The Weeknd And Others Call Out The Grammys

The Weeknd called out the Grammys after the singer got no nominations, despite releasing a very successful album this year. 

“The Grammys remain corrupt.You owe me, my fans and the industry transparency…” The R&B singer tweeted.

Response to the controversy:

In a statement to BuzzFeed News, the chief of the academy that presents the awards, Harvey Mason Jr., said he can “empathize with what he’s feeling.”

“Unfortunately, every year, there are fewer nominations than the number of deserving artists. But as the only peer-voted music award, we will continue to recognize and celebrate excellence in music while shining a light on the many amazing artists that make up our global community,” Mason said.

Mason also made it clear that the Weeknd’s lack of showing in the nominations had in fact nothing to do with negotiations for the artist to perform at the ceremony, despite what some rumors were implying.

“To be clear, voting in all categories ended well before The Weeknd’s performance at the Super Bowl was announced, so in no way could it have affected the nomination process,” he said.

The lack of nominations for Abel Makkonen Tesfaye (The Weeknd’s real name), was one of the biggest snubs and oversights of the nominations, the results of which were announced Tuesday.

The Weeknd’s new album After Hours broke records and made history with the biggest streaming week for an R&B album. The single “Blinding Lights,”was one of the top hits of 2020, and in fact was one of the few good things to come out of this terrible year. The song  broke the record for the longest-running top 5 single in Billboard’s Hot 100 list, and sparked a wildly popular group dance challenge on TikTok. It was so popular, in fact, that even if you don’t have tiktok, you probably saw videos of the challenge circulating around instagram too. 

Other Grammy snubs and complaints:

The Weeknd wasn’t the only artist snubbed in the nominations. 

The Chicks, were also left out of the nominations, there was not even a single nod for Gaslighter,  the group’s  first album in over a decade,  and an album that the Los Angeles Times described as the band’s “most intensely personal effort yet.”

 Other oversights included posthumous releases from Pop Smoke, Juice WRLD, and Mac Miller. Pop Smoke got one nod in Best Rap Performance category for “Dior” but could have been the first posthumously nominated performer for Best New Artist, a category that included artists like Phoebe Bridgers, who are not that new in the music industry.

Nicki Minaj also lashed out at the Grammys for snubbing her years ago.

“Never forget the Grammys didn’t give me my best new artist award when I had 7 songs simultaneously charting on billboard & bigger first week than any female rapper in the last decade- went on to inspire a generation,” Minaj tweeted. “They gave it to the white man Bon Iver.”

Justin Bieber also didn’t seem too pleased with the Grammys. Bieber did get nominations, but in the pop category. Bieber said he was surprised and thought it was “very strange” and  “weird” that he was nominates as a pop artist.  as he claimed his new album was supposed to be R&B, not pop.  Bieber received three nominations this year with his album “Changes” — Best Pop Solo Performance, Best Pop Duo Performance, and Best Pop Vocal Album.

“For this not to be put in that [R&B] category feels weird considering from the chords to the melodies to the vocal style all the way down to the hip hop drums that were chosen it is undeniably, unmistakably an R&B album!” The singer wrote on instagram. “To be clear I absolutely love Pop music,” Justin continued. “It just wasn’t what I set out to make this time around.” He also made sure to write in the caption that he did not want to seem “ungrateful,” and took the time to  thank “the people who fought for me to even have any noms.” His statement was met with mixed replies, some of them agreeing with the singer, and others claiming his single “Yummy” was not R&B.

People’s response:

The Weeknd is set to headline the Super Bowl halftime show in February, and he certainly was not alone in his criticism of the music academy on Tuesday. A legion of fans came to his defense, agreeing that he should have received a nomination.

https://twitter.com/GermanottaIsPL/status/1331318843436916739?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1331318843436916739%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.buzzfeed.com%2Fmorgansloss1%2Fthe-weeknd-grammys-snub-reactions

https://twitter.com/AllLoveHipHop/status/1331295221435555843?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1331295221435555843%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.buzzfeed.com%2Fmorgansloss1%2Fthe-weeknd-grammys-snub-reactions

Some even used the singer’s own lyrics to make light of the situation:

others just reiterated what we were all thinking, it doesn’t matter if the Grammys didn’t nominate him, he was still the artist of the year.

What do you think? Were the Grammy nominations right or is The Weeknd right and it is a corrupt institution?

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