Harry Styles' Grammys Speech Caused Mass Bewilderment

World gives a big 'um, what?' to claim that 'this doesn’t happen to people like me very often’
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 7, 2023 12:40 AM CST
Harry Styles' Grammys Speech Caused Mass Bewilderment
Harry Styles accepts the award for album of the year for "Harry's House" at the 65th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 5, 2023, in Los Angeles.   (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Before leaving the stage after winning the biggest award at Sunday night's Grammys ceremony, an apparently overwhelmed Harry Styles—a white, male, wealthy, straight, cisgender British singer of pop music—said: "I’m just so—this doesn’t happen to people like me very often and this is so, so nice." As BuzzFeed reports, the world did a bit of a double take at that line. "I need him to explain what identity he was using for that speech cause..." reads one sample response on Twitter. There are many, many more where that came from, with nearly all of them pointing out that "this," in fact, happens to people like him quite a lot.

Adding insult to injury was the fact that Beyonce had been widely expected to win Album of the Year; instead, in what many saw as yet another snub, she lost out for the fourth time. (Taylor Swift beat her for AOTY in 2010; Beck in 2015; and Adele in 2017.) A Black woman hasn't won the award since 1999, and a hip-hop artist hasn't won in 19 years. The Atlantic assumes Styles was referring to himself as "a former reality-TV contestant from a small town" when he made his claim, but says his speech still underscored all the problems of the "delusional" Grammys. Still, there were supporters to be found on Twitter defending him. And then there were those touting ideas like this: "harry styles didn’t mean anything when he said 'this doesn’t happen to people like me very often' because i don’t think he’s ever had a thought inside that head." (More Harry Styles stories.)

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