2019 Grammy Awards

[jenglisbe]

Jun 15, 2018 10:18:20 GMT -5 Glove Slap said:

Jun 15, 2018 10:15:16 GMT -5 jenglisbe said:

And coming off the criticisms from last year, the changes they're making, and the general mood with #MeToo and the like, I can certainly see the committee making a point to put acts like Janelle Monae in the general field categories. And those artists would be deserving. The committee just better not put 4 females in a category with 1 male because you know what will happen in that situation.

Whether they'd be deserving is personal opinion. There's a big counterargument that if hundreds or thousands of people didn't pick you, but a smaller amount of around 20 did afte, then you're not deserving. But, the bigger issue is much more practical than that. It's that they'd be sending them back out to the voters again after they didn't select them. So their chances of actually winning are automatically lower.

This is all just trying to shoehorn in a narrative, it's not an actual reflection of the Recording Academy.

Sure "deserving" is a personal opinion, but my point is artists like Janelle Monae (and Lorde last year) do have respect, prestige, etc. In a more general sense they aren't acts where a general perception would be that they 'robbed' other artists.

Your point is also overlooking that albums still have to make the top 20 overall in order to go before the committee. So, they are getting a lot of Academy votes.

[Glove Slap]

And none of that changes my point that this isn't an actual reflection of the record academy. It's a PR move, and it's a PR move before it's a statement on the quality of the works. If you take the top five albums with the most votes, and then remove two or three and insert those from the bottom five/ten, the chances of any of those added post-tally actually winning hinges on the two or three that stayed from the original group splitting votes. And, on top of that, you also have to count that the two or three you put in don't split among themselves, which is additionally tricky if you put them in for the same PR purpose.

You're not actually making a statement or empowering anyone, you're just covering your own ass using those works and artists as tools.

[jenglisbe]

^ While that makes some sense and has clearly happened, I think you also have to leave room for things changing once you whittle things down to 5 choices. It’s similar to how we have primaries for political elections. Once there are fewer options something can pick up votes due to it being the only representative from that genre, or due to the choices someone voted for not making those 5 nominees.

I think it’s also about exposure. Nominating something for AOTY and ROTY brings that artist and music publicity commercially and in the industry. The Grammy noms this year surely helped Childish Gambino even if he didn’t win a major category. In theory that could pay off in the long run in Grammy voting, though it hasn’t happened with acts like Kendrick Lamar so that is definitely just a theory.

[Deleted]

I've been poking around on Billboard.biz (I don't know why I don't do this regularly - so much less buggy and problematic than .com) - and I don't believe this info got posted when it was first mentioned that Portnow was leaving:

SPOILER: Click to show

{MusiCares drama}Recording Academy CEO Neil Portnow Accused by Fired Staffer of Funneling Funds From MusiCares Charity

On Monday, as Variety first reported, former MusiCares VP Dana Tomarken detailed her allegations in a letter to the Recording Academy Board of Trustees, which is holding its annual meetings in Hawaii this week. Tomarken also claimed Portnow brokered a deal to hold MusiCares' annual Person of the Year event at Radio City Music Hall without her knowledge, resulting in a loss in 2018 fundraising that projected just $1 million for this year's event -- a significant drop from the $5 million raised in 2017. A Recording Academy spokesperson denies that any money was funneled away from MusiCares.

In the nearly 4,500-word letter, which was obtained by Billboard, Tomarken, who was fired on April 16 after 25 years with the Academy, also claimed wrongful termination, saying the cause was a $2,500 bill for a MusiCares auction item that she was late in paying. She said her coworker Dorit Kalev was fired in connection to that as well, alleging "biased feelings" towards her from the Academy's chief human resources officer. Meanwhile, Tomarken claimed she endured "ongoing instances of workplace abuse and harassment" from two male coworkers and her dismissal came following "a painful year of trying to protect MusiCares from being exploited." A heading in her letter reads, "Hostile Work Environment, Abuse and Harassment," in which she alleges employees have been complaining about the chief human resources officer's behavior "over the years."

