Coming out of last night’s Grammys ceremony, the biggest issue — and there were many — that viewers had with the ceremony last night was with its lack of women, both as awards recipients and in the case of Album Of The Year nominee Lorde specifically, as performers. Lorde apparently decided to boycott the event to an extent, reportedly refusing to appear and sing with other artist during a Tom Petty tribute when all of her male counterparts were allowed solo spots. Today, the native New Zealand-er took to Twitter to shade the award show, while also promoting her upcoming tour.
https://twitter.com/lorde/status/958028718437425152
You’d think coming out of the Grammy’s last night, organizers might address the lack of women during their show with empathy and understanding with the hashtag #GrammysSoMale spreading like a wildfire over social media, however, Recording Academy president Neil Portnow had a different take.
“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 you face, but I think it’s upon us 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.”
The show’s producer Ken Ehrilich was equally dismissive when he was asked directly about Lorde’s absence during the program. “I don’t know if it was a mistake,” he told Variety. These shows are a matter of choices. We have a box and it gets full. She had a great album. There’s no way we can really deal with everybody.”
