Beyoncé accepted the Innovator Award last night, in Versace 1992, at the iHeartRadio Music Awards after ruling our lives since the release of COWBOY CARTER on Friday. 

 

My thought as I was listening to the album at midnight when it dropped – every artist out there is doing the same thing. As we have seen over the years, she is the star among stars, the biggest celebrity among celebrities. Just look at SZA’s reaction to seeing Beyoncé last night. SZA won Album of the Year, so it’s not like she’s just a fangirl…but she is, really, in that moment, just a fangirl of the artist many consider to be the standard. 

 

But Beyoncé fangirled too. It was Stevie Wonder who presented the award to her – because, you know, you can’t have just anyone presenting to BEYONCÉ. This was the montage that played before her moment with Stevie: 

And here’s her entrance after Stevie’s introduction, at which point she takes the time to pay tribute to him, and also closes out her remarks by honouring the artists who opened the door: Rosetta Tharpe, Tracy Chapman, Linda Martell, Prince, André 3000, Tina Turner, Michael Jackson, and so many more. 

 

So let me ask you this: now that you’ve watched that clip… is this how you would describe what she said? 

US Weekly's headline about Beyoncé


…that f-ck are those people at Us Weekly doing? She slammed exactly no one and nothing. She did, however, say that her hope is that “we’re more open to the joy and liberation that comes from enjoying art with no preconceived notions”. 

Beyoncé’s speech was under three minutes. The first minute was pretty much dedicated to Stevie. The middle minute was her talking about what it means to innovate, which is when she talked about how she hoped that people, including herself, since she used the word “we”, could broaden their understanding of art and its various forms. And the final minute was spent thanking the legends who came before her and her family. This is grace and generosity – but you wouldn’t know it from that f-cking headline. Anyone reading that, who doesn’t bother watching the video, would come away from with a totally warped impression of what actually happened last night.

 

And what’s currently happening…which is that Beyoncé, while enjoying the success of this new album, is also amplifying the work of other Black artists in country. The Hollywood Reporter yesterday reported that:

“Since the album’s release on Friday, the number of first-time listeners for acts like Brittney Spencer, Reyna Roberts and Shaboozey — who all appear on Cowboy Carter — has increased in the past week.

 

Spencer saw an uptick of 170 percent in first-time listeners, Roberts and Tanner Adell both went up 125 percent, and Tiera Kennedy’s first-time listens were increased by 110 percent. Spencer, Reynolds, Adell and Kennedy collaborated with the Grammy-winning superstar on a cover of The Beatles’ “Blackbird,” the second track on Cowboy Carter.Willie Jones, who appears alongside Beyoncé on “Just for Fun,” saw an uptick of 75 percent in first-time listeners, and Shaboozey, who is featured on “Sweet/Honey/Buckiin’” and “Spaghetti,” went up 70 percent. 

And the Beyoncé effect wasn’t just for first-time listeners — the budding acts also saw a major uptick in catalog listening on Spotify in the past week.

Kennedy saw an increase of 40,000 percent, Spencer saw an increase of 37,220 percent, Roberts saw an increase of 16,000 percent, Jones saw an increase of 5,650 percent, Adell saw an increase of 3,200 percent, and Shaboozey saw an increase of 1,350 percent.”

 

This was always one of her goals – to use her platform to spotlight others, and we’re seeing the effects of that in just three days.