The Grammy’s are a prestigious award show that aims to celebrate some of the biggest artists around the world. The award show takes place on Feb 2 this year. Although it is one of the most anticipated shows, there is a large wall of controversy that surrounds it. There is a lot of talk by many that the Grammy’s are rigged and only want certain artists to win. For example, back in 2023 when Harry Styles beat Beyoncé or back in 2000 when Christina Aguilera topped Britney Spears, one of the biggest pop artists of the 2000s. This brings up the question of how the winners are determined based on sales or by artistic integrity.
Back In 2022, many successful albums were dropped, including Renaissance by Beyoncé and Harry’s House by Harry Styles. Harry’s House came out on May 20th of 2022 and it’s Styles’ third studio album. Harry’s House sold 757,000 copies in the United States and over 460,000 in the UK in that year only. The album debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 and spent two weeks at that top rank. It also had all 13 songs appearing on the top 30 of the Billboard Hot 100 with a Link single as it was spending 15 weeks at #1. The album did extremely well across the globe. When we were captivated by the ex-One Direction star’s musical talent Genius.
Beyoncé’s 7th studio album Renaissance debuted on July 29th of 2022. Renaissance sold over 190,000 copies in the first week. The album also spent its first fourteen weeks at the top ten of the Billboard 200. When it comes to sales, it is obvious that Harry’s House outshined Beyoncé’s renaissance in 2022. There were many more copies in its first week than Renaissance did. We can see that when it came to the 2023 Grammys that Harry Styles was the winner based off of the sales and charting rankings. Many were surprised by the outcome of this due to the fact that Beyoncé has been creating music for the past two decades and is the most awarded artist in Grammy history. Many argue that Styles winning album of the year doesn’t accurately represent talent throughout the music industry and the amount of changes and inclusion that can be seen in the music industry today. We can see that in this case. Harry Styles won due to the sales and overall reached more people.
Almost the same amount of controversy can be seen at the 2000 Grammys with two of the biggest female pop stars of the 2000s, Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears, faced off after they were both nominated for best new artist. The Baby One More Time album was released on Jan 12, 1999. Over 4 million copies of the album were sold in 1999 alone. The album titled Cut Concurrently hit #1 on the Billboard 200 and the Billboard Hot 100. To this day “Baby one more time” is still one of her most popular songs. Christina Aguilera, on the other hand, was only nominated for two awards. Her song Genie in a Bottle was nominated for best female pop vocal performance. Album Christina Aguilera sold 1,973,000 albums. It is clear from. The statistics show that Britney had more sales when it came to songs and was more popular amongst the charts. The biggest debate was that Brittany was better selling and more well liked, but Christina Aguilera had the better vocals. It was a controversial topic because Brittany had become one of the biggest pop sensations. Ultimately, the Grammys decided to go with Christina’s vocals as opposed to Britney’s sales.
When interviewing a student, she said that she believed that Grammy winners weren’t based on either sales or quality of music, the winners were chosen based off of people on the comities opinions and they aren’t always representative. This is understandable due to the fact that the Grammy’s voting method is extremely secretive. In addition to this she believes that even this year’s Grammys were a little bit off with Beyoncé winning Album of the Year and Best country album despite being one of the least favorited in both categories.
Another student said that she intended on watching the Grammys and she believes that the winners are based off of quality of music. This makes sense due to the fact that there can be a lot of publicity and sales due to the fact that an album was made by a big artist even though the songs could be terrible. She was also questioning on the 2023 Grammys and Harry Styles triumph over Beyoncé. She explained that she believed that the overall quality of Harry Styles album was better than Beyoncé’s and deserved to win either way she stated that her music had a much bigger reach, and she connected to the songs off the album more.
