With Music’s Biggest Night just 12 days away, details about the 68th annual Grammy Awards are starting to trickle out. Last week, the Recording Academy announced that Trevor Noah will host the show for the sixth consecutive (and last) year. The comedian will be the first person to host the show six years in a row since crooner Andy Williams, who hosted the first seven live Grammy telecasts from 1971-77.
The first performers are due to be announced this week, with Bruno Mars almost certain to be on the list. His long-awaited album The Romantic is due Feb. 27. Mars is also a nominee this year, with three nods for “APT.,” his smash collab with Rosé. Justin Bieber and Sabrina Carpenter are also good bets to be announced as performers.
Grammy executive producers Ben Winston, Raj Kapoor and Jesse Collins tried something new last year that was well-received – booking performances by all eight best new artist nominees. They are likely to also spotlight many of this year’s equally impressive slate of best new artist nominees: Olivia Dean, KATSEYE, The Marías, Addison Rae, Sombr, Leon Thomas, Alex Warren and Lola Young.
The show will also pay tribute to the many music legends who we lost in the last year, such as Brian Wilson, Sly Stone, Roberta Flack, Ozzy Osbourne, D’Angelo and Bob Weir.
This will be Harvey Mason jr.’s fifth Grammy telecast as CEO of the Recording Academy – his seventh if you count the 2020 and 2021 shows, when he was interim CEO. He took time last week to talk to Billboard about this year’s show and nominations.
Today, you announced that Trevor is hosting. That didn’t surprise me, but it did surprise me that you simultaneously announced that this will be his last time hosting.
I tried my best to convince him for more, but this is it. He’s great. He’s done so well for us six years. It’s been a good long run, and to me, he’s just been such a perfect host for us through this period.
Why did you announce now that this is it?
I think some of that had to do with Trevor wanting to have it out there. And, you know, some basketball players like to do a retirement season, and some players like to [announce] it after they finish playing.
Last year, you got good notices for your spotlight on the eight best new artist nominees. Will you do that again?
I think I’ll probably leave that to be a surprise, but I know how much people enjoyed that last year, and I was really proud of how it came off, so we’ll see how that happens again this year.
You’ll have to find a way to honor an unusual number of legends who died this year. I imagine several of them will get more than just a mention in the In Memoriam spot.
I don’t know, it seems like every year we lose so many great legends, but yes, this year does seem particularly sad in that way. We’re trying to figure out how to make sure we honor all those people, the legends that we’ve lost. It’s always impossible, because there’s so many, but yes, we will be doing something special for a lot of those people.
We haven’t talked since the nominations came out. I would assume the first thing you do when you look at the nominations is hold your breath and hope there’s nothing embarrassing.
[Laughs.]
And I don’t think there was this year. I would think the second test would be, “How did we do in terms of having the right mix?” Did we hit all the bases we need to hit? How do you think you did in those terms?
Well, every year is always that moment where I’m hopeful that we honor music accurately and based on what’s really happening in the industry and in the world. And so we have 15,000 voters that at this point I really trust, because we’ve done the work to evolve our membership, and we requalified every single voting member. [The academy has announced that 73% of its voting members have joined since June 2019, when the academy introduced its new membership model.] So, the voters do the hard work, and yes, when I see the nominations, I’m hopeful that they’re representative and reflective of what’s happening.
I think this year, the voters did a really great job. There’s always going to be a discrepancy. It’s subjective. There’s always going to be people that I wish we could have nominated, and then ultimately there’s people that I wish could have won, or maybe should have won, in different people’s opinions. But ultimately, this year feels like it’s a great mix of young superstars, established legends, icons. We have so much diversity in genre.
Just look at the General Field [album, record and song of the year, best new artist, producer of the year, non-classical and songwriter of the year, non-classical]. You have all those different types of music, even coming from different parts of the world. So, in that sense, I think the voters were very successful in choosing some great people to honor.
Do you see any areas where you need improvement?
I always see areas where I look forward to continuing to evolve. I probably won’t point anything specific out, because I wouldn’t want to make light of anyone’s particular nomination. But part of what our work is at the Grammy organization is to make sure the voting body is in a position to evaluate the music accurately, and when we see things that are not measuring up to that standard, then we’re going to make sure we focus on that, make sure we bring in enough members to try and get the outcomes to be reflective of what’s happening in music.
