I’m gonna go over the ones she won too, but that doesn’t grab you as much in the title.
A few weeks ago, one my friends came down to listen to Taylor Swift’s new album and the convo turned to music in general. In some ways, Taylor and Beyoncé are orbiting around the same star of Ultimate Pop Supremacy, a comparison in which I am completely biased toward Beyoncé, who has no competition from anyone. We were discussing the fact that Taylor Swift has more Album of the Year wins than any other performer, while Beyoncé has more Grammys than anyone else, but only one Album of the Year win.
To him, there was no real problem here. To me, it’s evidence of what Black people face in entertainment: you can be the very best among your peers when your peers are defined as other Black people, but you will still come in second to the white entertainment industry at large. For example, Victoria Rowell has eleven NAACP Image Awards for her role as Drucilla on the Young & the Restless, but zero Daytime Emmy wins. Angela Bassett has seventeen NAACP Image Awards but she’s 0 for 2 at the Oscars. Beyoncé has racked up a record number of wins…largely against other Black performers. The subtext here is that even the best of us cannot compete with the most mediocre of them. So here are all of the times Beyoncé has lost in a General Field (Song, Record, or Album of the Year) at the Grammy Awards, starting with Destiny’s Child.
2001
Nomination: Record of the Year “Say My Name”
Winner: U2 “Beautiful Day”
Also nominated:
- Macy Gray “I Try”
- Madonna “Music”
- NSYNC “Bye Bye Bye”
Rightful Winner: “Say My Name”
Of the nominees, which song did you last hear out and about somewhere? I promise you it wasn’t “Beautiful Day.” What Beyoncé & Co did with “Say My Name” helped shape the sound of rap-singing for the next two decades. Everyone from Drake to Tyla is influenced by that song and it was Beyoncé’s rapid-fire pre chorus over Darkchild’s chaotic late 90s production that pushed her from just another lead singer of a mid-tier girl group to a superstar. The song was so good nobody cared that the girls in the video were not the girls on the cover of the album.
Nomination: Song of the Year “Say My Name”
Winner: U2 “Beautiful Day”
Also nominated
- Faith Hill “Breathe”
- Lee Ann Womack “I Hope You Dance”
- Macy Gray “I Try”
Rightful Winner: U2 “Beautiful Day”
It’s easy to miss how beautiful the lyrics really are because U2 and the song were so overexposed when it was released. Twenty-five years removed from the mass hysteria, it’s a top-tier track and some really good songwriting.
2004
Nomination: Record of the Year “Crazy in Love”
Winner: Coldplay “Clocks”
Also nominated:
- Black Eyed Peas & Justin Timberlake “Where Is The Love?”
- Eminem “Lose Yourself”
- Outkast “Hey Ya”
Rightful Winner: “Crazy In Love”
Another song that spawned a thousand imitators (Amerie, Jennifer Lopez, Pussycat Dolls, Diddy, Missy Elliott, etc.), “Crazy In Love” was so fresh I didn’t even like the song the first time I heard it. It was way too chaotic for me (and for Beyoncé, because she didn’t even want to record it when Rich Harrison played the track for her), but by the end of that year, it was the best thing I’d heard in a long time. It set me up for a major disappointment when the rest of her debut album wasn’t as energetic, but there is no record released that year that sounded as fresh as “Crazy In Love” did then or now.
Missing Nominations: No nomination for Album of the Year
Winner: Outkast Speakerboxx/The Love Below
Rightful Winner: Outkast Speakerboxx/The Love Below
I don’t love Beyoncé’s first album and it’s the one I listen to the absolute least. I didn’t enjoy her voice back then and I felt like she oversang a lot. That said, Beyoncé won a Grammy for three separate songs on the album: “Crazy In Love,” “The Closer I Get To You,” and “Dangerously In Love 2.” If your album wins a Grammy for three separate songs, how is it not one of the best albums of the year? Outkast was only nominated for “Hey Ya!” by the way. When you look at the slate of nominees though, there was Outkast and Missy Elliott. That’s two hip-hop acts out of five, so there was no “room” for Beyoncé. Justin Timberlake was nominated that year for his trash though, and that’s the spot she should have taken.
