BTS Just Shined A Light On The Grammys’ Diversity Problem

Aug 02, 2026 09:47 PM - 3 hours ago 54

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon - Season 13

On July 29, each 7 members of BTS posted the aforesaid connection to their individual Instagram accounts: they would not taxable their caller album, ARIRANG, for information astatine the 2027 Grammy Awards. "We dream our euphony tin beryllium heard and loved for what it is, alternatively than being divided by region aliases language," they wrote. It was not a tantrum. It was not a scheduling conflict. It was a nonstop rejection of a class the Recording Academy created 7 weeks earlier, connected June 16: Best Asian Pop Music Performance.

The timing makes the connection sting. ARIRANG is the group's first medium since each 7 members completed South Korea's mandatory subject service, and it debuted astatine number 1 connected the Billboard 200. This was an enactment by a group astatine the tallness of its commercialized power, telling the industry's astir powerful institution that a caller container built specifically to clasp their euphony was not a gift.

Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. responded wrong a day, calling himself "saddened" by the determination while defending the caller field. He based on that the class was built to "celebrate the depth, diverseness and bonzer maturation of popular artistry coming retired of Asia" and that genre-specific categories do not barroom artists from besides competing successful wide categories for illustration Album of the Year aliases Song of the Year. Both things are true. Neither addresses what BTS is really objecting to.

This is not the first clip a well-intentioned Grammy class has produced this nonstop reaction, and knowing the shape matters much than picking a broadside connected immoderate azygous group’s boycott. A class built arsenic a compliment tin still usability arsenic a fence.

Consider Best African Music Performance, introduced successful 2023 for the 2024 ceremony. The Recording Academy framed it arsenic nickname of Africa's explosive world influence, from Afrobeats to amapiano. Tyla won it twice, successful 2024 for "Water" and again successful 2026 for "Push 2 Start," beating Burna Boy, Davido and Ayra Starr some times. Each triumph triggered a activity of backlash, not chiefly astir Tyla's talent, but astir the premise of the class itself.

Recording Academy personnel and civilization commentator Joey Akan has been the astir nonstop critic. Akan argued African artists are not asking for a typical room of their own; they are asking to beryllium treated arsenic equals eligible for the biggest stages, informing the class risks becoming a measurement to fto "Africans conflict themselves there" while the awesome categories enactment retired of reach. Ghanaian American vocalist Amaarae raised the aforesaid interest backmost successful 2023, and OkayAfrica ran an op-ed arguing the class forces African artists to sound "ancestral, percussive, earthy" to moreover qualify, punishing anyone whose sound leans popular aliases global.

The shape repeats successful state music. When the Recording Academy announced it was splitting Best Country Album into Best Traditional Country Album and Best Contemporary Country Album successful June 2025, the move landed 1 twelvemonth aft Beyoncé became the first Black creator to triumph the category, for Cowboy Carter. The Academy framed the divided arsenic giving traditional-sounding records their ain spotlight. Social media publication it otherwise and immediately, pinch users asking whether the Academy had conscionable created divided categories by different name.

Go backmost further and the style of the statement flips, but the underlying hostility is identical. In 2011, the Recording Academy trim much than 30 categories, folding genres for illustration Native American, Hawaiian, Zydeco and Cajun euphony into a azygous Best Regional Roots Music category. That determination provoked the other guidance from BTS's boycott: musicians fought to support dedicated categories alternatively than to flight them. Carlos Santana, Herbie Hancock and Paul Simon protested the cuts straight to the Academy, pinch Santana penning that eliminating Latin Jazz and different taste categories was "doing a immense disservice to the superb musicians who support the euphony vibrant," and 4 affected artists yet revenge suit. NPR's Felix Contreras covered the fallout arsenic the merger drew "charges of racism and exclusion" from a wholly different guidance than the 1 BTS is arguing from today.

Put those 3 moments broadside by broadside and a genuinely uncomfortable truth emerges: the Recording Academy cannot resoluteness this by adding categories aliases by removing them, because the underlying creation flaw is the aforesaid either way. A class organized astir ethnicity, region aliases connection will ever beryllium publication successful 2 contradictory ways astatine once, arsenic nickname by the artists who consciousness recently seen, and arsenic a containment strategy by the artists who fearfulness it caps really acold their activity tin recreation wrong the institution. Both readings are logical responses to the aforesaid structure. The Academy keeps trying to technologist its measurement retired of a problem that isn't a categorization problem. It's a spot problem, built up complete decades of Album of the Year fields that skewed heavy toward achromatic American popular and stone moreover successful years erstwhile Black, Latin and Asian artists dominated the commercialized conversation.

That history is precisely why Mason's defense, technically meticulous arsenic it is, will not land. Telling BTS that a genre submission does not forestall a general-category submission misses the constituent BTS is making. Their objection is not procedural. It's that the beingness of a geography-coded lane, immoderate its stated intent, signals wherever the Academy expects Asian popular to live. Nobody created a "Best European Pop Music Performance" class for Dua Lipa aliases Ed Sheeran. The absence of a reflector class for majority-white location popular is the show that these fields, nevertheless generously intended, are not applied evenly crossed the map.

Notably, fewer awesome artists person joined BTS's boycott outright, and that is not grounds the manufacture disagrees pinch them. It is grounds of really overmuch leverage a boycott for illustration this requires. Rolling Stone's sum of the standoff noted that experts spot BTS's position arsenic unique precisely because the group has already achieved floor plan dominance, a anterior Grammy information successful 2020 for "Dynamite," and commercialized information that astir artists, moreover successful ones, do not have. A newer aliases mid-tier Asian popular enactment cannot spend to skip the vulnerability a Grammy information provides, class authorities aside. That asymmetry is itself portion of the problem. The artists astir capable to garbage a class are the ones who request it least, which intends the category's existent test, whether it helps aliases hems successful emerging artists, will play retired quietly, without headlines, for years.

For the manufacture watching this unfold, the instruction isn't that identity-based categories are inherently wrong. Recognition categories person genuinely launched careers; Tyla's 2024 triumph introduced her to millions of Grammy viewers who had ne'er heard "Water." The instruction is that the Recording Academy keeps trying to lick a credibility problem pinch a taxonomy solution, and each taxonomy prime it makes will beryllium publication arsenic a connection astir really overmuch the Academy really trusts its wide categories to reward awesome euphony sloppy of wherever it was made. Until Album of the Year, Record of the Year and Song of the Year fields consistently bespeak the afloat scope of what's dominating world culture, nary magnitude of class engineering, adding aliases cutting, splitting aliases merging, will make artists judge the room they're being offered isn't a smaller room.

BTS didn’t conscionable skip an awards show, they named the existent mobility the Grammys person been dodging for complete a decade: does this institution want to benignant euphony by identity, aliases does it want to spot personality not to find the result successful the categories that matter most? It cannot support doing some and expect artists to extremity noticing the difference.