How Beyoncé Finally Won Her Elusive Album of the Year Grammy

At the Grammy Awards on Sunday, Beyoncé finally clinched album of the year with “Cowboy Carter,” her ambitious gumbo of country and American roots music, ending a four-time losing streak that had long baffled fans and industry insiders alike. With her win, she became only the fourth Black woman — and the first since Lauryn Hill in 1999 — to take the Grammys’ top accolade.

“It’s been many, many years,” Beyoncé said with a wide smile when she accepted the trophy.

How the star prevailed with “Cowboy Carter” — an outlier in a career that has been largely devoted to R&B and pop — is a story as much about her own efforts as the inner workings of the Recording Academy, the organization behind the Grammys, and the evolving voting body within it.

Beyoncé’s victory effectively saved the Grammys from yet another public relations disaster, following years of complaints not only over her losses but of the academy’s poor record of rewarding Black artists in the top fields.

“The Grammys had one job to do, and they did it,” said Bill Werde, the director of the Bandier music business program at Syracuse University. (The academy and its chief executive, Harvey Mason Jr., scored another win on Sunday by welcoming back the Weeknd, who four years ago assailed the organization over its voting practices and boycotted the event.)

As noted by presenters like Diana Ross and Miley Cyrus on Sunday’s show, Grammy winners are selected by 13,000 members of the academy, who must demonstrate their bona fides as working music professionals to vote. That qualification, as peers of the creators on the ballot, is central to the Grammys’ sense of legitimacy.

But it can also be a vulnerability for the academy. Its voters must walk a fine line between making subjective choices, based on artist merit, and navigating the shifting sands of pop music. Erratic, conservative choices — like Herbie Hancock beating Amy Winehouse and Kanye West in 2008 or Beck defeating, er, Beyoncé in 2015 — can erode public perception of the show and devalue the gramophone-shaped trophy. Just ask Homer Simpson.

Knowing this, the academy has been working to refresh and diversify its membership pool. According to the organization, 66 percent of its current voters have joined since 2019 — among them 3,000 women — and 38 percent of its electorate are now people of color. (More quietly, the academy has also moved many of its inactive old guard to nonvoting status.)

“I just want to make sure,” Mason, the academy chief, said in an interview, “that we’re accurate in representing what’s going on in music at any given time.”

Those changes may well have improved Beyoncé’s chances this year. But demographics alone are not enough to tip the scales.

In some ways, “Cowboy Carter” played to the ingrained tendencies of Grammy voters, new or old. With a focus on American roots, it was far from Beyoncé’s usual work but involved hallowed traditions and music-making practices. In announcing the project, Beyoncé said she had chosen “real instruments” like banjos, organs and strings, and eschewed artificial intelligence and digital filters. More effective Grammy catnip is hard to find.

The album was a reclamation of the Black roots of country, and of the role women have played in its history. In her acceptance speech, Beyoncé dedicated the award to Linda Martell, the first Black woman to play the Grand Ole Opry, though most country histories had since relegated her to a footnote.

“For her to dedicate that award to Linda Martell was to really highlight and amplify the idea that we’ve always been here,” said Treva B. Lindsey, a professor at Ohio State University who has written about Beyoncé. “You just haven’t heard us, you haven’t seen us, you haven’t affirmed our presence and our contributions to this tradition.”

But “Cowboy Carter” is also a big, welcoming tent, with cameos by Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson and a reverent treatment of the Beatles’ “Blackbird.” That cover featured background vocals from a group of young Black women in country, though on the album Beyoncé also duetted with country-friendly white stars like Cyrus and Post Malone.

“Cowboy Carter” was hardly Beyoncé’s best-received album, with some critics finding it overstuffed. But in another Grammy tradition, voters saw an opportunity to atone for past errors and omissions by crowning a late-period album by a master whose earlier masterpieces they had overlooked. (Longtime Grammy watchers know this as the Steely Dan phenomenon, after the great 1970s jazz-rock band’s win for “Two Against Nature” in 2001.)

Mason, who took over the job in 2020, said he welcomed criticism as a catalyst to improvement. The Weeknd’s protest was focused on the academy’s use of anonymous committees that reviewed nominations and sometimes overruled voters in making up the ballots. Those committees were largely eliminated in 2021.

“My hope is that all of our awards are going to people who deserve them and make great music,” Mason said. “We’ll also take heat. And if there’s valid points of constructive input that we can use in our process to be better, then we’ll do that.”