Beyoncé was nominated for, and won, Best Contemporary R&B Album, a category that she would win repeatedly over the years.
2007
Missing Nominations: No nomination for Album of the Year
Winner: Dixie Chicks Taking the Long Way
Rightful Winner: Dixie Chicks Taking the Long Way
The Recording Academy did not look kindly upon the B’Day era. After racking up six Grammys in 2004, she only won one in 2007 — Best Contemporary R&B album. Still, the album had nominations for “Party,” “Deja Vu,” and “Irreplaceable,” so the math still is not mathing when you have three songs nominated for a Grammy but your album is not one of the best of the year.
Still, the right act won. Taking the Long Way is a top 10 pop-country album to this day and a well-deserved reward for the Dixie Chicks trying to push their country audience into being decent people.
Missing Nominations: No Record of the Year nomination for “Deja Vu”
Winner: Dixie Chicks “Not Ready to Make Nice”
Rightful Winner: Dixie Chicks “Not Ready to Make Nice”
“Deja Vu” has one of the best bridges in Beyoncé’s catalog. It sets the standard! But there was some stiff competition. “Be Without You” by Mary J. Blige, “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt, “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley, and “Put Your Records On” by Corinne Bailey Rae. Obviously I would take James Blunt out of this lineup and put Beyoncé there instead.
2008
Nomination: Record of the Year “Irreplaceable”
Winner: Amy Winehouse “Rehab”
Also nominated:
- Foo Fighters “The Pretender”
- Rihanna” Umbrella”
- Justin Timberlake “What Goes Around…Comes Around”
Rightful Winner: Amy Winehouse “Rehab”
Yeah, there was nothing out that was really seeing “Rehab” in the record department. From the lyrics to the delivery to the production, Amy had it.
Missing Nominations: No Song of the Year nomination for “Irreplaceable”
Winner: Amy Winehouse “Rehab”
Rightful Winner: Carrie Underwood “Before He Cheats”
Listen! The way Carrie MAGAwood painted that visual of the tramp her man was cheating with? That’s how you write a song!! I’m just annoyed at anyone who thinks Rihanna “Umbrella” is a better written song than “Irreplaceable,” because how did that song get a nomination here over Beyoncé???
2010
Nomination: Record of the Year “Halo”
Winner: Kings of Leon “Use Somebody”
Also nominated:
- Taylor Swift “You Belong With me”
- Black Eyed Peas “I Gotta Feeling”
- Lady Gaga “Poker Face”
Rightful Winner: Beyonce “Single Ladies”
I’ll explain in a second…
Nomination: Song of the Year “Single Ladies”
Winner: “Single Ladies”
Also nominated:
- Lady Gaga “Poker Face”
- Maxwell “Pretty Wings”
- Kings of Leon “Use Somebody”
- Taylor Swift “You Belong With Me”
Rightful Winner: Kings of Leon “Use Somebody”
I think the Recording Academy got it wrong here. Song of the Year is typically for the songwriters, because the song is written well. Record of the Year is for the overall impact of the song, its production, the performance, etc. “Single Ladies” does not feel like a great exercise in songwriting, but overall, it was the best record out, so I don’t really know what all was going on here.
Nomination: Album of the Year I Am…Sasha Fierce
Winner: Taylor Swift Fearless
Also nominated:
- Black Eyed Peas The END
- Lady Gaga The Fame
- Dave Matthews Band Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King
Rightful Winner: Taylor Swift Fearless
Beyoncé’s 3rd album is not a great album, but I understand why it was nominated. She won a Grammy for two separate songs (“Single Ladies” and “Halo”) and she actually beat Taylor Swift in the Pop Vocal category. So while I like Taylor’s album better (it’s her 2nd or 3rd best album in my opinion), the math still doesn’t add up. How do you win multiple Grammys for multiple songs, beat someone head to head in two categories, but their album is better?
