Why Adele really beat out Beyoncé at the Grammys

pulse

February 13, 2017 4:47 PM

The Grammy Awards once again showed they're eager to award cross-generational, all-pleasing music with Adele's streak of wins, while shortchanging black music.

Adele with her 2017 Grammys haul.

The Grammy Awards got it wrong again.

On Sunday night, Adele swept the major categories: Album of the year, record of the year, and song of the year all went to "Hello" and its album "25."

That shouldn't have been much of a surprise. Adele was the odds-on favorite going into the 2017 Grammys, even if "25" and its smash hit feel like distant memories (the album was released in November 2015 and was eligible for this year's awards because of the Grammys' weird timing rules). She is beloved across the world, technically impressive, charming all of the time, and almost impossible to hate.

But Adele's sweep felt like an affront to Beyoncé's "Lemonade," which had to settle for best urban contemporary album (an awkward phrasing that basically means best modern-sounding R&B album). The Grammys chose a perfectly fine album with a huge hit over one that made history, which left the awards feeling more irrelevant than ever.

Black music has gotten shortchanged before

As many critics have pointed out, the Grammys have an uneasy racial history. Only 10 black artists have ever won album of the year since it was first given in 1959, even though the history of rock 'n' roll is derived from black music.

Craig Jenkins, New York magazine's music critic, said Kanye West was "right" about the Grammys. West said after Beck's "Morning Phase" beat out Beyoncé's self-titled album in 2015: "At this point we tired of it, because what happens is when you keep on diminishing art and not respecting the craft and smacking people in the face after they deliver monumental feats in music, you’re disrespectful to inspiration."

Immediately after this year's awards, the singer Solange (Beyoncé's sister) shared a note on Twitter from Frank Ocean, who chose to sit out this year's Grammys, which was directed at Grammy producers. Ocean wrote:

The Grammys have a history of not giving hip-hop — and anything remotely new or pioneering — its due. Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff won the very first Grammy rap award in 1989 for "Parents Just Don't Understand," but the category wasn't televised, leading them and other nominees to boycott the show.