Grammys President Says Women Will Start Winning Awards When They “Step Up”

RIP your mentions.

If you watched the Grammys yesterday, we’re impressed, because it was literally 78 hours long and terrible.

If you got all the way to the end, you would have noticed that only one solo female took the stage to collect a prize throughout the entire broadcast: Alessia Cara, for Best New Artist.

Sure, there were plenty of snubs yesterday, especially against eight-time nominee/eight-time loser Jay-Z, not to mention one of music history’s biggest ever hits, “Despacito”.

And though there were scattered references to the #TimesUp and #MeToo movements during the ceremony (driven by a powerful speech from Janelle Monae, and a performance of "Praying" by Kesha), women, collectively, still fared pretty poorly at the event when it came to actually collecting awards, continuing the Grammys 60-year streak of dismissing female artists. (In the last six years, only nine per cent of nominees have been women.)

Not only was hot favourite SZA left out in the cold, but Lorde was the only Album of the Year contender to not be offered a solo performance during the show. You guessed it: The other four nominees were dudes (only Jay-Z declined). She, bafflingly, was not nominated in any other category.

Prez pic.twitter.com/UHrN6uTZCh

— Lorde (@lorde) January 29, 2018

But fear not! Recording Academy president Neil Portnow had a not-at-all tone deaf response to the #GrammysSoMale hashtag, and general criticism against his awards show: When ladies "step up", they’ll start seeing more nominations. Very cool! Let’s check in real-quick with P!nk to see how that steaming-hot take went down.

pic.twitter.com/BI861sjSZ4

— P!nk (@Pink) January 29, 2018

Portnoy’s full-quote to Variety isn’t much better, in which he insists progress has to start, first, with female artists.

"It has to begin with ... women who have the creativity in their hearts and souls, who want to be musicians, who want to be engineers, producers, and want to be part of the industry on the executive level," he said.

"[They need] to step up because I think they would be welcome. I don’t have personal experience of those kinds of brick walls that [women] face but I think it’s upon us — us as an industry — to make the welcome mat very obvious, breeding opportunities for all people who want to be creative and paying it forward and creating that next generation of artists."

I wish the #Grammys would return to female/male categories. Who will young girls be inspired by to pick up a guitar and rock when most every category is filled with men? I'm not sure it is about women needing to “step up”, (as said by the male in charge). #GrammysSoMale https://t.co/v1rvbT3pCC

— Sheryl Crow (@SherylCrow) January 29, 2018

Well. At least the music industry is consistent across North America in putting the blame on women for not being nominated. https://t.co/wdaDorqZy0

— Tegan and Sara (@teganandsara) January 29, 2018

We’ll leave the last word to Lorde.

IF YOU’RE DEBATING WHETHER OR NOT I CAN MURDER A STAGE... COME SEE IT FOR URSELF 😇https://t.co/BeS8VYTynn

— Lorde (@lorde) January 29, 2018

Photo: Twitter.com (Lorde)