The Grammy Awards, scheduled to air on Sunday at CBS, is widely known as “the biggest night in music”.
Some top performers, however, are complaining about The Recording Academy, the organization behind the Grammy, for what they say is a lack of transparency in voting and diversity among nominees.
One singer, The Weeknd, said he is boycotting the annual awards ceremony from now on, after his last album and top single, “Blinding Lights”, were scorned.
The Recording Academy chooses the nominations for the ceremony. But since 1995, the final nominations in the “Big Four” categories – album of the year, song of the year, record of the year and best new artist – have been decided by a select committee, according to Billboard.
The vehicle wrote in a 2020 article that the committee was created so that the final nominations in these categories were “more progressive” and “more musically adventurous”.
Several artists had problems with the process.
Zayn Malik posted a swearing tweet on Tuesday, criticizing the ceremony.
“F — the grammys and all the associates. Unless you shake hands and send gifts, there are no naming considerations. Next year, I will send you a basket of sweets,” he wrote.
“My tweet was not personal or about eligibility, but about the need for inclusion and the lack of transparency in the nomination process and the space that creates and allows for favoritism, racism and network policies to influence the voting process,” he added.
Rapper Nicki Minaj tweeted on November 24 – the day the nominations were announced – that she was dismissed as the best new artist of 2012.
“Never forget that the Grammy didn’t give me my award for best new artist when I had 7 songs simultaneously appearing on the billboard and bigger in the first week than any rapper in the past decade – it has inspired a generation,” she wrote. “They gave it to the white man Bon Iver.”
That same day, Teyana Taylor called the award show for having an exclusively male list. “You’d be better off saying just the best MALE R&B ALBUM because all I see is d — in this category”, she wrote.
Taylor, who released his third studio album entitled “The Album” in June, did not receive a nod.
In a statement to The New York Times on Thursday, The Weeknd said it would “no longer allow my record company to submit my music to the Grammy.” When asked why he was boycotting the Grammy, he told the newspaper it was “because of the secret committees”.
The singer, whose real name is Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, declined to comment further when contacted by NBC News on Friday.
The Weeknd, 31, has been breaking records for the past few weeks. Billboard announced that “Blinding Lights” made history as the first song to be on the Hot 100’s top 10 list for a year. And The Weeknd also spent the third week in first place on the Artist 100 list since its release in 2014, just behind Taylor Swift and Drake.
Last month, he performed on one of the biggest stages, when he was the headliner of the Super Bowl halftime show.
Despite the accolades, The Weeknd did not receive a single Grammy nomination this year.
Musicians are not the only ones to call the Grammys. Deborah Dugan, who was fired last year as chief executive of the Recording Academy, said the ceremony was “rigged” and clouded by conflicts of interest.
“I was so shocked when I got there with the level of sexism and corruption that I found at the Recording Academy,” Dugan told Kate Snow of NBC News in an interview last year.
“There is a layer of corruption, self-control and sexism that must disappear,” she added.
Dugan was suspended while the organization investigated allegations that she created a “toxic” work environment with an “abusive and intimidating” management style. She denied the charges in her interview with NBC.
Dugan filed a discrimination complaint against the Recording Academy. According to The New York Times, the case is in arbitration. Dugan did not immediately return a request for comment on Friday.
