Black Music Sunday is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music, with over 245 stories covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new.
It’s Grammy Awards time again for those of you music lovers who like to tune in—though viewership is no longer what it used to be. We have seen pushback over the years from Black artists focused on all major industry awards (see movements like #OscarsSoWhite), and this year’s Grammy Awards will surely be no different.
Let’s take a look at Black music throughout Grammy history, controversies and complaints, and some of the great music that never won.
As the Musicians Hall of Fame says:
The GRAMMY Awards, which began as The Gramophone Awards, first took place in 1958. At that time, The Academy Awards, also known as the Oscars, and The Emmy Awards both recognized the leading artists in film and television, but no such musical equivalent existed. Following the Hollywood Walk of Fame project, which began in the 1950s, a renewed interest in music and the recording industry led to the creation of The GRAMMY Awards as a way to honor the music industry’s most talented composers, songwriters, and musicians.
And writing for FarOut Magazine, Lauren Hunter discusses the first Black artist to win a Grammy:
To this day, the main means of musical recognition of the highest order is through the Grammys, but with the awards body having frequently been subject to discriminatory racial biases over its nearly 70-year history, it has been made appallingly more difficult for Black artists to receive the same level of plaudits as their white musical counterparts over time. With only 11 Black artists having ever won its most coveted ‘Album of the Year’ prize, it is plain to see that the Grammys still has a long road to travel in terms of its recognition and reverence of the Black musical landscape and the monumental role it indeed plays across the modern sonic realm as a whole.
[...]
That would be Ella Fitzgerald, the pioneering jazz queen and ‘First Lady of Song’, who incidentally, living up to her nickname, also became the first-ever Black artist to win a Grammy award at its inaugural ceremony in 1959. She took home two of the prizes for ‘Best Vocal Performance, Female’ for Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Irving Berlin Songbook and ‘Best Jazz Vocal Performance, Individual’ for Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Duke Ellington Songbook.
Here’s Ella Fitzgerald singing “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” from the album.
Controversies are often centered around the “Big Four” Grammy categories: Best New Artist; Song of the Year; Record of the Year; and Album of the Year, which garners the most acrimony.
Only 11 Black artists have won Album of the year:
1974, 1975, 1977: Stevie Wonder for "Innervisions, "Fulfillingness' First Finale," and "Songs in the Key of Life"
1984: Michael Jackson for "Thriller"
1985: Lionel Richie "Can't Slow Down,"
1991: Quincy Jones for "Back on the Block"
1992: Natalie Cole for "Unforgettable…With Love”
1994: Whitney Houston for the soundtrack of "The Bodyguard"
1999: Lauryn Hill for her debut solo album, "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill"
2004: Outkast for "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below"
2005: Ray Charles posthumously won for "Genius Loves Company”
2008: Herbie Hancock for "River: The Joni Letters," a tribute album
2022: Jon Batiste for "We Are"
Last year, Marie Claire’s Quinci LeGardye wrote:
The Grammys have faced accusations of racial discrimination since its first ceremony in 1959, and several notable snubs and upsets have continued raising eyebrows well into the 21st century. In March 2021, a study by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that Black performers represented approximately 38 percent of all artists on the Billboard Hot 100 from 2012 to 2020, but they only received 26.7 percent of top Grammy nominations during that same period. That was the same year that the Weeknd boycotted the ceremony, after receiving zero nominations for his After Hours album, including his hit song “Blinding Lights.” That year, the Grammys’ nomination process, including the use of "special committees" to decide the final set of nominees, came under heavy scrutiny, with fans wondering whether the lack of racial diversity in the upper echelons of the Recording Academy was the reason why Black albums—which ultimately shake culture and have proven to change the entire record industry (even earning Pulitzers)—still couldn’t break into the “Big 4” categories (Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best New Artist, and Album of the Year).
In 2020, Princess Weekes at The Mary Sue explored the Grammy Awards’ snub of Beyoncé’s album, Lemonade:
Lemonade was her sixth solo studio album and the second “visual album” she’d done after the release of the self-titled Beyoncé album in 2013. With this album, the Houston chanteuse got some of the best critical praise of her career. It was ranked the number one album of 2016 by many, including Rolling Stone. Yet when the time came for the Grammy’s she lost Record of the Year and Song of the Year, to Adele’s 25.
