#029: The GRAMMYs on the Brink of Becoming Irrelevant
“When you can fake sincerity, You’ve made it in show business” — George Burns
In the ad agency world, the 18-to-34 age demographic has been considered the most valuable to advertisers for many decades now. Regardless of if this age group has skewed slightly younger or older today, this is precisely why the GRAMMY Awards — presented by The Recording Academy — are on the brink of becoming irrelevant today.
When I was growing up, I got most excited about the thought of the Chicago Bulls winning (another) championship, the Chicago Cubs potentially ever winning the World Series and one day attending the GRAMMYs. This was fueled by my love for music, the mystery of Los Angeles/New York City and the spectacle that was the GRAMMYs. Not only do younger kids not feel the same way today due to more forms of entertainment (i’m looking at you TikTok and video games), but the GRAMMYs have made countless blunders to lose many of the 34+ demographic that always would have watched the show in years past.
Let’s get the clear and recent controversies out of the way first. In 2018, four days before the 60th Annual Grammys, a study on the music industry was released by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which found that just 9 percent of the 899 people nominated over the previous six Grammy Awards were women. This prompted the planned departure of long-time President of The Recording Academy Neil Portnow in 2019, who was replaced by the first ever woman President, Deborah Dugan. Mrs. Dugan led the Academy for only 6 months, when only ten days before the 2020 Grammys, the Recording Academy released a statement announcing Dugan was fired. Per their statement, “In light of concerns raised to the Recording Academy Board of Trustees, including a formal allegation of misconduct by a senior female member of the Recording Academy team, the Board has placed [Dugan] on administrative leave, effective immediately.” This was followed by accusations of fixing and cheating of the show by Dugan and nearly $5 million in legal fees to follow. This was not the empowerment story that The Recording Academy was seeking.
Even when trying to overlook the internal mess that is The Recording Academy’s executive ranks, there is an even more pressing issue in the GRAMMYs fight to remain relevant with the public and specifically the youth — the award show is out-of-touch. Let’s just take this years nominees as an example. The Weeknd had the #1 most streamed song of 2020 with “Blinding Lights”. So did he not win any GRAMMYs? No, way worse. The Weeknd wasn’t even nominated for a single GRAMMY. That shows how disconnected the award show is for pop music, but the history of being out of touch is a long one when it comes to Hip Hop and R&B — highlighted in 2013 when Macklemore’s The Heist won Best Rap Album over Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid, M.A.A.D City (a total joke and also the first GRAMMYs that I ever attended in-person). But back to this year. There are no women even nominated for R&B Album of the Year, even though it was a breakthrough year for female acts in the genre — highlighted by Summer Walker, Kehlani, Teyana Taylor, Jhené Aiko and Brandy. And for Best Rap Album, the median age of the nominees is 43 and there was no recognition given to Lil Baby, DaBaby, JuiceWRLD, Pop Smoke, Lil Uzi Vert or Roddy Ricch, all of whom dominated the charts.
The disconnect is real. And you know that you have a problem when some artists stop attending the show entirely, and others stop accepting their nominations. In a letter to the Recording Academy just this year, Alastair Moock & Friends, the Okee Dokee Brothers and Dog on Fleas — all nominated for Grammy Awards for Best Children's Music Album — asked that their names be removed from the final GRAMMY ballot. As they collectively stated, "We are deeply grateful to the Recording Academy and its voting members for the honor we’ve received, but we can’t in good conscience benefit from a process that has — both this year and historically — so overlooked women, performers of color and most especially, Black performers”. And are they wrong? No. In the past 10 years, only about 6% of nominated acts have been Black-led or co-led, another 8% or so have been non-Black-POC-led and around 30% have been female-led. To put it mildly, those numbers are simply unacceptable.
My intent isn’t to disparage The Recording Academy, or the hard-working people that fill their ranks. I have many friends over there who are great people with the intentions of fighting for creatives each and every day. The GRAMMY Awards are only one day out of the year and the other 364 days The Academy has programs in place to help the creative music community in various ways. My primary intent here is to shine more light on the flaws that plague certain areas of The Recording Academy and address the real issue that exists, since the award show helps fund most of these other efforts. I don’t feel that it’s valid to discuss how the voting members choose the nominees, not The Recording Academy itself. Even if this were completely accurate, perception is reality and that isn’t a good excuse. If the system is broken, then fix it. I don’t have the exact answers on how the GRAMMYs can be salvaged and that is a bit above my pay-grade, but I fear that blowing up much of the old model, leveraging the history and cultural impact that the GRAMMYs still have and creating a new system for choosing nominees and winners is the only real choice left on the table. But it is now up to the powers that be to take action, or the GRAMMYs will quickly become just another overly produced TV show providing house decorations to members within the music community.
(1) Chow, Andrew R. “Deborah Dugan Grammys Controversy: What to Know.” Time, Time, 2 Mar. 2020, time.com/5770558/deborah-dugan-grammys-controversy/.
(2) Rosenbaum, Claudia. “Recording Academy Paid $4.5M in Legal Fees in 2019, Filings Show.” Billboard, 16 Dec. 2020, www.billboard.com/articles/business/9499800/recording-academy-irs-filing-legal-fees/.
(3) “GRAMMY WTF: CHILDREN'S MUSIC PROTEST.” HITS Daily Double, 13 Dec. 2020, hitsdailydouble.com/news&id=324403&title=GRAMMY-WTF%253A-CHILDREN%2527S-MUSIC-PROTEST.
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JAY’S SONGS OF THE WEEK:
MVNA - “Strangers”
redveil - “how 2 find hope”
Justin Bieber - “Anyone”
Kiko - “goblin”