Beyoncé got her third win in a row for Best Contemporary R&B album here, really racking up those wins against Black artists.
2012
Missing Nominations: No Album of the Year nomination for 4
Winner: Adele 21
Rightful Winner: I can’t choose
2012 is a mystery to me because 4 was not nominated at all for any album awards. After 2011, the Academy restructured the awards and took out some R&B ones. Instead of two album categories, they took away the Contemporary R&B album, and Beyoncé wasn’t nominated. I wasn’t paying enough attention to Beyoncé to notice whether she was overexposed or experiencing any backlash, but it’s odd to me that one of her best albums got very little recognition.
I want to say Beyoncé should have not only been nominated for R&B Album but also won AOTY as well, but that Adele album still holds up surprisingly well. If we want to judge by Metacritic, 21 does have three points over 4, but it’s a very close race. Of Adele’s two AOTY wins, I’d rather she keep this one and give her second one to Beyoncé for Lemonade. And Adele would agree with that.
2015
Nomination: Album of the Year Beyoncé
Winner: Beck Morning Phase
Also nominated:
- Sam Smith In the Lonely Hour
- Ed Sheeran x
- Pharrell Williams GIRL
Rightful Winner: Beyoncé
The Academy got it wrong so many times that year. Pharrell beat Beyoncé in the Urban Contemporary Album category for an album where nobody can remember a single song other than “Happy.” Beck lost the categories where his songs were nominated. Beyoncé, meanwhile, took home a Grammy for “Drunk In Love.” Plus, Morning Phase ended up with an 81 Metacritic score while Beyoncé got an 85. Her album is on more Best Of lists than you can count, from best of the year to best of the decade to best releases of all time. Morning Phase does not have nearly the same legacy so I still have no idea what went into that decision. I like Beck and I like Morning Phase, but it’s still laughable that he beat self-titled.
This is when I started paying attention to what Grammy voters say and the vibe was that Beyoncé wins all the time so she doesn’t need to win anymore. She was already inching into record-breaking territory and for her to win with an album that explicitly accuses the world of forcing Black women to shrink themselves? That was too much for voters who already have this unfounded concept that Beyoncé has too many awards.
2017
Nomination: Record of the Year “Formation”
Winner: Adele “Hello”
Also nominated:
- Lukas Graham “7 Years”
- Rihanna “Work” feat. Drake
- Twenty One Pilots “Stressed Out”
Rightful Winner: Adele “Hello”
Let’s keep it a buck. That record came out of nowhere and blew everybody away.
Nomination: Song of the Year “Formation”
Winner: Adele “Hello”
Also nominated:
- Mike Posner “I Took a Pill in Ibiza”
- Justin Bieber “Love Yourself”
- Lukas Graham “7 Years”
Rightful Winner: “Freedom”
“Hello” is a great record, but there’s not a lot to sink your teeth into from a song craft standpoint. “Freedom” on the other hand….why wasn’t it nominated instead? Between Beyoncé and Kendrick, the imagery is top-notch and the production covers more ground than anything else nominated in the category.
Nomination: Album of the Year Lemonade
Winner: Adele 25
Also nominated:
- Justin Bieber Purpose
- Drake Views
- Sturgill Simpson “A Sailor’s Guide to Earth”
Rightful Winner: Lemonade
Even Adele knew she shouldn’t have won this award. Lemonade was a landmark release for Black Women everywhere and Rolling Stone says it’s the best album of the 21st century. The Daily Telegraph says it’s the 8th greatest album of all time and NPR says it’s the 6th best album of all time from female artists. I don’t have to go down the list. Y’all know that album is better than Adele reheating her own nachos from 21.
