The Grammy’s are one of the most watched award shows in history, dating back to 1959. This year, with 16.9 million viewers and 94 categories, the Recording Acedemy’s Voting nominated many talented artists and televised 24 awards to the winning ones. By far, the most debated and controversial award goes to the album of the year, which was won by Beyoncé, for her album Cowboy Carter. The other nominees for the category were André 3000, Billie Eilish, Chappell roan, Charli xcx, Jacob Collier, Sabrina carpenter, and Taylor Swift. Fans from across the world broke out into social media debates about who should’ve won the award.
The CSArtisan polled 40 CSArts students to get their opinions on who they think should’ve won best album of the year and overwhelmingly 85% of the students voted for Billie Eilish. The reason? Eilish’s music skews to a bit younger crowd and no one is more popular to high school students than the “Birds of a Feather” singer.
“Yeah, I mean, I think Billie Eillish should’ve gotten it. She gained so many new fans and stuff, her album was definitely the most talked about this year, probably the most popular too, even though Beyoncé won, right?” student Sylvie Brinson said.
Billie Eillish did gain many new listeners, with 1.5 billion listeners to the album, and the most popular song, “Birds of a Feather,” having 2.3 billion streams. Beyoncé’s winning album, Cowboy Carter, had less than half the streams as Eilishes’. But, the amount of streams is not part of the criteria for winning the album of the year.
The Academy Voting decided that they thought Beyoncè’s album was the most influential Album this year, and her winning the Grammy is historic. It makes her the first Black artist with a country album to ever win “album of the year” in Grammy History. Plus you can’t forget her win of “best country album.”
In Cowboy Carter, Beyonce honored Black country artists, and Black female country artists who represent the future of the genre. In Beyoncé’s acceptance speech, she said, “I hope we just keep pushing forward, opening doors.” Beyoncé definitely left an impact with her album and branched out into a genre many people didn’t think she could, or would do. Although every talented and hardworking artist that was nominated deserved a win, Beyoncé’s win unquestionably changed the traditional standard for country music.
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