[snip]In the letter, Tomarken also claimed that MusiCares was dropped from a package ticket deal conceived by Portnow and Oak View Group (a partnership between Azoff and Tim Leiweke) that would sell Grammy Week packages with passes to the ceremony telecast and the Person of the Year concert and was designed to raise $1.5 million for MusiCares. Instead, Tomarken said, "Just before the 2017 Christmas holiday, I discovered ... that Neil had subsequently approved dropping MusiCares from the package revenue stream in favor of funding the telecast deficit."

Tomarken continued, "Since we were forced into costly agreements we had no control over, MusiCares will likely net no more than $1 million from the 2018 Person of the Year. Last year's net was $5 million. The significantly less amount raised is, in my opinion tragic, totally unacceptable, and it did not have to happen."

The package deal issue is worded a bit weirdly IMO, but if I'm understanding correctly, the ticket packages themselves were not dissolved; rather, Portnow made the decision later on to simply not share the revenue from them with MusiCares, so the telecast got all of the money made from those sales. This isn't illegal per se, but it's absolutely shady af.

With regard to the RCMH deal, .biz later reported on an email exchange between a NARAS exec and a Madison Square Garden VP that likely exposes how/why Portnow needed to move money from one pot to the other:

"When we went into this, we said no events could be at Barclays," wrote [MSG VP Joel] Fisher in an email to Branden Chapman, Recording Academy production and chief business development officer, threatening that it would "kill the entire deal" for MSG to host the ceremony if the Barclays Center, MSG's Brooklyn competitor, hosted the academy's annual MusiCares Person of the Year charity event two nights before the awards. Fisher signed off on the email, which was reviewed by Billboard: "Please confirm no Barclays. Thanks."

Meanwhile, across the East River, Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment executive vp Keith Sheldon was aggressively pitching MusiCares/Grammy Foundation then-vice president Dana Tomarken on having the MusiCares fundraiser at Barclays, offering to waive the rent for the night, and rendering plans to create a platform on top of the lower seating bowl that would provide enough floor space for 250-300 banquet tables that could be sold to corporate partners, as well as multiple stages and a large silent-auction space. Sheldon also had offered to cut in MusiCares on suite revenue and connect the charity's sponsorship team with BSE's own sponsor network for its concerts, events and Brooklyn Nets divisions.

[snip] The funds raised by the MusiCares benefit were ultimately hampered by soft ticket sales, theater seats instead of banquet tables and less space than usual for its lucrative live auction, but an academy spokesman says there was no reason to conclude that Barclays would have been a better or more profitable choice.

The article goes into further detail about how MSG and RCMH cost much more than the norm for Grammy/MusiCares hosting, and ties this in to the longstanding venue wars between MSG/AEG (in LA) and MSG/Barclays (in NYC). The Grammys are headed back to the AEG-owned Staples center for the next four years, so MSG was pretty much on its "I did not come to play with you hoes" ish and willing to put the televised show in jeopardy if the Academy did not give them hosting privileges for both events - and didn't blink twice about charging the Academy out the ass for the privilege of being locked in. Meanwhile, Portnow blamed the city of NYC for not covering the extra costs of the telecast like it said it would, but NYC refutes this. (The wording is a bit ambiguous, so I'm not sure if they're refuting the assertion that they didn't pay, or the claim that they agreed to pay for that in the first place; either way though it's not really a good look when a city calls you a liar.)

The most notable thing here, for those who only care about the awards, is that the Academy trustees and staff stood behind Portnow even after three open letters from various industry power players called for a change in the way the Academy operates and a petition called for Portnow to resign. Portnow's resignation announcement only came after Tomarken's letter, which just so happened to coincide with the board's annual meeting. In the article regarding the Portnow/Fisher email, .biz says that "the academy slowly assembled a task force led by Michelle Obama's former chief of staff, Tina Tchen, to improve inclusion both at the Grammys and within its own -governance, but Tchen told Billboard in an earlier interview that she didn't see any quick fixes."