Also, in keeping with the trend, it’s important to note that four individual songs were nominated from Lemonade (“Formation,” “Don’t Hurt Yourself,” “Hold Up,” and “Freedom”) while only “Hello” managed to grab a nomination for Adele. This will continue to bug the hell out of me every time it happens.
But she won Urban Contemporary Album again, because even with a country song and a Grammy nomination for Rock Performance, they still boxed her into only winning Black People Music categories.
2019/2020
I don’t have a lot to say here. She didn’t get nominated for Album of the Year with Everything is Love or The Lion King: The Gift but I don’t actually mind. I don’t think they’re great projects and both Kacey Musgraves and Billie Eillish deserved those wins anyway.
2021
Nomination: Record of the Year “Black Parade” & “Savage” (Remix)
Winner: Billie Eillish “Everything I Wanted”
Also nominated:
- Black Pumas “Colors”
- DaBaby “Rockstar”
- Doja Cat “Say So”
- Dua Lipa “Don’t Start Now”
- Post Malone “Circles”
Rightful Winner: “Black Parade”
I don’t think enough of y’all have actually listened to that song because it’s a top tier Queen Bey track and it doesn’t get enough love. It’s just too Black for those white voters.
Nomination: Song of the Year “Black Parade”
Winner: H.E.R. “I Can’t Breathe”
Also nominated:
- Roddy Rich “The Box”
- Taylor Swift “Cardigan”
- Post Malone “Circles”
- Dua Lipa “Don’t Start Now”
- Billie Eillish “Everything I Wanted”
- Saxe “If The World Was Ending”
Rightful Winner: “I Can’t Breathe”
Now this was the kind of Black Song voters could get behind because they could feel good about themselves for being emotional while listening to it. A song where you a proud to be Black can’t pull those same emotional heartstrings. I stand behind the win though.
2023
Nomination: Song of the Year “Break My Soul”
Winner: Bonnie Raitt “Just Like That”
Also nominated:
- Gayle “ABCDEFU”
- Harry Styles “As It Was”
- Steve Lacy “Bad Habit”
- Adele “Easy On Me”
- DJ Khaled “God Did”
Rightful Winner: Bonnie Raitt “Just Like That”
If you’ve never actually listened to the lyrics of this song, go ahead and do that. Bonnie had seen a news pieces about a mother who lost her child and donated the organs. Later, she met the man who received her kid’s heart. Bonnie managed to put that story and all of those emotions into a song and it’s one of the more deserved wins for “Song of the Year” recently.
Nomination: Record of the Year “Break My Soul”
Winner: Lizzo “About Damn Time”
Also nominated:
- ABBA “Don’t Shut Me Down”
- Adele “Easy On Me”
- Mary J. Blige “Good Morning Gorgeous”
- Brandi Carlile “You and Me on the Rock” feat. Lucius
- Doja Cat “Woman”
- Steve Lacy “Bad Habit”
- Kendrick Lamar “The Heart Part 5”
- Harry Styles “As It Was”
Rightful Winner: “Virgo’s Groove”
Black women win this category so infrequently, I was not mad that Lizzo won (for a song I don’t really like) over Beyoncé (with a song sitting in the bottom two of my Renaissance ranking). Literally any song on Renaissance would have been a better nomination to me, but “Virgo’s Groove” is the best song of Beyoncé’s career. It is six minutes of exquisite production with Bey out-singing everyone who has put out an album the past 20 years. The fact that “Virgo’s Groove” lost Best R&B Performance to MUNI OFFKEY LONG IS A TRAVESTY. Any last shred of respect I had for The Grammy Awards left right then and I just knew if they could play in her face over “Virgo’s Groove” then they would also pass her by for Album of the Year. Because those people are not listening with ears that work.
And now we’re here. The greatest Beyoncé Upset of all time and the reason why I will never stay up late to watch another Grammy telecast.
