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POP MEGASTAR BEYONCÉ made Grammys history last night by becoming the winningest woman ever at the music industry’s top awards gala, while there was disappointment for Irish band Fontaines D.C.
Beyoncé secured the record for 28 career wins after scooping Best R&B Performance honours for her hit Black Parade, a single celebrating Black culture and activism that dropped in the wake of mass protests ignited by the death of George Floyd, a Black man, in police custody in the summer of 2020.
Overall, the 39-year-old — who initially rose to fame as part of the girl group Destiny’s Child before embarking on a wildly successful solo career — won four trophies on the night.
“I am so honoured. I’m so excited,” said the singer, who made a surprise showing at an event she has skipped for the past several years, wearing a curve-hugging black leather Schiaparelli mini dress.
“As an artist, I believe it’s my job and all of our jobs to reflect the times. And it’s been such a difficult time,” Beyonce said, with her rap mogul husband Jay-Z looking on.
Critics praised Black Parade for Beyonce’s strong vocals as well as its lyrics that simultaneously condemn racism, issue a call for activism and pay homage to Black culture.
Proceeds from the song — which dropped on Juneteenth, a holiday on 19 June commemorating the end of slavery in the United States — benefit Beyonce’s Black Business Impact Fund, which supports Black-owned small businesses.
“I wanted to uplift, encourage, celebrate all of the beautiful Black queens and kings that continue to inspire me and inspire the whole world,” Beyonce said.
Dublin-Mayo rockers Fontaines D.C. were nominated in the Best Rock Album category for the second album A Hero’s Death but lost out to The Strokes.
Grammy Night. You can watch from 7pm GMT on https://t.co/Yf2iYCwaDl or https://t.co/wmsjsGDMPw The “Best Rock Album” Nomination is up around 9pm GMT pic.twitter.com/uuhGBWS3KR
— Fontaines D.C. (@fontainesdublin) March 14, 2021
‘History!’
But even as she rules over the Grammy record books, Beyonce is also among the show’s most-snubbed artists — and on Sunday, she once again fell short of capturing an award in the major categories.
She was nominated twice for Record of the Year — once alongside Megan Thee Stallion — and once in the Song of the Year category.
Those awards went to last year’s top winner Billie Eilish and bluesy rocker H.E.R., respectively.
Instead, she secured the R&B performance award, along with two rap prizes for her collaboration with Megan Thee Stallion on a remix of “Savage” and Best Music Video for her Brown Skin Girl.
Prior to 2021, pop deity Beyonce boasted 24 Grammy wins to her name — but notoriously lost Album of the Year in 2017 to British balladeer Adele despite releasing her landmark visual album “Lemonade.”
The slight is often cited as an example of the Recording Academy’s diversity issues, and even Adele said Beyonce deserved to win.
It was hard not to see a parallel after Eilish won over both Queen Bey and Megan Thee Stallion — with the 19-year-old winner saying the rapper should have taken home the prize, just as Adele had done for Beyonce.
The megastar is the most nominated female artist in Grammys history with 79, tied with Paul McCartney as the second most nominated act and only one behind Jay-Z and industry legend Quincy Jones.
But she’s only triumphed in the top categories once: in 2010, she won Song of the Year for Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It).
Yesterday, any controversies between her and the Academy seemed more like fodder for fans, than something Bey deigned to concern herself with.
“It’s such a magical night, thank you so much,” Beyonce said, adding her gratitude to her children — the eldest, Blue Ivy, won her first Grammy alongside her mom for her appearance in “Brown Skin Girl.”
“I’m so honoured to be your mommy,” she said, before nodding to Jay-Z and adding: “I love you so much, my rock.”
“History!” host Trevor Noah exclaimed as the night’s queen sashayed from the stage.
“Give it up for Beyonce. This is history right now!”
Album of the Year: Taylor Swift, “folklore”
Record of the Year, recognizing overall performance on a song: Billie Eilish, “Everything I Wanted”
Song of the Year, for songwriting: H.E.R., Dernst Emile II and Tiara Thomas, “I Can’t Breathe”
Best New Artist: Megan Thee Stallion
Best Music Video: Beyonce, “Brown Skin Girl”
Best Rap Album: Nas, “King’s Disease”
Best Rap Song: Megan Thee Stallion featuring Beyonce, “Savage”
Best Rap Performance: Megan Thee Stallion featuring Beyonce, “Savage”
Best Rock Album: The Strokes, “The New Abnormal”
Best Rock Song: Brittany Howard, “Stay High”
Best Rock Performance: Fiona Apple, “Shameika”
Best Pop Vocal Album: Dua Lipa, “Future Nostalgia”
Best Pop Solo Performance: Harry Styles, “Watermelon Sugar”
Best Pop Duo/Group Performance: Lady Gaga with Ariana Grande, “Rain on Me”
Best R&B Album: John Legend, “Bigger Love”
Best R&B Performance: Beyonce, “Black Parade”
Best Alternative Music Album: Fiona Apple, “Fetch the Bolt Cutters”
Best Global Music Album: Burna Boy, “Twice as Tall”
Best Country Album: Miranda Lambert, “Wildcard”
Best Contemporary Christian Music Album: Kanye West, “Jesus Is King”
Best Comedy Album: Tiffany Haddish, “Black Mitzvah”
Best Song Written for Visual Media: Billie Eilish, “No Time to Die” (for “No Time to Die”)
- © AFP 2021 with reporting by Rónán Duffy
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Global? Start at home first.