So, chronological timeline-slash-tl;dr summary for those who don't want to slog through the details:

- Winter/early spring 2018: Industry/label heavyweights write multiple open letters criticizing Portnow for his asinine statements and call for changes within the Grammys, but NARAS bigwigs back Portnow up anyway. The Academy "slowly assembled a task force" headed by Michelle Obama's former chief of staff, only for her to concede that she did not see any fast solutions to their internal problems.

- May 23, 2018: Fired MusiCares VP Dana Tomarken sends a 4,500 word letter ("Cynthia could never," someone murmurs) to the NARAS trustees accusing Portnow of workplace harassment, wrongful termination, and dropping the MusiCares charity from package-ticket revenue streams to funnel money toward the televised award show. The combined lack of package revenue, expensive price tag for Radio City Music Hall, and RCMH just being a wack ass choice of venue for the kind of event that MusiCares is led to decreased ticket sales and donations, and an 80% drop in net funds for the charity event. Venue selection and fundraising were literally Dana's entire job so the real tea is that she is big madT that Portnow basically belittled her in front of the entire industry by going over her head and booking Radio City Music Hall for the venue while she was in the midst of securing a sweetheart deal with Barclays Center, leaving her with the near-impossible task of trying to pull in money for an event where people couldn't even buy table seating (I bet you think this detail is trivial but corporate people LOVE buying tables), then firing her over a "late payment" for an auction item (so on top of looking incompetent, she's the one who is made to look like she's trying to stiff the charity).

- May 31, 2018: The trustees are back from their Hawaii vacay/annual meeting and Portnow announces his resignation when his contract is up in 2019.

- June 1, 2018: .biz, with permission from an MSG exec, dumps scalding hot tea over the entire industry's head when it publishes an exchange b/t Madison Square Garden and NARAS execs revealing that MSG went into hosting the 2018 Grammys with an all-or-nothing mentality, and threw its weight around to ensure that the MusiCares event was hosted at RCMH (which MSG owns) instead of Barclays (its biggest NYC rival).

So I don't really know how much weight, if any, Portnow's departure really holds in terms of nominations and winners. We can see now that that the main - maybe sole - reason for his departure is over MusiCares (unfortunately Tomarken's harassment and wrongful termination claims are getting backburner treatment in all this; kind of ironic and yet in many ways, not ironic at all). The combination of staff continuing to support him even after his open-mouth-insert-foot response to the lack of women on stage, along with their task force leader openly admitting that there are "no quick fixes" to their inclusion problems, makes me doubtful now as to how well 2019 will be handled (I'll get into that in a separate post later; this one is long enough). Neil was the face of the problem, not the root of it.

[anafan]

With Beyonce/Jay-Z's release I guess that will change some things now.

[jenglisbe]

Jun 16, 2018 17:38:06 GMT -5 anafan said:

With Beyonce/Jay-Z's release I guess that will change some things now.

Maybe, but from what I’ve heard it’s not overly accessible. We’ll see what the reception is like.

[Deleted]

^If it doesn't get the critical reaction that 4:44 got, I don't see it getting any Grammy attention at all.

They are also hampered by a) the fact that fans don't anticipate their joint projects nearly as much as their solo efforts and b) from what I can tell, fatigue from the continuous attempts to make fetch Tidal happen.

[collegedropout]

Also there is a lot of competition from similar albums/artists (Janelle Monae, possibly Drake, Black Panther, Childish Gambino) they can't have the whole AOTY lineup black artists.

[Deleted]

Jun 16, 2018 22:31:42 GMT -5 collegedropout said:

Also there is a lot of competition from similar albums/artists (Janelle Monae, possibly Drake, Black Panther, Childish Gambino) they can't have the whole AOTY lineup black artists.

