The Grammys were once the most prestigious award a musician could possibly attain. The Grammy’s honor musicians for all of their hard work and determination, however, throughout the past decade, the Grammys became infamous for their lack of diversity, excluding women and minorities in multiple categories. However, this year the Grammys came out with arguably their most racially diverse nominations with an exceptional amount of people of color nominated for the major awards. The problem with the nominations this year though was the exclusion of women that were nominated, and that won. Some of the most prominent female artists released singles and albums, yet an insufficient amount of females were nominated. The Grammys even got their own viral hashtag this year, “#GrammysSoMale”.

In recent years, the Grammy Awards have been extremely controversial especially when Adele won Album of the Year for her album, 25 over Beyonce’s Lemonade, not to mention that people were also disappointed when Taylor Swift’s 1989 won over Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. This left an abundance of people upset and exposed the lack of racial diversity in major categories. Rap/hip-hop artist, Drake has a history of boycotting the Grammys because he feels that minorities are not represented enough; only 10 black artists have won Album of the Year in the 60 year history of the Grammys.

The Album of the Year Award is arguably the most vital award of the night. The award is presented to those who have made an astounding piece of work that deserves to be recognized by the general public. However, of the five nominees for Album of the Year, only one woman was nominated. Lorde’s Melodrama is the most critically acclaimed female album of 2017, yet was only nominated for one award. Lorde was the only person nominated for album of the year who was not asked to perform a song of their own, the Grammys told her she could only perform a Tom Petty song, and that it had to be sung with someone else. The New York Times states, “Of 899 people nominated in the last six Grammy Awards, the report found, 9 percent were women”.

The Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Album was awarded to Divide by Ed Sheeran, which is sort of weird because Joanne (Lady Gaga), Praying (Kesha), and Lust for Life (Lana Del Rey) all had more critical acclaim than Divide, but in Sheeran defense, it had the most commercial success over the other nominees.

The Grammy’s came across as quite hypocritical after the award show attempted to show unity and strength through the Me Too Movement and to support equality in the entertainment industry. The Grammys failed to show equality and unity at a time where America desperately needs it. The award show itself was uncomfortable, the diversity of the nominees this year was brought up a plethora of times, and it made the viewer feel like all these people were only nominated because they wanted diversity. The President of the Grammys released a statement on why so few women were nominated, he basically said that women need to “Step up”. This statement quickly became the center of controversy and some female musicians even responded to this statement, including U.K. pop artist, Charli XCX.

Looking back at 2017, most women were ignored by the general public. In fact, the only female solo artists that achieved a number one single on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2017 were Taylor Swift, and Cardi B, but both were only number one for three weeks each. This means that men were at the top of the charts for about 46 weeks combined. If people really want equal representation of genders at the Grammys, then the award show must go back to separate categories for each gender because it is impossible to please everyone. The Grammys should be awarding the music that deserves recognition and not what was most popular on the charts.