Beyoncé Accepts Grammys Award With Powerful Speech About Race and Beauty
Beyoncé accepted the Grammy for Best Urban Contemporary Album Sunday night at the 59th Annual Grammy awards and delivered a moving speech that left us about as breathless as her show-stopping and angelic performance did.
In the speech, Beyoncé spoke about the creation of Lemonade and using the album to redefine beauty standards and the meaning of race for her own daughter Blue Ivy (and future twins). She also spoke about the deeply personal album—in which she aired the details of her marriage to Jay Z—saying she hoped her expression of pain and honesty would help her confront her own pain and make it easier for people everywhere to discuss taboo topics like infidelity and female power.
The singer also made a political and societal statement about race, simply saying we cannot let history repeat itself.
Read the full transcript from her acceptance speech, below.
Thank you so much. Hi, baby. Thank you to the Grammy voters for this incredible honor and thank you to everyone who worked so hard to beautifully capture the profundity of deep southern culture. I thank god for my family, my wonderful husband, my beautiful daughter, my fans for bringing me so much happiness and support. We all experience pain and loss and often we become inaudible. My intention for the film and album was to create a body of work that would give a voice to our pain, our struggles, our darkness and our history, to confront issues that make us uncomfortable. It’s important to me to show images to my children that reflect their beauty so they can grow up in a world where they look in the mirror, first through their own families, as well as the news, the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the White House, and the Grammys, and see themselves. And have no doubt that they’re beautiful, intelligent, and capable. This is something I want for every child of every race, and I feel it’s vital that we learn from the past and recognize our tendencies to repeat our mistakes. Thank you, again, for honoring Lemonade. Have a beautiful evening. Thank you for tonight. This is incredible.
Beyonce had picked up two gramophones (at the time of publishing) but had received nine nods for the 2017 ceremony. (She is also the most nominated female artist in Grammys history.)
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