And why not?

[filthy]

Jun 16, 2018 22:31:42 GMT -5 collegedropout said:

Also there is a lot of competition from similar albums/artists (Janelle Monae, possibly Drake, Black Panther, Childish Gambino) they can't have the whole AOTY lineup black artists.

One year with an entire black lineup would draw a lot of media attention, which only benefits The Grammys. Also, does it really matter? Black artists have been superior this year.

[Deleted]

Grammys got more fallout in the mainstream from the exclusion of women than their continued snubbing of melanin (which they get backlash over damn near every year now and continue to nominate multiple urban albums knowing that the votes will split) so the narrative has already been set for women to take the stage.

Assuming it's business as usual for NARAS, I expect to see surface attempts made to appear inclusive, but their own biases and self-interests will still be placed ahead of actually being inclusive, resulting in unnecessary snubs and backlash over their attempts to make up for the previous show's backlash.

[collegedropout]

Jun 16, 2018 23:49:34 GMT -5 @drakeisskinny said:

Jun 16, 2018 22:31:42 GMT -5 collegedropout said:

Also there is a lot of competition from similar albums/artists (Janelle Monae, possibly Drake, Black Panther, Childish Gambino) they can't have the whole AOTY lineup black artists.

And why not?

I don't think it's wrong or bad. I'd love to see it. I just don't see them doing it. I think they would throw in 1-2 rock or country albums to ensure diversity. So that's like 5 albums fighting for 3 spots and I'd say Black Panther and Janelle are stronger contenders.

[braveheart]

Cardi B has a shot at at least 9 nominations :

3 in the r&B category with finesse..
3 in the rap category...

BNA/Album of the Year/ SOY for Finesse

[Troublemaker]

Jun 17, 2018 22:22:22 GMT -5 braveheart said:

Cardi B has a shot at at least 9 nominations :

3 in the r&B category with finesse..
3 in the rap category...

BNA/Album of the Year/ SOY for Finesse

What 3 in r&b category? The last time I checked it was 2: r&b song and performance. Besides I doubt she’ll be nominated for BNA considering she already got nominated for Bodak Yellow

[Deleted]

Jun 18, 2018 0:42:39 GMT -5 Troublemaker said:

Jun 17, 2018 22:22:22 GMT -5 braveheart said:

Cardi B has a shot at at least 9 nominations :

3 in the r&B category with finesse..
3 in the rap category...

BNA/Album of the Year/ SOY for Finesse

What 3 in r&b category? The last time I checked it was 2: r&b song and performance. Besides I doubt she’ll be nominated for BNA considering she already got nominated for Bodak Yellow

maybe he was thinking of rap/sung? Even so, you are right. Finesse would only be eligible for two r&b awards (a song cannot be submitted to more than one performance category). She still has a shot at being in 9 separate categories though, with all the collabs she's done that can be sent to both rap/sung and pop duo/group. Atlantic could send Finesse to r&b perf and push Ring or I Do to rap/sung, for example. Girls Like You is her best shot at sneaking into pop duo/group though b/c Dinero and Girls are flopping.

An artist can still be eligible for BNA as long as they didn't win any previous nominations.

[shayonce]

considering the competition, I think carters won't make it to AOTY unless the album become hit with multiple top5 hits which can only happen in another universe.

[braveheart]

Anyone else think ''I Like It '' by Cardi B might actually have a shot at Record of the Year nomination if it keeps up this pace.

[Choco]

Maybe? I think Cardi would be a great choice for most of the General categories, but I don't know if the academy will feel the same way. She did get a couple nods last year.

[shayonce]

i think cardi will get lots of nominations including general. she has everything right now.

[shayonce]

Grammy Awards Expand Nominees for Top Album, Song, Record & New Artist From 5 to 8: Exclusive.

Recording Academy president Neil Portnow says the changes, which take effect immediately, provide "more flexibility to our voters when having to make the often challenging decisions about representing excellence and the best in music for the year."