When Adele made her speech after winning Album of the Year, she notably took a moment during her speech to call Beyoncé’s album “monumental” and giving it, as well as Beyonce herself praise, for being a light in the industry for making the album.
Later on, Adele followed up on this with another statement that reflected a lot of what people were saying. “I thought it was her year,” she said of Beyoncé. “What the fuck does she have to do to win album of the year?”
Here’s the full album:
Similarly, Business Insider’s Callie Ahlgrim addressed another snub toward Beyoncé, this time for “Renaissance” in 2023:
There is no reason why Beyoncé's "Renaissance" should've lost album of the year. This is Beyoncé's third time being added to this list, and each time she fails to win album of the year, it gets a little more inexplicable and infuriating. Her eighth album, the queer-pop masterpiece "Renaissance," was the obvious choice for album of the year in 2023.
To make matters worse, the Recording Academy spent a large chunk of the ceremony exalting Beyoncé for becoming the most-decorated person in Grammys history — and patting themselves on the back for allowing it to happen — just to end the night by handing the top award to Harry Styles. And to be clear, "Harry's House" is good, but it's no "Renaissance." It's not even close.
One of my biggest personal beefs with the Grammy Awards will always be the 1985 snub of Prince’s “Purple Rain.”
In 1984, music critic and historian Robert Palmer reviewed the album for The New York Times:
For the first time on one of his albums, Prince has chosen to work primarily with his band, and presumably to accept musical input other than his own.
In solitude, even the work of a prodigally gifted, self-made genius must eventually become constricted. On ''Purple Rain,'' the band's contributions do make the music sound more alive and more sensual. There are dazzling musical moments - the synthesizers and guitars that rave and rage at each other, yet remain almost frighteningly controlled in ''Let's Go Crazy,'' or the strutting, almost-scat vocalizing on ''The Beautiful One.'' ''Darling Nikki'' features some of the most unrestrained piano- thumping and leather-lunged screaming since Little Richard. The album's closer, the cathartic ''Purple Rain,'' sets a gospel rap and jazz borrowings into the framework of a country-rock ballad, decorated with Nashville-style, Floyd Cramer-like piano arpeggios.
For the first time, Prince has stepped beyond the image he so obsessively constructed for himself on earlier records, and the result is exhilarating. What the film critics will make of all this remains to be seen, but the album ''Purple Rain'' is a winner, creatively and commercially. It may lack the Jacksons' multiformat sophistication and Bruce Springsteen's single-minded vision of America's hopes and failures, but this listener suspects that long after this summer's hits are forgotten, and the Jacksons and Springsteen albums are packed away, ''Purple Rain'' will still be remembered, and played, as an enduring rock classic.
Here is Prince’s “Purple Rain”:
This year’s nominees for Album of the Year are:
André 3000 - “New Blue Sun”
Beyoncé - “Cowboy Carter”
Billie Eilish - “Hit Me Hard and Soft”
Chappell Roan - “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess”
Charli XCX - “Brat”
Jacob Collier - “Djesse Vol. 4”
Sabrina Carpenter - “Short n’ Sweet”
Taylor Swift - “The Tortured Poets Department”
Given today’s political climate, I wonder if Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” has a shot, or if backlash from the MAGA world will affect the vote.
Pitchfork’s Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, wrote a stunning review of the album last April:
If Lemonade taught us anything, it’s that you do not fuck with Beyoncé. Her 2016 opus was her seething response to being wronged, giving us the indelible image of a smiling woman in a yellow dress carrying a baseball bat and the enduring specter of Becky and her good hair. We already know what happens when something meddles with her peace—she puts her whole being into righting the wrongs, enacting her revenge with a twinkle in her eye, extra gumption in her voice, and ice in her veins. There’s a particular edge when one of the world’s biggest music superstars has a chip on her shoulder. This doesn’t often occur—of late, Beyoncé has been acting as a beatific Mother in every way—but when it does, boy howdy, look out.
… it was clear that even Beyoncé’s Texas bona fides wouldn’t protect her from the longstanding racism and sexism that still existed in the country mainstream, despite Black musicians creating the spark of country music and Black Americans creating the foundations of the country itself. “Because of that experience,” she wrote, “I did a deeper dive into the history of country music and studied our rich musical archive… the criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me.” The country music establishment got Beyoncé doing homework. The guns they are a-blazin’.
Will you be tuning in?
Join me in the comments section for highlights (and lowlights) from this year’s Grammy Awards and to share your thoughts on the winners and losers.
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