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GRAMMY HEAT

Leading up to music's biggest night, stories about the growing divide between artists and Grammy top brass, and who won't be attending have snowballed.

Ariana Grande tweeted her rebuttal to a Ken Ehrlich quote from an interview with the AP and a press riot ensued. On the eve of Grande's album release day, a beef with the most popular music star in the world at the moment is certainly not a battle the Recording Academy wants to be fighting three days before the ceremony.

How will all this shake out? Stay tuned. In the meantime, see below for some recent press commentary.


"The awards show messed things up with one of the biggest pop stars in the world," noted The Ringer. With Drake and Kendrick Lamar declining invitations to perform—and possibly skipping the show altogether—the headlines from Sunday night’s broadcast won’t be about what happens on stage... Consequently, on Sunday, as usual, who doesn’t win—and who doesn’t even show up—will be a much bigger Grammys story than whoever does... This was supposed to be the year the Grammys figured it out, or at least radically shook things up in a tacit acknowledgment that they still don’t have it figured out."

“You have to honor the artist's vision. A big mistake was made by not having the #1 record in the world on the show. So shame on that. That should never have happened. If you want the biggest artist in the world, you have to trust their artistic vision,” Scott Borchetta told The Hollywood Reporter on 2/7.

"Now, just days away from the 2019 Grammys, argued Esquire, "it's already looking to be another complete disaster. It doesn't help that the Recording Academy picked some of the most baffling nominees in recent years, now many of the top artists in music are boycotting this year's event... Refusing to attend the show is a backlash to years of being ignored by the Grammys, both individually and of hip-hop as a whole. Historically, the Grammys will invite hip-hop and R&B artists to the ceremony to perform and draw in viewers but not award them with actual trophies."

In a story titled "Can the Grammys please anyone?" The New York Times offered this: "There is also a chance that the award could go to Drake or Lamar only to have the winner not show up. That has become a growing risk for the Grammys as the show has alienated more and more hip-hop and R&B stars—like Drake, Kanye West, Jay-Z and Frank Ocean—by failing to give them the most prestigious prizes... More bad news for the Grammys arrived on Thursday afternoon, when Ariana Grande confirmed reports that she had pulled out after clashing with producers—apparently Ehrlich himself—over which song to perform."

Refinery 29 declared, "What's not subjective is that women overall were not given anywhere near equal or even representation in the Grammys. After that fact became a major point of contention both with artists and the press, Ehrlich was unable to say he'd made a miscalculation and would let it inform his intangible booking calculations in 2019. Instead, in 2019 Ehrlich apparently shut down the creative process of a woman who is coming into her own as a top tier pop star, who was one of the most talked about people of 2018, whose new album is as embraced by music nerds as it is the gossip industrial complex, and who has been a strident voice for feminism in music. It's not a good look."

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