Among the other changes -- most of them are fine-tuning or clarifying category definitions -- music supervisors will now be considered nominees in the best compilation soundtrack album and restoration engineers will now be eligible for best historical album.

In the best song written for visual media category, if a track is released in the current eligibility year (Oct. 1-Sept. 31), but the soundtrack album is not released until the following eligibility year, the track will be eligible for Grammy consideration in the following year so long as it is not submitted in any category in the current year.

Additionally, the world music field will now determine its five finalists by a nominations review committee, which will take the top 15 selections from the general voting membership's first ballet and narrow the selections to five. Review committees are already used in a number of other categories, including album of the year.

www.billboard.com/articles/news/grammys/8462824/grammy-awards-nominees-rules-expand-changes-recording-academy?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Billboard%20Watch&utm_term=biz_breakingnews

mess.. lol split game got more serious.
unless they make oscar style voting, this is just fail.

[Glove Slap]

[Caviar]

I approve this. More voter splitting!!! The underdogs win.

[14887fan]

Woah.

[braveheart]

10 Plus nominations confirmed for Cardi B now !!

[filthy]

Groundbreaking

[Duca]

None of this will matter until they get rid of the stupid blue-ribbon panel...

[Joe1240]

Yes! I love this. Reputation for AOTY is now a lock and Delicate for ROTY and SOTY. Great for us Taylor Swift fans.

[Rose "Payola" Nylund]

I’m not against that idea! Though it makes a nomination less special but let’s see how it plays out. Personally, I’m curious to see if they can even find 8 options for each worthy of a nomination 🤐

[born]

It is indeed great for Taylor cause I consider her to be between #5-#7 in the General Field categories so she's getting in with this new system!

[14887fan]

Jun 26, 2018 9:39:18 GMT -5 14887fan said:

Woah.

Kk, now I have more thoughts.

I think I like this. It may absolutely lead to even more stressful cases of split-voting, but I think allowing more room for more than *maybe* just 1 album from each genre (minus Pop, which usually always took 2 or 3 of the 5 available spots), it almost helps guarantee a presence of all sounds in these categories. With that, my initial thoughts for this year:

(With this new change, I think the people listed above the line in each category are all but certain to be nominated.)

Album
Dirty Computer, Janelle Monae
Invasion of Privacy, Cardi B
Golden Hour, Kacey Musgraves
reputation, Taylor Swift
KOD, J. Cole
---
Meaning of Life, Kelly Clarkson
Port Saint Joe, Brothers Osborne
The Tree of Forgiveness, John Prine
LOVE IS EVERYTHING, The Carters
Black Panther, Kendrick Lamar / Various Artists
Shawn Mendes, Shawn Mendes
Beautiful Trauma, P!nk

Song
"Make Me Feel," Janelle Monae
"I Like That," Cardi B
"Space Cowboy," Kacey Musgraves
"This is America," Childish Gambino
"All the Stars," Kendrick/SZA
"Delicate," Taylor Swift
---
"No Tears Left to Cry," Ariana Grande
"It Ain't My Fault," Brothers Osborne
"The Middle," Zedd feat. Maren Morris & Grey
"In My Blood," Shawn Mendes

Record
"Make Me Feel," Janelle Monae
"I Like That," Cardi B
"This is America," Childish Gambino
"Delicate," Taylor Swift
"Meant to Be," Bebe Rexha feat. Florida Georgia Line
"Nice For What," Drake
"The Middle," Zedd feat. Maren Morris & Grey
---
"APESHIT," The Carters
"Space Cowboy," Kacey Musgraves
"Never Be the Same," Camila Cabello
"In My Blood," Shawn Mendes

New Artist
Cardi B
Bebe Rexha
Camila Cabello
Dua Lipa
Post Malone
---
Jorja Smith
Margo Price
Lauren Alaina
Kane Brown
Brett Young
(Does Shawn Mendes qualify for this?)