Lots of feelings watching Adele up there holding the Grammy for album of the year, acknowledging that her working inspiration, Beyonce, is sitting right in front of her.
In the history of the Grammys, three black women have taken home Album of the Year:
Natalie Cole in ’92
Whitney Houston in ’94
and
Lauryn Hill in ’99
There would be no Adele without the work of these women. There would be no American music industry without the voices of black women, howling and wailing and lifting sonic sounds that raise themselves to say, “I am here. Do you hear me?”.
And when we do it, it comes at great cost. Natalie and Whitney are gone. Lauryn hasn’t made a studio album since her monumental work on ‘Miseducation’ nearly 20 years ago. Working in this industry is hard and it is especially hard on black women.
Nights like the Grammys really show it.
I love Adele, she’s a fantastic artist, I’m glad she acknowledges the tradition she draws from. Her speech will be all over the internet in the morning.
She did great. She’s doing great. But it was a strange phenomenon, the acknowledgement of Beyonce in her speech, and the history for years now of blue-eyed soul being heralded as “artful” and elevated above its “urban” origins.
Adele, 25. Album of the Year, while her idol applauds her at her feet.