On Losing Awards and Babies: Beyonce Knowles Shares Life Lessons

Multi-award-winning African American artiste Beyonce Knowles talked to Elle about her experience losing the awards for her 2016 album “Lemonade” and her 2019 Netflix concert documentary “Homecoming”.

For this incredibly rare Elle interview, fans got the chance to send in their questions for Beyonce via different social media platforms. One fan asked about how Beyonce felt the Grammy’s and Emmy’s snubbed her for awards she so clearly deserved.

Here’s a little backstory…

For those of you who do not remember, there was a lot of outrage when the Grammy’s passed over Beyonce’s “Lemonade” for the Grammy’s Album of the Year Award. In fact, even Adele, who won the award, expressed shock at the outcome.

And then this year, Beyoncé’s Homecoming got nominations for five Emmys, and lost in every category. The most notable and unbelievable loss was to James Corden’s “Carpool Karaoke”.

Many people called out racism as a factor in the snub, especially given the Emmys’ noticeably white audience.

Knowing Beyonce, these two projects were extraordinarily artistic bodies of work that took the full capacity of her work ethic to accomplish.

From this, you can tell that Beyonce Knowles is a Rennaisance woman who aims to be the best at everything she does, with no exceptions. And for the longest time, things went how she wanted them to.

But Beyonce had a surprisingly enlightening and personal answer about losing awards for works as emotionally baring and culturally relevant as 2016’s “Lemonade” and 2019’s “Homecoming”.

Here’s Beyonce’s full statement about it:

“I began to search for a deeper meaning when life began to teach me lessons I didn’t know I needed. Success looks different to me now.

“I learnt that all pain and loss is, in fact, a gift. Having miscarriages taught me that I had to mother myself before I could be a mother to someone else.

“Then I had Blue and the quest for my purpose became so much deeper. I died and became reborn in my relationship, and the quest for self became even stronger.

“It’s difficult for me to go backwards. Being “number one” was no longer my priority. My true win is creating art and a legacy that will live far beyond me. That’s fulfilling.”

Basically, the wisdom behind this is that if you live your life for external validation, you are bound to get disappointed. But if you live your life based on your purpose, you will find fulfillment.

Even if Beyonce decides to end her career today, her legacy will still be stamped in history and that is truly amazing.