The Recording Academy is consulting Asian music industry leaders, including BTS label HYBE, to reshape its new Best Asian Pop Music Performance category after BTS declined to submit music over concerns about regional classification.
BTS performs during the 64th Annual Grammy Awards show in Las Vegas, Nevada on April 3, 2022.
REUTERS/YONHAP
The organization behind the Grammy Awards is reconsidering its new Asian pop category after BTS refused to submit music for this year’s ceremony, according to a Billboard report Saturday.
Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. and other leaders have spent the past two weeks in talks with musicians, labels and managers across K-pop, J-pop, C-pop and Indian music — including HYBE, BTS’s label — about the Best Asian Pop Music Performance category, Billboard reported, citing the academy.
The academy’s full Board of Trustees and the Awards & Nominations Committee are now being brought in to shape the category further.
The category was announced on June 16 as one of five new Grammy additions and quickly drew criticism from fans who argued it risked walling off Asian artists from the Grammys’ main categories rather than opening a path into them.
BTS said July 29 it would sit out next year’s Grammys, telling fans it wanted its music “heard and loved for what it is, rather than categorized by region or language” — a move widely read as a rebuke of the category, which the group had been favored to win with its comeback album, “Arirang.”
Mason defended the category the next day, saying it does not bar artists from also competing for Album of the Year, Song of the Year and other top honors.
K-pop acts have long struggled at the Grammys. BTS and Rosé have collected nominations without a win, though “Golden” from the “KPop Demon Hunters” soundtrack became the first Korean song to win a Grammy in February.
Entries for the 69th Grammy Awards close Aug. 21, with nominees announced Nov. 16 and the ceremony set for Feb. 7 in Los Angeles.
BY JIM BULLEY [jim.bulley@joongang.co.kr]