Above photo: SZA, who was one of the most prominent Grammy nominated females, was snubbed in all five of her nominations. SZA performed her hit song “Broken Clocks” at this year’s Grammys. Courtesy of Wikipedia
By Alexander Eubanks
Before the Grammys even began, it was clear that the award show was in for a controversial night.
Pop prodigy Lorde stood at the center of the social storm after her mother tweeted that only 9 percent of all Grammy nominees in the past six years have been women.
The tweet was later followed by a Variety report revealing that Lorde was the only female nominee for Album of the Year who wasn’t asked to perform her own music. The native New Zealand singer was only asked to perform a cover of Tom Petty’s “American Girl.”
The show itself was equally mishandled.
Several musicians and celebrities turned up to the Grammys wearing white roses to “symbolize respect, pay homage to new beginnings and express hope for the future,” according to the Time’s Up Twitter page.
Unfortunately, the idea received little to no recognition during the show, and the #MeToo movement was hardly mentioned.
Instead, the program focused on taking shots at the president, which rang unfortunately hollow as Kendrick Lamar stayed quiet, leaving Logic to step up and do his best impression of an off-brand Lamar.
The “Fire and Fury” reading skit was also poorly made.
Donald Trump has done enough questionable things in office; the show shouldn’t have to resort to Cardi B making fun of his eating habits.
Keeping the Hillary Clinton appearance was a bad decision after a report from the New York Times revealed that she protected an aid who was accused of sexual harassment.
This rings especially true on a night where the focus was supposed to be bringing added attention to sexual assault awareness.
Alessia Cara was the only female to win any of the Grammys’ main awards.
American R&B singer-songwriter SZA, who was nominated for five awards, was snubbed every time.
Lorde came away empty-handed as well. She began sending shots at the Grammys via Twitter and an ad in a New Zealand paper.
On the other hand, Ed Sheeran, who dropped one of the worst albums of 2017, was chosen as both Best Pop Performance and Best Pop Vocal Album, robbing Lady Gaga and Kesha in the process.
Kesha should have won.
She could have delivered a speech about her sexual assault at the hands of producer Dr. Luke and how she was forced from the music industry for standing up for herself.
But instead, we get Ed Sheeran being Ed Sheeran.
It only got worse for the Grammys after the show ended and the old, rich white guys were sent out to defend the academy for not being more inclusive.
Grammy producer Ken Elrich said in an interview with Variety that Lorde wasn’t invited to perform because “there’s no way we can really deal with everybody. Sometimes people get left out that shouldn’t, but on the other hand, we did the best we can to make sure that it’s a representative and balanced show.”
So the academy is fine excluding Lorde, an Album of the Year nominee, but is completely ready to let Shaggy and Sting perform a new song from their future collab album that no sane human wanted? Got it.
Finding a way to make things even worse, Academy President Neil Portnow said in an extremely condescending interview with Variety the next morning that women need to “step up” if they want more Grammys.
As expected, he was slammed for this, and female record label executives have begun calling for him to resign.
To make up for his comment, Portnow decided to rescind his comments in a news release from the Music Academy.
“The Recording Academy will establish an independent task force to review every aspect of what we do as an organization and identify where we can do more to overcome the explicit barriers and unconscious biases that impede female advancement in the music community,” the release said.
I guess the Grammy executives decided condescension wasn’t the right approach to dealing with women’s issues, and that patronization was a better idea.
Hopefully, the next Grammys can begin to make some improvements. But, as we learn every year, expect anything from the Grammys and you’ll always be disappointed.