Well, there’s no country music in album of the year again. That’s a kind of perpetual refrain. Do you think you need to do more in terms of recruitment to make sure you have enough people who are open to country, sympathetic to country? You have three hip hop albums nominated for album of the year. You’ve made great strides in getting a membership that embraces hip hop.
I’ll say we have a well-balanced membership right now across the genres, from what I’m seeing. And I think voting does tend to go in cycles. Some people tend to like a certain genre more than others, and some voting bodies are more active than others year-over-year. But we’ll always continue to look and see, where are there gaps? Where are there things that we can do better and continue to evolve the membership to be accurate?
You invited all the voting members of the Latin Recording Academy to join the Recording Academy, and nearly 1,000 of them took you up on your offer.
Yeah, they did. And if you remember, many of the members were members of [the Recording Academy] before we started LARAS [the Latin Academy of Recording Artists & Sciences] and then LARAS started and started recruiting its own members. But for us, the idea of making sure that we were becoming a global voting body, because music is becoming more and more global, made a lot of sense, and we had a built-in group of incredibly qualified and professional members in the LARAS membership, so importing them over to [the Recording Academy] made a lot of sense, because of the popularity and the prevalence of Latin music and what’s happening there. It’s been an explosion over the last 25 years.
You see the same thing happening in K-pop and then Afrobeats and the Middle East is growing. So, we’re going to have to make sure we’re figuring out how to get representative voters into our organization so we can continue to stay relevant and up on all the different genres.
I realize that the Latin Recording Academy is your own organization, and the Country Music Association is not. But how would you feel about inviting all members of the CMA to join the Recording Academy and get serious about embracing one of the bedrock genres of American music?
I would say we’re very serious about embracing the bedrock genres. But I will say I don’t have context around who those members are — but we definitely would welcome more members from a lot of genres, that one included, for sure. Whether or not they would qualify – what is the threshold? What are the qualifications? I don’t have that, whereas with Latin we knew exactly who their members were, what were the standards by which they were admitted. Does that meet our standards? And we were able to do it pretty smoothly. We would want to look at that set of qualifications, but we’re open to admitting more members from different genres.
You mentioned K-pop a minute ago. When are you going to add a K-pop category? I can’t remember the Grammys ever being this seemingly resistant to adding a category. Usually, you’re on it the minute something seems real, you add a category — and here, it’s been years, and it’s like there’s some resistance. Why?
There’s no resistance at all. Traditionally, what happens with new categories is it has a groundswell of support in the membership, and those members submit a proposal. You know the system as well as I do. We have not gotten to the point where a proposal has come through the system that made sense yet — and I’m sure there’ll be one submitted this year — but there’s no hesitance to do it, and all we want to do is honor music and all the different genres of music, so we’ll have to see what comes in the system this year.
Again, you should know, and your readers should know, I don’t choose the categories. No one who works at the Academy chooses the categories. The members choose the categories. So, it has to come from membership.
You mentioned that you’re proud of the voters and how the membership has evolved. Then, why do you still have committees picking the nominees in so many categories, like producer of the year, non-classical and songwriter of the year, non-classical? You’ve said you trust your voters, so why not trust them there too?
There are a few crafts that we feel need different levels of attention. We’ve eliminated all the committees around genres, which I think was really important. That was one of the first things that we did when I got in this role. But I still see the value and the need for committees to evaluate certain categories, like immersive audio, where there’s a real need for committee to sit in a room and evaluate the music. So, there’s not that many committees left, but I think they serve a purpose in the areas that they are in.
Last year, I was shocked when Jack Antonoff wasn’t nominated for producer of the year, non-classical and this year my head exploded when he wasn’t nominated again. Grammy voters gave him two nominations as a producer for record of the year and two for album of the year. So, the voters seem to think he’s doing good work with records as diverse as “Manchild” and “Luther,” which respectively are the most pure-pop record you’ll ever hear, and a really classy, I call it R&B, the Grammys call it melodic rap record. So, what’s with the committee? Why are they resistant to Jack?
I’m not privy to the conversations that go on that room. All I can tell you is that the committees are made up of producers, other producers, other writers.
Are they jealous?
No, because it’s not just producers. It’s a wide variety of people that make up that room. So, I don’t know.
