The Grammys Have One Job—and This Year They Actually Did It
Much like Beyoncé, we were surprised (in a good way) by the 2025 awards.
Among the various creative maxims offered by Brian Eno in his deck of Oblique Strategies cards, my favorite has got to be: “The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten.” I was thinking about that last night as the Grammys finally ended, and Beyoncé won Album of the Year for the first time. The Recording Academy surely hadn’t forgotten Beyoncé, the most awarded artist in Grammys history, but year after year, they relegated her victories to the genre categories, and instead picked winners like Taylor Swift, Adele, Billie Eilish, and late-career Beck. Those artists’ oft-sheepish acceptance speeches became a genre unto themselves—how many white people would apologize to Beyoncé for winning AOTY, before she won one herself?
