Grammys: Harry Styles makes gracious speech after awards win
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Harry Styles, 29, received the award for his third album, Harry’s House, since embarking on his solo career. As the singer took to the stage he appeared to be heckled by Beyonce fans and caused a social media frenzy as he said “this doesn’t happen to people like me very often”.
At the Grammy Awards on Sunday evening, Harry took home the top prize, Album of the Year, beating the likes of Adele, ABBA, Kendrick Lamar and Beyonce.
The pop singer was visibly shocked as his name was called and walked on stage with his collaborators Kid Harpoon and Tyler Johnson.
However, as the musicians made their way up, Beyonce fans could be heard in the crowd calling out: “Beyonce should have won.”
Despite holding the all-time record for most Grammy Awards and being nominated for Album of the Year four times, Beyonce is yet to win the coveted Gramophone.
Harry started his speech thanking the other artists, the judges, his collaborators and fans and declaring “there’s no such thing as bests in music”.
He concluded: “I’m just so… this doesn’t happen to people like me very often. And this is so, so nice. Thank you very, very much.”
There was almost instant backlash online, with fans taking to Twitter to express their outrage with one declaring: “You’re literally the umpteenth white man to win (Album of the Year)”.
Many noted that they didn’t understand what the singer had meant by his statement as he is a “straight cis white guy” as one person wrote: “I gotta be honest I can’t think of a type of people this happens for more.”
In the 65-year history of the awards show, 11 black artists have received the Album of the Year Grammy while Harry is the 33rd white male to be awarded it, according to the Mail.
Another ridiculed the statement as “extremely rich”, slamming the singer as someone “whose biggest act of rebellion is wearing sequins and nail polish”.
A Twitter user questioned: “How tone deaf could you possibly be, I would really like to know what he meant by that.”
Harry’s own fan base was quick to rush to the singer’s defense, explaining that Harry was alluding to his working-class background in the UK but it had been somewhat lost in translation.
On Twitter a fan wrote: “I feel like everyone who is criticising what Harry Styles said at the Grammys needs to do a crash course in class privilege in the UK and the North-South divide.”
Another noted: “Fuss over Harry Styles’ ‘people like me’ just shows how class is erased from inequality, particularly in the US.
“The British arts are dominated by rich private school kids. Not being able to see class as a crucial factor is…telling.”
One person even took a moment to highlight a fact that he is definitely not a fan of Harry’s but continued: “You have to be dumber than a bag of hammers to not see he’s clearly talking about being working class in the sea of privately schooled nepotism babies that makes up the arts in the UK.”
The middle-class singer was plucked from obscurity in 2010 when he auditioned on The X Factor, originally as a solo artist before being grouped with Zayn Malik, Niall Horan, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson to form One Direction.
The 16-year-old from Cheshire said in the interview before his audition that his only singing experience at the time was in his band made up of school friends.
On stage, the soon-to-be award-winning singer explained he was working at a local bakery part-time around his school schedule and had plans to study law, sociology and business at college.
Express.co.uk has contacted Harry’s representatives for comment.
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