Grammy bosses are not “affected” or “offended” by Weeknd boycotting the awards.
The 31-year-old star – real name Abel Makkonen Tesfaye – decided to stop submitting his music for consideration after his album ‘After Hours’ was not nominated for a single award at the 2021 ceremony.
Grammy boss Harvey Mason Jr said: “It’s not distracting, [from the work], it’s understandable. People that make music are passionate people inherently. These [projects] are their babies. When they get upset, it doesn’t affect us or offend us. Getting this right is the priority. The perception of the academy and our process is important because it allows us to do the work that we want to do.”
The Recording Academy CEO did then go on to say that it would be “nice” to hear decisions from the artists themselves, rather than read about it in the press.
Speaking to Billboard, he added: “Sometimes it might be nice to not always hear it in the press; maybe it would be nice to get a phone call or a text. But regardless of how we get it, it’s important we evaluate it and find out actionable steps on how to be better. At the end of the day, when our members and our community say, ‘We’d like to look at something differently and we think there is a new way of doing this, it’s better’, we listen and we move.”
Mason’s response to The Weeknd came after the ‘Save Your Tears’ hitmaker – who has previously won three Grammy awards – vowed never to submit his work to the board again.
He told the New York Times: “Because of the secret committees, I will no longer allow my label to submit my music to the Grammys”