The only thing I can think is they think that a nomination, or even another win, won’t make him one iota more famous or in-demand, and somebody else can use [the nomination] more. But I’m not sure that’s their role or should be.
That’s definitely not the role, and it’s not weighing into it whatsoever. I would like to think — my hope is that they’re really critically listening and deciding on the merits of the music, and that’s our policy, and that’s, I’m pretty sure they’re doing that to the best of their ability. It’s very subjective.
Do you ever call people who are or aren’t nominated?
All the time. Sometimes it’s “Congratulations.” Sometimes it’s “I’m really sorry.”
I was surprised The Weekend didn’t get any nominations after that platform he got on the Grammys [where Mason personally introduced him with a near-apology for past snubs, before the artist performed two new songs, “Cry for Me” and “Timeless.”]
It’s really down to the voters listening to the music. None of the other things should matter. All that should wash away. It should be about the music you released in the 12 months of the eligibility period. As a voter, did I think it was the best in the category that it’s entered in? And hopefully that’s how they’re evaluating the music. Beyond that, I can’t predict what the voters will do.
I’ve got to ask about Morgan Wallen, who is, what, the second-best selling artist of the last five years? He’s never won a Grammy. He’s only been nominated as a featured artist on a Post Malone record. This year, he didn’t enter his album or any of its singles. I wrote something, and I want to know if you agree with me or not: “I get why he has hard feelings about award shows, especially the Grammys. But not submitting doesn’t solve the problem. Morgan, submit. Grammy voters, judge the record, not an artist’s past mistakes.”
[Signals two thumbs up]
You agree with that?
1,000%.
Good. I was thinking maybe you would say people can evaluate artists however they choose. But you’re saying: Focus on the record. Yeah, he’s done dumb things, but focus on the record – the songs, the performances, the work.
I think if you asked our awards team and the people that are all the way in-the-weeds around the nominations and awards, they would tell you that the rule for voting is really to evaluate the music on the merits of music. As a music fan and consumer myself, that’s how I choose to enjoy music. I listen to music that I love and that moves me. I’m not tying it to every single backstory or behavior, I listen to the things that I like, and our voters vote for the things they think are excellent in the field in which they are evaluating it. That’s how it’s supposed to go down.
Are you satisfied that eight is the best number of nominees for the Big Four categories [album, record and song the year plus best new artist] — better than five, better than 10?
I’m happy with eight for now, and yes, I’m satisfied with it for this year. We’ll see how that goes. And it’s a huge calculus of, are we honoring enough music? Is there diversity in that music? Is it set up for the right number for a TV show and for the purposes of creating that? Those variables all will change year-to-year, and we’ll just keep looking at it. But for now, I think yes, eight is a great number. What do you think of it? Do you like it or do you think it should be higher or lower?
Well, definitely not higher. I’m a traditionalist. I like five. And you apparently like eight. Then why don’t you have eight nominees in producer of the year, non-classical and songwriter of the year, non-classical?
It’s not something that I decide. It’s something that ultimately comes in from the membership, and if the membership feels like we have the need to honor more people, then we’ll do it. But we’ve just traditionally only had eight [nominees] in the General Field. Now that those two [categories] are in the General Field, I’m sure that will be something that gets discussed.
This year, all five of the nominees for songwriter of the year, non-classical have been nominated in that category before, so expanding it to eight nominees might help bring in some new names.
Good point.
How do you think the split between best traditional country album and best contemporary country album played out this year?
I thought it made sense. And for me, celebrating more music is always better than trying to pit really disparate music against each other in the category. So, I really like the way that it’s working so far.
Everybody assumed that splitting the country album category in two was a reaction to Beyoncé winning best country album last year. Was it?
Absolutely not. And obviously, again, you know our system. That has to be in the form of a proposal and that takes time. We’ve been working on that for a number of years, actually, before that last category even happened. We’re never going to make policy change based on one person. It comes from the membership in a proposal, and [having a contemporary/traditional split] is also in line with what we’ve done in so many other genres. You know, R&B has it. Blues has it. So, no, that is not the case.
Anything we didn’t touch on, or we kind of glossed over?
[good-naturedly] As always, Paul, you’ve done a magnificent job of hitting all the pressure points and making me squirm.
Thank you for taking the time.