Nomination: Album of the Year Renaissance
Winner: Harry Styles Harry’s House
Also nominated:
- ABBA Voyage
- Adele 30
- Bad Bunny Un Verano Sin Ti
- Mary J. Blige Good Morning Gorgeous
- Brandi Carlile In These Silent Days
- Coldplay Music of the Spheres
- Kendrick Lamar Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers
- Lizzo Special
Rightful Winner: Renaissance!!!!!!!!!
Bitch I’m still mad. I don’t even have to go all into it because y’all know it too.
I would like to point out that, keeping in theme with Beyoncé’s excellent projects, Renaissance had nominations nominations for four different songs (“Break My Soul,” “Cuff It,” “Plastic Off the Sofa,” and “Virgo’s Groove”) and she won a Grammy with three separate, individual songs. Harry Styles did not win a single Grammy for any of his individual songs and only one of them was nominated anyway. That will absolutely never ever in your life make any sense at all. Your album was so good that three of the songs deserve Grammys, but it’s not the best album of the year…..okay.
2025
I did not stay up to watch Beyoncé win her AOTY trophy because 1) I no longer care to watch the Grammys and 2) it felt like a “here, damn!” anyway.
Nomination: Record of the Year & Song of the Year “Texas Hold Em”
Winner: Kendrick Lamar “Not Like Us” (both wins)
We don’t even need to list any of the nominees because nothing was beating “Not Like Us” regardless of the competition.
Nomination: Album of the Year Cowboy Carter
Winner: Cowboy Carter
Also nominated:
- Andre 3000 New Blue Sun
- Sabrina Carpenter Short n’ Sweet
- Charli XCX 360
- Jacob Collier Djesse Vol. 4
- Billie Eillish Hit Me Hard and Soft
- Chappell Roan The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess
- Taylor Swift The Tortured Poets Department
I still believe Taylor Swift would have won this category again if the Academy hadn’t invited so many people of color the year before. It’s also important to note that there were no Black women in the category to split the vote with Beyoncé either. Oftentimes, there are only so many Progressive Votes that are up for grabs. These are the people who will vote out of the box for women of color, and if you put more than one in a category, they all lose, the way we saw Stephanie Hsu and Angela Bassett split the vote for the Best Supporting Actress trophy that went to Jamie Lee Curtis.
No Black woman has ever won Album of the Year when another Black woman is nominated. Natalie Cole won (with help from her deceased father) against an all-white field, so it was easy to see a clear path to that win. The Bodyguard soundtrack is credited to Whitney Houston, but I think it cheapens the statistic because half of the album is not Whitney Houston, so should it really count as a win for Black women? At any rate, the rest of the field was white. When Lauryn Hill won, interestingly enough, the entire field was female. I wonder what would have happened if there had been one man nominated — would he have pulled out a win with the patriarchy lined up behind him? They were all white women though, so there were no other Black people to vote for. With Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé had a pretty decent field of competition, but the only two men in the race had no hope of winning. That plus the injection of diversity pushed her over the top.
So by my count, that’s 7 times that Beyoncé should have rightfully won Album, Record, or Song of the Year when the award went to someone else. Personally I think it comes down to two misperceptions: Beyoncé wins too much and Art is better with fewer people.
Beyoncé Wins All the Time Anyway
Time after time, Grammy voters will anonymously explain that they did not vote for Beyoncé because they assume she’s going to win anyway. Look at some of these quotes from 2023:
I think there’s a really good chance Beyoncé wins one or all the big categories.
With Beyoncé, the fact that every time she does something new, it’s a big event and everyone’s supposed to quake in their shoes — it’s a little too portentous.
OK, Adele, Beyoncé — they always win; it’s the same people over and over again.
I didn’t vote for either Adele or Beyoncé in any of the top categories. I love Beyoncé’s album and have been a fan of Adele, but I feel that they have already won a lot of Grammys.
