USC students have a love-hate relationship with the Grammy Awards. Students say they love the music, but feel that the Recording Academy doesn’t always get it right.
This year’s Grammys brought in more than 17 million viewers, ranking 5th lowest in viewership of the program ever, a statistic all the more surprising when you account for the fact that this year’s grammys had a near 5 million viewer increase from the previous year.
Despite ranking 5th lowest of all time in viewership, many USC students tuned in to watch the musical awards show.
“I thought this was the best award show there has been in a while,” said Savannah Biscoe, a sophomore Acting major. “The only thing is that it’s crazy that Beyonce hasn’t won album of the year.”
Biscoe seemed to share an attitude echoed by other USC students who watched the Grammys — that the desire for a show which celebrates popular music and culture can sometimes feel undermined by sentiments of exclusion.
“Obviously as a person of color, I typically root for Black artists and Black music to take home the hardware” said Joshua Wilson, a senior popular music major at USC. “Sometimes the cards fall in your favor and other times they don’t.”
In the Grammy’s 60-year history there have been only 10 Black artists who have won the show’s highest honor, Album of the Year. The artists include Stevie Wonder, who won the award three times in 1994, 1975 and 1977; Michael Jackson in 1984; and Whitney Houston in 1994.
According to Vox, Beyoncé and other artists of color being underrepresented in the Album of the Year category may speak to a much deeper problem around representation and race.
“I love my girl [Taylor Swift], but I don’t think she deserves to win album of the year. I think Beyonce should have won,” said Kalalapa Winter, a sophomore BFA Acting major. “It was an amazing year for women winning because they dominated, but at the same time caring enough specifically about Black women and women of color hasn’t happened yet.”
The winners of the Grammy awards are decided by the Recording Academy’s voting members. According to IMDiversity, the block of members consists of Grammy winners and those endorsed by another voting member. But the legitimacy and fairness of these voting committees came under fire in 2018 when a Diversity and Inclusion task force found the voting members of the nomination category were 74% male, according to the LA Times. The Grammy Awards said the goal of the task force was to address the addition of more women and people of color into the Recording Academy’s group of voting members.
Since then, the Recording Academy has created committees to review nominations by category which, according to Rolling Stone, are notably secretive with their review process. Some categories were denied specific review committees, such as the rap category. It was historically dominated by Black musicians and did not get a designated review committee until late 2018 according to APNews.
The historic lack of diversity and secrecy around the practice of Recording Academy committees may have catalyzed the belief shared by multiple students on campus that some musicians are being snubbed.
“I think people forget the Grammys aren’t a popularity contest, but rather a show that is meant to represent the best bodies of work in music,” Wilson said.