Lester Cohen/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
Serena Williams was among the stars who mixed and mingled with the biggest names in music over the weekend ahead of the annual Grammy Awards.
Williams took the stage at music executive Clive Davis’ invitation-only pre-Grammys party at the Beverly Hilton on Saturday, where she introduced the rock band Green Day — one of her favorite groups of all-time — ahead of their opening set.
“Truly, to know me is to know my love for them,” Williams said in her opening speech, per Forbes. The five-time Grammy winners went on to perform some of their most recognizable hits, including “American Idiot” and “Basket Case.”
(Held every year since 1976, Forbes calls Davis’ exclusive gala “the most enviable” event in the lead-up to music’s biggest night, and it returned in style this year after having not been held in-person since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.)
Alongside a whos-who of some of the most recognizable recording artists, Williams joined other famous faces including Tom Hanks, Paris Hilton, “Mean Girls” star Renee Rap, and Meryl Streep at the party, where the Recording Academy also honored Sony Music Publishing CEO Jon Platt in its Salute to Industry Icons.
Per a social media post, Williams, who gave birth to her second daughter, Adira River, last summer, said that she scored a personal invite to the star-studded soiree from Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong.
“When Billie Joe Armstrong calls you to present their band,” Williams teased on Instagram, “you jump on a plane and do it.”
But Williams wasn’t the only Hologic WTA Tour star orbiting the awards show.
No stranger to having her name in the record books, WTA co-founder Billie Jean King offered her congratulations to another history-maker, Taylor Swift, on her win for “Album of the Year.”
Swift was honored for “Midnights,” her 10th studio album, and thus became
the first artist to win “Album of the Year” four times.