The problem here is that Adele had actually won the big categories, while Beyoncé hadn’t. The perception problem that these older, white voters have is that the Black lady is too big for her britches and they don’t need to gas her up any further. They don’t like how big she is. Nevermind the fact that Adele has two of the biggest selling albums of all time, dwarfing Beyoncé’s own sales. Nevermind the fact that Taylor Swift has not only won AOTY four times but is also the biggest female touring artist in the history of music with chart successes that could not even have been conceptualized twenty years ago. But Beyoncé is too big too vote for. Beyoncé is too portentous.
Anyway…
Beyoncé Doesn’t Write Her Music
Beyoncé will never escape this and at this point she doesn’t even care to try. She actually adds more contributors to her album than she needs to. Take “Break My Soul” for example. She credited the writers behind Robin S. “Show Me Love” even though she didn’t even use a sample from that song! She used the same instrument and general vibe, but there is no sequence of notes that matches anything in “Show Me Love.”
Aside from that though, we know Beyoncé has been writing songs since at least 1998 when she contributed to 11 out of 16 songs on Destiny’s Child’s second album. Remember, she was 17 years old at the time. Darkchild, Kandi, Missy Elliott…these people were not going to give songwriting credit to a 17-year-old girl unless she was actually in the studio writing the music. We know from Kelly and LeToya that the girls were out running the streets while Beyoncé was basically living in the studio. Beyoncé has been writing music for longer than Billie Eillish has even been alive okay? The fact that people continue to question her contributions to her own music is both misogynist and foolish at this point.
And it shows a fundamental lack of understand for how Beyoncé works. I’m going to use Taylor Swift as an example, not to pit them against each other, but because they’re both really familiar and I like them both.
Taylor Swift sits down with a guitar (or a piano), and her little diary of lyrics, and knocks out a song. Her producer of the moment will take that song, edit it to the most impactful structure (most of the time), and produce a song. Or! Her producer of the moment will present her with a track and she will scroll through her rolodex of lyrical ideas until she finds something that fits that track. And then she’ll write lyrics to it. You end up with two people on the track — Taylor, and a producer.
Beyoncé produces by curation. Beyoncé has an idea for what she wants to do from beginning to end, oftentimes starting with the stage presentation for the tour first, and then filling in the blanks with music. She’s a 360 conceptual artist, so she’s picturing the outfits, imaging the choreography, plotting the staging, planning the videos, and writing the music all together. When she has the vision, she finds the people who will bring that vision to fruition. She finds the songwriters and the producers that will create the sound of the project she’s trying to make, and then it’s her job to keep them all moving toward the same artistic vision. Sometimes she has them all in one place, so she can move from room to room bouncing around ideas, and sometimes it’s a several years journey of collecting music and ideas that may fit into a future project.
That is fucking impressive regardless of whether you think the only way to make great music is with a guitar and a piece of paper alone in the studio. You’re entitled to your wrong opinion, but your opinion shouldn’t affect how you grade the output.
If Beyoncé has 60 credits on an album and Unnamed Singer Songwriter only has 3, that doesn’t mean that album is better — it just means it was made with fewer people. Are you trying to grade the product or grade the process? Picture it this way. If one person make you a delicious ham sandwich and ten people work together to make you a delicious Thanksgiving dinner, are you going to enjoy the ham sandwich more because one person made it by themselves?
Beyonce is serving us Thanksgiving dinners over and over and the industry wants to reward singer-songwriters for giving us ham sandwiches. I’m sorry, but a Grammy shouldn’t be an A for Effort.
When all the chips land, Beyoncé doesn’t need my help. She has a billion dollars and storage facilities full of awards. In 20 years, nobody will be talking about Harry’s House or 25, but we will still be talking about Renaissance and Lemonade. I just wanted to get this out of my head and onto the screen so that the next time someone asks you why it’s annoying that she gets overlooked while being simultaneously hyper-visible, you’ll have somewhere to point them.
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