Carlos Santana says he respects Beyoncé after calling her “not a singer”

The guitarist sparked outrage after saying that Beyoncé makes "music to model a dress".

Carlos Santana has claimed that his comments about Beyoncé, which were criticised for being misogynistic, were taken out of context.

The musician sparked outrage on social media after saying that Adele’s win over Beyoncé at Sunday’s Grammy Awards was deserved because the star is a model rather than a singer.

“I think that Adele won (her Grammys), because she can sing-sing,” he told the New Zealand Herald. “With all respect to our sister Beyoncé, Beyoncé is very beautiful to look at and it’s more like modeling kind of music — music to model a dress — she’s not a singer-singer, with all respect to her.”

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In a post on his Facebook page yesterday, Santana tried to row back his comments, saying that he respects Beyoncé as an artist.

“My intent was to congratulate Adele on her amazing night at the Grammies, [sic]” he wrote. “My comment about Beyonce was regretfully taken out of context. I have the utmost respect for her as an artist and a person. She deserves all the accolades that come her way.”

I would like to clarify a comment that was reported when I was doing an interview for some upcoming shows in Australia &…

Posted by Carlos Santana on Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Beyoncé’s latest album ‘Lemonade’ was nominated for Album of the Year but the singer lost out, for the third time in that category, to Adele’s ’25’.

A number of artists including Sufjan Stevens, St Vincent, Frank Ocean and Adele herself called out the Grammys for the snub.

Following the criticism, Grammys boss Neil Portnow denied the awards have a racial bias, saying: “I don’t think there’s a race problem at all… It’s always hard to create objectivity out of something that’s inherently subjective, which is what art and music is about. We do the best we can.”

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He added: “We don’t, as musicians, in my humble opinion, listen to music based on gender or race or ethnicity. When you go to vote on a piece of music—at least the way that I approach it—is you almost put a blindfold on and you listen.”

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