Recording Academy president tells women to 'step up' in music industry hmmm

Keen-eyed viewers may have noticed that only one woman won a major Grammy Award on Sunday, but don't blame systemic sexism or centuries of gender bias! Recording Academy president Neil Portnow told Variety that women need "step up" in all aspects of the music industry because "I think they would be welcome."

Oh, OK!

"I don’t have personal experience of those kinds of brick walls that you 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,” said Portnow, a man.

According to The New York Times, a mere nine percent of the last six years of Grammy nominees were women. Awards are subject to voters in the Recording Academy, but the Grammys came under extra fire for asking four of the five Album of the Year nominees to perform during the show – the only exception being the only female nominee, Lorde.

“I don’t know if it was a mistake," Grammys producer Ken Ehrlich 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.”

When asked about the overwhelmingly male list of winners, Ehrlich said "It's not for me to talk about" and "I produce the TV show."

Yet the Lorde oversight points to a larger problem with the Grammys (and, you know, all industries), a problem that isn't rectified as easily as making the welcome mat visible and asking women to step up. Producers and people in power need to fundamentally reevaluate how they approach their work, ensuring that a name like Lorde's is in conversation with Chris Stapleton and Childish Gambino – especially when her work has been nominated at the same level.

"Equality is something we have to address on a lot of levels," Stapleton said. "I can’t really speak to how voters voted and what happened there, but there is a lot of great music being made by a lot of great women."

Maybe next year they'll be recognized for it.