In her acceptance speech for the Grammy for Record of the Year, Lizzo offered an emotional tribute to another artist who inspired her, calling out to Beyoncé from the stage.
Coldplay’s Chris Martin read the nominees for Record of the Year and then announced Lizzo’s “About Damn Time” as the winner, as the camera showed her looking happily surprised.
When she got to the mic, Lizzo said that she and Adele had been “having a good time just enjoying ourselves just rooting for our friends” during this “amazing night.”
The award was “so unexpected,” said Lizzo, and she was dedicating her award to Prince, who had inspired her to “dedicate my life to making positive music.”
She had “felt very misunderstood,” because “positive music and feel-good music wasn’t mainstream at that point…but I stayed true to myself because I wanted to make the world a better place, so I had to be that change to make the world better place.”
Lizzo said she was “just so proud to be a part” of all the songs she was seeing that followed this theme, “about loving our bodies and feeling comfortable in our skin and feeling good!”
“Because in a world where there’s a lot of darkness,” she continued, “I’d like to believe that not only can people do good, but we just are good. We are good inherently. And anybody at home who feels misunderstood or on the outside looking in, like I did, just stay true to yourself, because I promise you, you will find people, you will attract people in your life who believe in you and support you.”
Lizzo thanked a list of people including her family, her producers and collaborators, and fans, and then turned her attention to Beyoncé, who earlier that night had officially won the most ever Grammys by an individual.
“In the fifth grade I skipped school to see you perform,” said Lizzo.
“You changed my life,” she continued, choking up a bit as Beyoncé beamed up at her from her table near the stage. “You sang that gospel medley. And the way you made me feel, I was like ‘I want to make people feel this way with my music.’ So thank you so much. You clearly are the artist of our lives! I love you, God bless y’all!”
“You go wherever you wanna go, Lizzo,” said host Trevor Noah. “Grammy winner Lizzo, everybody! They should give out the Grammy for the best speech as well. Wow, that was amazing.”
Watch the video above, via CBS.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
