Generally speaking, Grammys are not things to get worked up about, especially if you're Beyonce and have twenty of them. However, after Beyonce's self titled album lost to Beck for album of the year at the Grammys, certain people I could name did not take this very well.
However, after Kanye West started talking about artistry, another conversation emerged, claiming that Beck in this case was a true artist, while Beyonce was not for various reasons, especially regarding things such as lyrics and instrumentation.
However, these two arguments are extremely shortsighted and misleading.
The first and most obvious thing to point out is that the Grammy is not for the "Best Self-Produced" album, but instead for the "Best Album", and the number of people that worked on the album have absolutely nothing to do with the album's quality.
The second thing to point out is that Beck didn't even play all of the instruments on his album by himself, bringing in multiple musicians to help him play songs on his album. He didn't even do all of the arranging by himself, working with his father to arrange the instruments on the album.
In June 2013, [Boots and Beyonce] met in person for the first time and presented her with material he felt would resonate with her. However, Beyoncé was more interested in his experimental material, and he reluctantly played her the piano demo of "Haunted" on his cellphone, believing its instrumental to be lacklustre. She disagreed and refused to ignore it, saying "this shit has to knock harder than any rap album out there". At a later meeting, he played her a stream of consciousness rap called "Ghost", which he wrote after an exasperating meeting with a potential record label. Boots began by composing a melody that reminded him of a hypnotic state, then layering guitar arpeggios to resemble the work of English electronic musician Aphex Twin. Subsequently, "Ghost" became the first half of "Haunted"; he later described Beyoncé as the "only visionary in the room" for her ability to find potential in scraps of songs.
And if you doubt her musical ability, consider that both the songs Drunk in Love and Partition were ad-libbed in the studio.
Both ad-libbed cuts of the song made it directly onto the album. Other impressive songs are the song XO, which Beyonce sung while she had a sinus infection. The fact that these songs even made it to the album are incredible considering that eighty songs were created for this album.
On top of all of that, the album Beyonce was released with no warning, and sold more copies in 24 hours than Beck's album has sold to date.
Beyonce's album sold 433,000 units on the first day of release while Beck's album has sold 300,000 units period. Generally speaking, album sales are a large precursor to determine a winner, as shown by Macklemore taking home two Grammys last year over Kendrick Lamar's superior album.
But as artistry goes, the most important thing to remember is that Beyonce was a visual album.
Each one of the songs has a music video that goes with it, and each of these music videos were the direct vision of Beyonce. The entire purpose of art is to show the vision of the artist, and this visual album did this perfectly. Whether or not Beyonce played tambourine on a couple of tracks is irrelevant.
This is in no way trying to devalue the work that Beck put into his album. Kanye West said as much when asked to clarify his comments afterward.
There is always a time for personal opinion. If you absolutely hate Beyonce's music, there's nothing that anybody can really say to convince you otherwise. If you think that Beck's album was more impressive musically and that he honestly deserved his win, that is your opinion and is entirely valid. But to argue that Beyonce isn't a true artist because she has producers make beats for her to sing over or that Beck deserved this win because he plays multiple instruments on his album is absolutely absurd.
The one thing that I can say for sure is this: the next time that a major artist drops a massive album with zero prior warning, we'll all be calling it "pulling a Beyonce."
Share This Article
