Victoria Monét won Best New Artist at the 66th annual Grammy Awards on Feb. 4, accepting the award from last year's winner, Samara Joy.
In an emotional speech, Monét thanked "the champagne servers" first, then added appreciation to her mom "for raising this really bad girl."
Alluding to her long journey through the music business as a songwriter, she said: "To everybody who has a dream, I want you to look at this as an example. This award was a 15 year pursuit. I moved to LA in 2009 and I like to look at myself as a plant. The music industry is like soil… and my roots have been growing for so long, and I feel like today I’m sprouting finally aboveground."
Victoria Monét won Best New Artist on the strength of her album 'Jaguar II.'
One of the year’s obvious breakout artists, Monét’s Jaguar II made her a household name, as well as one of the darlings of this year’s Grammys, at which she racked up six nominations, including Record of the Year for her single “On My Mama.” Yet Monét was also the least Grammy-green of the nominees here, having previously been nominated for both Album and Record of the Year in 2020 for her work as a songwriter on Ariana Grande’s album Thank U, Next. (She’s also written songs for Fifth Harmony, Blackpink and Selena Gomez.) 2023 saw the singer notch her first Billboard chart entry as a solo artist, as well as performing her first headlining shows.
Watch her acceptance speech below:
Other artists nominated included Jelly Roll, a onetime rapper who found great success after switching to a country-rock sound; Gracie Abrams, who has crawled up through the pop ranks by touring in support of Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift; Coco Jones, whose single “ICU” won a Grammy earlier in the night; rapper Ice Spice, who has rapidly risen from TikTok notoriety to a fixture on the pop landscape through collaborations with Swift and Nicki Minaj; the War and Treaty, who recently became the first Black duo to be nominated for both the Country Music Association Awards and the Academy of Country Music Awards; super-producer Fred Again; and Noah Kahan, who fully came into his own last year with the breakout success of “Stick Season.”
The War and Treaty were also nominated in the category, after making history at the ACMs and CMAs.
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The Best New Artist category has long been one of the strangest of the Grammys’ “big four” general field categories. For all the spot-on picks the Academy has made here over the years (The Beatles, Mariah Carey, Sade), there have been just as many left-field ones, and Best New Artist bears the ignominious distinction of being the only Grammy category to see an award retracted after the fact, as happened to 1990 winners Milli Vanilli following the group’s lip-syncing scandal.
However, the award has had a far better track record in recent years: three of this year’s Song of the Year nominees are past winners of the award (Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish and Dua Lipa), while two others (SZA and Taylor Swift) were at least nominated.
