The 2017 Grammy Awards aired February 12 at 5pm on CBS, and this year, many famous musicians attended. One of them, Adele, took home the most awards for that night, five, as well as giving a powerful tribute performance of George Michael’s “FastLove”, performing her original song “Hello”, and finally shocking many with her final speech after receiving the award for album of the year and dedicating over half of her speech on how Beyonce should have won instead of her.

Adele had opened the show with her song “Hello”, which reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming her fourth number one. In addition to that, “Hello” had broken a record being the first song to sell over a million digital copies in one week after its release. After her stunning performance of “Hello”, she also sang “FastLove”, by George Michael, a tribute the late singer who passed away Christmas Day 2016. Halfway through her performance, Adele stopped singing and stated an expletive for the entire audience to hear, after which she said, “I’m sorry, I can’t mess this up for him,” and restarted her song. Once she had finished her performance it resulted in a standing ovation from the crowd and had left many, including Adele herself, teary eyed. Later through the show, Adele was shown to win five awards, one being Song and Record of the Year for her previously performed song, “Hello”. However, her most shocking part of the night was the speech she gave after winning album of the year for her album, “25”, over Beyonce’s album, “Lemonade”. She had mentioned multiple times throughout her speech how Beyonce had deserved to win that award over her, and how she felt cheated that Beyonce had not won. After insisting that “Lemonade”, deserved album of the year more and confessing her admiration of Beyonce, who had mouthed the words “I love you,” to Adele during her speech, Adele had held back crying while stating, “The artist of my life is Beyoncé, and this album to me, the ‘Lemonade’ album, was just so monumental.” Backstage, Adele expressed how as a fan of Beyonce she felt that it was her time to win, while she then broke her Grammy in half. Whether it was by accident or not is not fully known, but Adele stated that it was split in two so it was now half hers and half Beyonce’s.

By the end of the night Adele had won five Grammys, performed two heartfelt songs, as well as gave a speech dedicated to one of her favorite artists and fellow nominee Beyonce. Yorba Linda High School student Roxane Fournier believes, “Adele is amazing because she has such a gorgeous voice, and she has stayed humble throughout her career while still managing to write so many inspiring and beautiful songs,” which she proved by her speech to Beyonce made a statement that is refreshing to see for a change, that even through competition, love and respect between different artists is important and should be a main focus in the music industry. Artists should not be hating one another to reach the top of the charts and receive awards, but rather building each other up with friendly competition in between, as Adele showed during her award speech at the 2017 Grammys.