So, the Grammy Awards came around again, a dazzling night celebrating the best the music industry has had to offer over the past year! An innocent marking of an incredible era of music, right? Oh, if only! No of course even in 2018, women are still being severely underrepresented as reciprocates of these global awards. Obviously, a Grammy should only go to the best of the best, but you’re telling me out of the significant awards only 1 female deserved recognition? Alessia Cara did it for the girls, winning Best Newcomer last week. Yet, has faced huge criticism during the subsequent week and has had to defend her win saying “What I’ve created is worth something” and too damn right! At least one positive we can take from this is the 21-year-old is as fine a Girl Boss as we all hoped she was!
The women smashed it in the nominees for ‘Best pop Solo Performance”, with the nominees being mostly women; Kesha, Kelly Clarkson, Lady Gaga, P!nk and Ed Sheeran. But alas, the infamous Ed Sheeran was praised once again for his musical contributions. He’s great, I get it, but so are like ..other people? Kesha was expected to be recognised, for her contribution in the form of her song ‘Praying’, a song denoting her emotive battle to break free from abusive, manipulative producer Dr. Luke. Though really, who wants to hear about that when you can listen to another guy, singing about pulling another girl, in another bar.
Further backlash then followed when Grammys President Neil Portnow reacted to the equality questions by simply saying the ladies in the music industry need to “step up” for their music to be recognised ahead of the guys. Obviously, a fair few people had something to say about this dusting of plain ignorance! Kelly Clarkson KILLED it with her response: describing Portnow as “a confused soul” and remained sophisticated in saying she’s “just gonna kindly point you in the direction of my A-game album I recently dropped”. Oh YEAH she DID that!
As if that wasn’t enough! Lorde, the only female to be nominated in the Best Album category was snubbed and not offered a performance, despite U2 and Sting – who were not nominated – performing multiple times. When this was questioned, Grammy producer Ken Ehrlich simply said “there’s no way we can really deal with everybody”. Obviously girls, we must apologize profusely for the dear men of this world having to ‘deal’ with us; poor, poor guys.
Amongst all this anger, Kesha’s performance of Praying on the night, supported by a myriad of female artists including Bebe Rexha, Camila Cabello and Cyndi Lauper will go down in history as a performance of strength, solidarity and empowerment! We await to see if the 2019 Grammys will ‘Step Up’ and recognise equality.