"As an artist, I believe it is my job, and all of our jobs, to reflect the times." These are the words with which Beyonce accepted then GrammyThe Grammys, short for "Gramophone Awards", are the musical equivalent of the Oscars. The first ever awards were held in 1959. for the year's best R&B performance on Sunday night.

The award is Beyonce's 28th, meaning that she has now won more Grammys than any other woman. She is just four away from having more than any other artist in the award's history.

Other women broke down barriers on Sunday: Taylor Swift became the first artist to win the award for the best album of the year three times, and H.E.R.'s George Floyd-inspired anthem "I Can't Breathe" won Song of the Year.

But above all, the night belonged to Beyonce. The win is yet another feather in the cap of an artist who, perhaps more than any other, has captured and channelled the mood of her era. She is not only one of the greatest pop stars in history; she is one of the most influential people on the planet.

So what is it about Beyonce that millions of people find so compelling?

Some think it is partly about the art form she has chosen. They argue that songs have always had a unique power to speak to our feelings and express our mood.

In the 1960s, the BeatlesAn English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960, and is widely regarded as one of the most influential bands of all time. They played for ten years between 1960 and 1970, with Paul McCartney as co-lead vocalist, bassist, and songwriter. reshaped music by giving voice to a generation that was calling for social change. In their early career, their lyrics about dating, dancing, and generally having fun - which today seem very tame - spoke to a generation that was eager to break free of the social constraints of traditional society. Later, their embrace of recreational drugs and hippie cultureA countercultural movement of the 1960s. Hippies were often strongly influenced by Indian spiritualism, and many used psychedelic drugs to enhance their experience of reality. helped to bring these trends into the mainstream.

In the same period, Bob DylanAn American singer and songwriter who released his first album in 1962, aged 20. Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. channelled a new mindset of change and protest against the old order in his songs, many of which were used by the civil rights movement.

As people became increasingly disillusioned with modern society, mainstream culture, and consumerism in the 1970s, they once again turned to music to express their outrage. Punk rockOriginating in the 1970s, punk rock was designed to antagonise middle-class opinion. One famous punk song, Johnny Rotten's "God Save the Queen", parodied the national anthem., with its angry lyrics and provocative imagery, captured this mounting distaste for social conformity.

In the 1980s, Bruce SpringsteenAn American singer known as "The Boss". His best-known albums include Born to Run and Born in the USA.'s album Born in the USA articulated a sense of disappointment among many Americans: that the American Dream had failed them, that their government had turned its back on them, and that as Americans, they deserved better.

Then, it was hip hop that grasped the public mood in the 1990s, especially amongst African Americans who used it to express the anger and despair of the country's inner cities.

Today, it is Beyonce who has been most successful at capturing and shaping the public imagination. In 2016, at the height of the original Black Lives Matter movement, she released the song Formation, whose music video featured Black women in settings and clothings associated with the American South in the slave era.

She has always had a remarkable capacity to speak to both the personal and the political. Her 2016 album Lemonade combines themes from her experiences as a Black woman with the sorrow and anger of processing the unfaithfulness of her husband, Jay-Z.

Yes, say some. Throughout history, it is songs that have expressed where we have come from and what we want to be. At moments of great social and political change, people have turned to music to voice their hopes and fears. And songs are personal: they can capture our feelings, our heartbreak or our joy, and help us process them and grow as people.

Not at all, say others. Most modern music is really just a cynical trick pulled by very wealthy people on their fans. Beyonce is, first and foremost, a business devoted to selling her songs. It is absurd to think that someone as rich and powerful as Beyonce could ever really speak for the powerless - or capture the mood of an entire generation.