Kanye West made headlines after storming the stage during the 2009 VMAs, interrupting Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech for Best Female Video.“I’m Sorry, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time,” he said as a stunned Swift stood on stage speechless, and Beyoncé and the rest of the audience looked on in shocked. While that has not been Kanye’s only public outburst, many believed the great Yeezus may have changed for the better in the past years, given his usual rants are about himself, and his blatant disrespect to another popular artist nearly ruined him.
Fast forward six years later to the 57th Grammy Awards – 44 year old singer-songwriter, Beck, had just been announced as the winner of Album of the Year, beating out Pharrell, Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith (who seemed to win every other award that night), and even Beyoncé. The obvious dark horse in that category, even Beck seemed very surprised to win the award. No sooner had Beck stepped on that stage, Kanye was also making his way up. The crowd watched in horror – was history about to repeat itself? With a grin, Kanye walked right off the stage again… crisis avoided.
It appeared as though Kanye had changed for the better. However, all of that went out the window in a post-Grammy interview where Kanye had a few choice words to say about Beck’s award:
“We ain’t gonna play with them no more. And Beck needs to respect artistry and he should’ve given his award to Beyonce. What happens is, when you keep on diminishing art and not respecting the craft and smacking people in the face after they deliver monumental feats of music, you’re disrespectful to inspiration,” he said, “And we as musicians have to inspire people who go to work every day, and they listen to that Beyonce album and they feel like it takes them to another place.”
In one interview, the renowned jack*** managed to not only disrespect Beck immensely, but make himself look awful again, all while providing Beyoncé once again with a defense she didn’t need.
Here’s the thing – Beyoncé knows she’s fabulous. After 20 Grammy wins and being the most nominated woman in Grammy history, she doesn’t need Kanye to constantly remind her she’s successful. I can only imagine Kanye’s very blatant and public defenses are nothing more than embarrassing to her. Should Beyoncé have won the award instead of Beck? Maybe, she’s an incredibly talented woman. But Beck was very deserving of that award, and here’s why.
Beck has been involved with the music industry as a multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, and producer since 1985. Since then, he has released 12 albums, all of which he’s been the primary song-writer and instrumentalist. While Beyoncé is undoubtedly a very talented artist, she creates much less of each song than Beck does of his own songs. His album Morning Phase is a beautifully crafted album full of touching lyrics, emotion, and raw sound. Each song coming entirely from his own mind, body, and soul. He’s only won 4 Grammys previous to this one, and has been nominated for Album of the Year three times (he’s had many other nominations, but only three for this particular category) before winning it finally, so this award has been a long time coming. And it makes sense – most of the other performers in this award category, (Pharrell, Sam Smith, and Beyoncé) were all of similar genres; therefore those who would vote for that genre had to split their votes between three or four different artists. Beck was undoubtedly the unique genre in his category, gaining ALL of the votes from people voting for that sort of music. It gained him more votes in that way, but it was definitely not undeserved.
So while it may be surprising that Beck was the overall winner, there is no doubt that he deserved it. He’s been a huge musical influence in the industry since 1985 and deserves this special recognition. Not even that, but he’s incredibly classy in the way he handles himself (as seen by the way he replied to the comments made by Kanye). So next time Kanye wants to needlessly leap to Beyoncé’s defense and bash another artist by telling them to “respect artistry,” maybe he should take a look at himself and realize he’s nothing more than a man full of empty words and hot air. In the end, the mark of a true artist is not only the music they produce, but how they handle themselves. Beck embodies everything good about the industry, and it’s only right he gets the recognition he deserves.