State Champ Radio Nine Milestones Beyoncé Could Reach at 2025 Grammys
Written by djfrosty on April 3, 2024
As has been widely critiqued here and elsewhere, Beyoncé has yet to win album of the year. She was previously nominated for I Am…Sasha Fierce in 2010 (lost to Taylor Swift’s Fearless), Beyoncé in 2015 (lost to Beck’s Morning Phase), Lemonade in 2017 (lost to Adele’s 25) and Renaissance in 2023 (lost to Harry Styles’ Harry’s House). The fact that she lost to a white artist in each case has not escaped notice.
On “Sweet Honey Buckiin’,” a track on the new album, Beyoncé addresses her album of the year (AOTY) track record. “A-O-T-Y, I ain’t win/ I ain’t stuntin’ ’bout them,” she raps. “Take that s—t on the chin/ Come back and f—k up the pen.”
In accepting an honorary award on the Grammy telecast on Feb. 4, Jay-Z “went there” and bluntly addressed her losses.
Looking at his wife, who was standing in the audience, he said, “I don’t want to embarrass this young lady, but she has more Grammys than everyone and never won album of the year. So even by your own metrics, that doesn’t work. Think about that. The most Grammys, never won album of the year. That doesn’t work.”
He then doubled down by saying, “When I get nervous, I tell the truth.”
Jay’s calling out the Grammys, right there on the Grammy stage, was a moment of high drama. Never mind that many other artists with large numbers of Grammys have never won album of the year, including Jay himself (24), Kanye West (also 24), Vince Gill (22) and Bruce Springsteen (20).
Because of all the attention Beyoncé’s repeated losses for album of the year have received, Recording Academy voters may feel unspoken pressure to finally give her the big one. It will be hard for voters to be totally objective when they have so much Grammy history on their minds, but that’s how it often works with awards.
Should Bey win for Cowboy Carter, it would be her first win on her fifth try. No one else in Grammy history has ever won for the first time on their fifth nomination in the category. Seven artists won for the first time on their third nod – Frank Sinatra (who received two nods in the Grammys’ first year), The Beatles, Whitney Houston, Steely Dan, Ray Charles, Dixie Chicks and Beck.
If Beyoncé finally wins, Sting, Kanye West, Lady Gaga and Kendrick Lamar will remain as the only artists to go 0-4 as lead artists for album of the year. Sting’s tally includes the final studio album by The Police. Gaga’s includes her second collab album with Tony Bennett. The tallies for West and Lamar include just solo studio albums. (Lamar’s tally does not count the Black Panther soundtrack, which was also nominated, but on which he was credited as a featured artist, not the lead artist.)
Why has Beyoncé’s 0-4 track record in this category attracted so much more attention than these four other artists’ identical records? Discuss amongst yourselves.
