There comes a time where one needs to reevaluate who they’re and what their place is in the world. The Grammy’s have reached such junction in recent years where they should acknowledge what they carry as an institution and how they reflect current trends taking place in music landscape. It should come to no surprise (if you’ve kept up with Grammy) that the Grammys have come under heavy scrutiny for their portray of what’s good with clear favoritism for white English speaking artists. The favoritism comes into play many times during the process of the Grammy voting.
I will breakdown the Grammy voting process.
The process (from the website) starts in the middle of the year — during the summer months — when companies of artists send in their Grammy submissions for the categories they believe the song, album, or mix best fits.
There is no limit as to how many categories a company can submit to, but committees check to see whether the submission is eligible for the award it’s been nominated for.
At the end of October, there is a little over a week for members of the highly prestigious Recording Academy, an invite-only Grammy voting body, to vote in the Grammy categories. They recommend that the voting members vote in categories they fall into the expertise of. The voting closes and the nominations list isn’t revealed until mid to end November.
Once nominations are announced, final voting takes a month starting in December. Finally, the Grammys are usually held mid to end of January the following year. The 2021 Grammys have since been postponed to March 14th, as L.A county has been experiencing a surge of COVID-19 cases (continue to social distance and wear a mask).
There are a lot of loopholes in the process for choosing the nominations.
The process of understanding who is good in the U.S can be illusive for some members, no matter how many of them are veteran in the music industry. The 1st round voting can be influenced by other members and connections they have with the artists looking to get nominated. Simply put, the 1st round is based on popularity voting which is biased.
The process of voting is massively strange as well. The initial voting is reliant on Recording Academy members, however if members are not aware of how big certain artists and what the current music landscape looks like, than how can we rely on them to choose who is big in the music scene? Recording Academy members shouldn’t be the sole decider on what is good and what isn’t.
After the 1st round of voting, the nomination committees process the votes.
This is also a loophole.
In January of 2020, Deborah Dugan was ousted as the Academy chief when Dugan accused the Recording Academy of rigging the Grammy Awards. Later explaining on CBS, she stated many of the Recording Academy committee members are white and male and have financial gain if their represented artist receives a nomination.
This is just another gatekeeping component which limits artist that deserve to be nominated. With these white male, closed-minded, and financial gainers deciding who gets the nomination, how is this an award show meant to recognize good music?
Clearly based on the above, it isn’t.
The Grammys need to change.
It’s slightly ironic to see big artists accomplishing great records, but nominations are given to artists that haven’t accomplished any of the records. It only proves to me and many others the reality of the Grammys.
The Grammys should have changed a long time ago. Calling for change now is just a recognition that the Grammys have been out of touch with reality for a long time.
Now, is the 2nd best time for the Grammys to change for a better, more inclusive amount of artist to be nominated and recognized for their artistry. If it’s not for the artists, it's at least for the Grammys that’s lost face a long time ago.
