Once again, #EdSheeran wins over much stronger female contenders, so instead of #kesha's song about overcoming sexual abuse, we reward another song by a man about a woman's body. #GRAMMYs #metoo #timesup #grammyssomale
— Anya Silver (@AnyaSilverPoet) January 29, 2018
https://twitter.com/MarcSnetiker/status/957784288597917696
https://twitter.com/sbstryker/status/957788422805979136
https://twitter.com/deadlostboy/status/957753244545150976
The president of the Recording Academy, Neil Portnow, responded to the online criticism with a statement which can only be described as ill-advised.
Portnow informed women that it was their responsibility to “step up” if they wanted to be commended in a creative field:
I think it has to begin with women who have the creativity in their hearts and their souls who want to be musicians, who want to be engineers, who want to be producers, who want to be part of the industry on an executive level to step up. Because I think they would be welcome, I don’t have personal experience of those kinds of brick walls that you face, but I think it’s really a combination — it’s us as an industry making the welcome mat very obvious, creating mentorships, creating opportunities not only for women but for all people who want to be creative and really paying it forward and creating that next generation of artists who feel like they can do anything and say anything.
Dude. Read the damn room. The opinion that women don’t win awards because they don’t work for them is not only patently untrue, it is disappointingly regressive in our current political climate.
Twitter wasted no time in responding to Portnow’s remarks.