Beyoncé sets a new record for most Grammy wins in history

Beyoncé has now captured more Grammy awards than any other artist, thanks to a quartet of trophies for her album RENAISSANCE. Two-thirds of the way into the evening's live telecast, she won her fourth award of the year for a total of 32 in her career, shattering the record for the most Grammys of any artist in the prize's 65-year history.

Coming into this year's awards, Beyoncé already owned 28 Grammys as a lead artist, and had garnered nine nominations this year. She hit the new record just after 7 PM PT, when she won best electronic/dance music album. She cried upon taking the stage, saying, "I'm just trying to receive this night." Later, she gave credit to her forbearers and inspiration, adding: "I would like to thank the queer community for your love, and for inventing the genre," referring to the house music that grounded RENAISSANCE.

Faced with years of declining and middling viewership, the Grammys hoped to amp up the dazzle this year via this bit of history-making. What the Record Academy had clearly hoped would be an earlier, big live television moment was foiled by urban sprawl. A half an hour into the show, Beyoncé — who was reportedly late to the awards thanks to LA traffic — tied the all-time record for most Grammys won when she and a team of co-writers won best R&B song for "Cuff It." The previous Grammy record of 31 wins was a feat set by the late Hungarian-born classical conductor Georg Solti, who had 31 Grammys. The iconic musician and composer Nile Rogers, one of the co-writers on "Cuff It," accepted the award for best R&B song on the team's behalf along with another of its co-writers, The-Dream.

In another history-making moment, 2023 marked the first time that either an openly non-binary person or an openly transgender woman won a Grammy. Both glass ceilings were smashed when Sam Smith and Kim Petras were awarded best pop duo/group performance for their song "Unholy." (Musician Wendy Carlos won three Grammys in 1970 for her album Switched-On Bach, but she was not yet living publicly as a woman at that point.)

At the so-called Grammy "premiere" show, the pre-telecast ceremony in which the Recording Academy handed out nearly 80 awards. Among that sprawling array of prizes, actress Viola Davis became an EGOT — the proud possessor of Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards — Sunday afternoon when she won a Grammy for the audiobook version of her memoir, Finding Me.

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