This government needs to do more to support the largest employer in Ireland, SME’s.
Great country if you are Google etc. God help anyone looking to run their own business tho!
Large players like Google actually distort the market here, welcome as they are.
You have mid level managers thinking 80k is their right, not something that is unheard of in most of Europe. Rent and property prices in Dublin driven crazy by high paying multi-nationals which destroy the competitiveness of the country.
Most of our exports come from 40 US owned companies, over 85% in fact. What a position to place oneself in.
Multi-nationals are lovely to have but they are in terms of economic sustainability and jobs they are a distant second in importance to SME’s.
Double edged sword,
Seanie, multinationals were our one saving grace when the sh!t hit the fan in 2007 so I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss their importance. They also create service industries around them which are equally just as important. And if as you say they represent 85% of our experts what do you propose replaces that? It’s not like we have a tonne of natural resources to tap into.
It is the sheer volume of the Pharma industry that distorts the exports.
We live in hope that America will not need someday to refocus tax at home in a recession or jobs at home for political reasons. What a gamble.
Our trade balance is a complete mirage due to Multi-nationals.
Focusing in on SME’s is much more important than Multinationals, they provide most of this countries jobs and spending.
We’ll never reduce unemployment just using multi-nationals, we’ll never have a sustainable tax base or economy by over relying on them.
There are a lot of sme’s that can be brought up to being large players.
Companies like Kerry Group, Glanbia CRH etc are leading global players in their fields, they are some of our multi-nationals, investing large sums all over globe.
Rental increases have nothing to do with google. It’s to do with the lack of housing supply due to a collapsed construction industry based on FF policy.
Don’t forget the planners J. They are still insisting developers build apartments in the middle of no where despite the obvious demand for 3 and 4 bed houses. I’m amazed this isn’t getting more media attention.
Govt too busy bending over for foreign multinationals and rolling out the red carpet for snakes like Donald Trump to help Irish SMEs. I see they’ve brought in an extra USC level now for self employed people. Shows you where their priorities lie.
Self employed earning over 100k. Hardening throttling enterprise is it?
A self employed person has more right to 100k than a high level manager in someone else’s business.
I haven’t much problem with the higher charge at that level but it is very wrong that it is just targeting the self employed. It should be across the board.
The higher tax rate for the self employed who are on reasonable wages shows that the self employed are actively targeted for bleeding.
C’mere to me, where do I get a job that pays €29 per hour??
Primary teacher!
Be a crappie hooker……
When is the next protest against water charges in Dublin?
NEXT Water charge protest: [NOVEMBER, 1st. DUBLIN]
Would like to see the relationship between average gross pay and net pay between Ireland and rest of EU. We have high gross salaries but I imagine they are so high to make up for all the tax and deductions. Talking Private sector here. Public Sector is another animal completely.
In most of Western Europe the tax take is much higher on average, never mind that property tax and water rates are also higher.
The tax wedge is much higher across Western Europe people, ye might not like that fact but that is still a fact.
That’s simply not true Seanie.
A useful graph to include would be each countries % spend of GDP. Most of the EE states with low cost of labour have less than 40% of GDP spent by governments. This with higher % spend have higher hourly rates. Relationship is striking
To take on them we will have to kick every high productivity business out of Ireland.
That is the key difference, most of them do not have any, at any level.
How is competing with high unemployment, low value businesses with poor national infrastructures a good idea.
Luddite.
That’s not my point at all. But I won’t waste my time or yours educating you
Why are labor costs in Ireland always so distorted?
Fact is the Irish worker has 20 days paid holidays in a year.
In Germany the Worker has 30 days paid annual leave ?
First three days of sick leave is at the employees expense.
In Germany sick pay is covered 100% from day (for a limited period of time)
The books are being seriously cooked here it is a complete lie that the Irish worker is so expensive.
However compare the wages of Lawyers,doctors and the public service teachers and politicians.
Our s are some of the worlds most expensive. The Wage issue is pure profiteer propaganda.
So what if we are still above the EU average, we are cheaper on that scale than most of our competitors. We’ll never beat countries like Spain or Portugal or Cyprus on wages, unless we consider cutting wages by 50% and kicking out the high wage multi-nationals.
We pay professional people, senior managers, doctors etc way too much, in many cases double even what wealthy European countries pay.
Legal fees here are outrageous and it is very wrong and selfish that no Govt. have tackled the Law Society here and its closed shop. It is an extortion on Irish society and deeply damaging to business here.
Do you ever take a break from commenting on here. Find yourself a hobby well ye
Ah yes, it’d be great if we could just not pay all the people that do all the work and watch the money roll in. A capitalists wet dream.
Welcome to Jobridge Ireland…
Yeah great place u can pay your employees as little as possible. Zero hour contracts jobbridge.fcukn assault on the working class
“Is Ireland really ‘the best small country in the world to do business in’?”
Not with that preposition dangling on the end of its sentence it’s not!
I guess I’m just going to have to pay a few per cent extra tax to set up my soon-to-be-highly-lucrative grammar auditing consultancy in a country with some syntactic credibility. Well done Ireland – that’s one more highly skilled job you’ve allowed to slip through your bungling fingers!!!
Only prescriptive grammarians would present such a narrow, limited and mostly historical interpretation of syntax; it belongs back in the 18th century along with Bishop Lowth. Most modern grammarians accept the proposition that language is better analysed in terms of a lexical approach.
Q. Is Ireland…blah blah blah?
A. No
Enda says it is
No
Support Small businesses
Great country if your name is O’Brien
have your say