At the Grammys on Sunday, Beyoncé ended up winning the album with “Cowboy Carter,” “Cowboy Carter.” Her victory made her the fourth black woman and the first woman since 1999 Lauryn Hill to receive top Grammy admiration.
“It’s been a long time,” Beyoncé said with a big smile as she accepted the trophy.
How the Star won with “Cowboy Carter” (a career outlier that has been devoted primarily to R&B, pop and pop), is as much as the internal mechanics of the organization behind the Recording Academy, the Grammy Awards. It’s about my own efforts. The evolving voting machine among them.
Beyoncé’s victory effectively saved the Grammys from yet another public relations disaster. Then there was a poor academy record of rewarding black artists in top fields as well as long-standing complaints about her losses.
“There was one job at the Grammy Awards and I did that,” said Bill Welde, director of the Bandier Music Business Program at Syracuse University. (The Academy and its CEO, Harvey Mason Jr., scored another victory on Sunday by welcoming Weekend, who attacked the organization on voting practices four years ago and boycotted the event.)
As presenters like Diana Ross and Miley Cyrus pointed out on Sunday’s show, Grammy Award winners are selected by the Academy’s 13,000 members, who make their authenticity as music experts who vote for. It must be demonstrated. That qualification is central to the sense of legitimacy of the Grammy Awards, as a fellow voting creator.
But it could also be vulnerable to the academy. That voter must walk a tiny line between making subjective choices based on the artist’s merits and navigating the changing sands of pop music. Unstable and conservative choices like Herbie Hancock, who defeated Amy Winehouse and Kanye West in 2008 and defeated Beyoncé in 2015, have erode public perception of the show and tramophon-shaped trophies. You can cut it down. Ask Homer Simpson.
Knowing this, the academy has been working to refresh and diversify its membership pool. According to the organization, 66% of current voters have been participating since 2019, including 3,000 women, and 38% of voters are currently of color. (More quietly, the academy has also moved many of its inactive old security guards to non-voting status.)
“We always say it’s accurate to express what’s happening in music,” Mason, the Academy’s chief, said in an interview.
These changes could have improved Beyoncé’s chances this year. However, demographics alone are not enough to tilt the scale.
In some respects, “Cowboy Carter” performed to the ingrained trends of new or old Grammy voters. Focusing on American roots, it was far from Beyoncé’s usual work, but included sacred traditions and music production practices. In the project announcement, Beyoncé said she chose “real instruments” like banjos, organs and strings, avoiding artificial intelligence and digital filters. Finding a more effective Grammy catnip is difficult.
The album was a reclamation of the country’s dark roots and the role women played in their history. In her acceptance speech, Beyoncé dedicated her award to Linda Martel, the first black woman to play Grand Ole Opry, but most rural history has been relegated to footnotes.
“To dedicate that award to Linda Martell was to really emphasize and amplify the idea that we were always here,” said Treva B., professor at Ohio State University who wrote about Beyoncé. Lindsay said. “You have never heard of us, you have never seen us, you have not confirmed our existence and contribution to this tradition.”
But “Cowboy Carter” is also a big welcome tent with a cameo from Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson and a respectful treatment of the Beatles’ Blackbird. The cover featured background vocals from a group of young black women in the country, but on the album, Beyoncé duets with country-friendly white stars such as Cyrus and Post Malone.
“Cowboy Carter” is not Beyoncé’s most welcome album, and some critics have found it packed into it. However, in another Grammy tradition, voters saw an opportunity to ease past mistakes and inactions by crowning late period albums by masters who had overlooked their previous masterpieces. (Long-run Grammy Watchers know this as the Steely Dan phenomenon after the 2001 victory of the great jazz rock band in the 1970s with “Two Against Nature.”
Mason, who took over from the job in 2020, said he welcomed criticism as a catalyst for improvement. Weeknd’s protest focused on the use of anonymous committees that reviewed nominations and sometimes overturned votes. These committees were largely eliminated in 2021.
“My award is to go to people who deserve them and make great music,” Mason said. “We take the heat too, and if there is a valid point of constructive input that we can use to get better in our process, we do that.”
