Beyoncé, the most-awarded artist in Grammy history, has finally won album of the year. Beyoncé picked up the top prize at Sunday night’s 67th Grammy Awards with “Cowboy Carter,” her bold yet scholarly exploration of the Black roots of country music.
It was the pop superstar’s first time taking the show’s flagship prize, which she’d previously lost four times for albums including the critically lauded “Lemonade” and “Renaissance.” Members of the Los Angeles County Fire Department presented the award during the ceremony dedicated to L.A. fire relief.
“It’s been many, many years,” Beyoncé acknowledged in her acceptance speech.
“I just want to thank the Grammys, every songwriter, every collaborator, every producer, all of the hard work,” she said. “I want to dedicate this to Miss [Linda] Martell, and I hope we keep pushing forward and opening doors.”
When Adele’s “25” beat “Lemonade” at the 2017 Grammys, Adele famously told Beyoncé during her acceptance speech that she couldn’t rightly accept the award knowing that her win had come at Beyoncé’s expense. In a speech during last year’s show, Beyoncé’s husband, Jay-Z, chastised the Recording Academy for bestowing his wife with dozens of genre awards while withholding album of the year.
Beyoncé also nabbed trophies for country album and country duo/group performance (alongside Miley Cyrus).
Released in March 2024, “Cowboy Carter” is Beyoncé’s eighth studio album and the second installment in a planned trilogy that began with the dance music-focused “Renaissance.” The LP — which she produced with a vast array of collaborators including Miley Cyrus, Pharrell Williams, Raphael Saadiq, the-Dream, Post Malone, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Shaboozey and pioneering Black country singer Linda Martell — entered the Billboard 200 at No. 1 and stayed there for two weeks. It also topped Billboard’s country album chart, making Beyoncé the first Black woman to reach No. 1 on that tally. “Texas Hold ’Em,” the album’s lead single, spent two weeks atop the Hot 100 on its way to more than 600 million streams on Spotify.
On Christmas Day, Beyoncé, 43, gave her first public performance of “Cowboy Carter” material during halftime of an NFL game streamed by Netflix from her hometown of Houston. This weekend, the singer teased an upcoming tour behind the album — the follow-up to her blockbuster Renaissance world tour that crisscrossed the globe in 2023.
The other LPs nominated for album of the year were Charli XCX’s “Brat,” Jacob Collier’s “Djesse Vol. 4,” Billie Eilish’s “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” André 3000’s “New Blue Sun,” Chappell Roan’s “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess,” Sabrina Carpenter’s “Short n’ Sweet” and Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department.”
In 2024, Swift took the prize with her album “Midnights.”
