History was made when Beyoncé snagged her 32nd Grammy to be the person with the largest number of Grammy wins.
Early Wins
Beyoncé won her first two Grammys in 2001 for “Say My Name” with Destiny Child. The awards were for best R&B song and R&B group or duo performance. However, only one of her thirty-two awards were in a Big Four category: the song “All the Single Ladies” which she helped co-write. In 2008, “All the Single Ladies” won the award for Song of the Year. Since then, while Beyoncé had been nominated several times, she had never won another Grammy in a Big Four category.
This year, she won 4 Grammys––including that for dance/electronic recording, dance/electronic album, R&B performance and R&B song. In her speech, she thanked God, her Uncle Johnny, and the queer community.
Darker Side of the Grammys
Many of her fans, known as the Beyhive, were outraged when Harry Styles won the prestigious award for album of the year. Styles added the words “This doesn’t happen to people like me very often,” further infuriating fans who thought that Beyoncé should have received the award.
The Grammy’s has a dark history of ignoring African Americans for awards and music critic Chris Richards explains how “for the past 20 years and counting, the Recording Academy has routinely failed to recognize Black artists at their creative peaks.” Many other people have commented on how a Black woman hadn’t won Album of the Year since Lauryn Hill in 1999 with her album “Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.” Jon Batiste won Album of the Year in 2022 with his song “We Are” but he was the last Black person to win the award.
Past Record Holder
Sir Georg Solti, the previous holder of the title “Most Grammy Awards”, was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor with thirty-one Grammys. After Sunday’s award ceremony, Beyoncé now has thirty-two. Solti was hired as a conductor for the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra from a very young age. Later, he became the music director of what is now known as the Royal Opera House. He then moved into the Chicago Symphony Orchestra where he received twenty-four of his now thirty-one Grammys. In 1996 Georg Solti won the Grammy for Best Artistic Career. After his death, he received the Best Opera Recording, Hall of Fame Award.
Beyoncé has made history and the public––both fans and not––can rest assured that she will continue doing so.
