"BTS boycott Grammys over new Asian pop award category": https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/bts-boycott-grammys-over-new-asian-pop-award-category-2026-07-29/ There are nearly a hundred Grammy categories. But only 9-12 are given away on the live telecast. Because the general public only cares about that many. Kind of like the Brit Awards, of which there are fewer than twenty. Now what bugs me most is lazy obituary writers will say that some deceased musician was a Grammy winner, as if that counted. The bottom line is if you can't be nominated for a Grammy in some category, you don't make music. As for winning... If the category is narrow enough, you've got a good chance. The reason eighty plus Grammy categories exist is to have those who make music without mass commercial appeal feel good. So they can use it on their bios, on their Wikipedia pages, so it will influence those who are inexperienced and uneducated. And BTS is taking a stand against this. Of course it can win an Asian music category, there's no way it won't be nominated. How many Asian acts have succeeded in the U.S? And BTS is the biggest. So no big deal. This is the backwater. No one in music wants to reside in the backwater, they want to be in the mainstream. To an artist whose album debuts at number one on the chart, that has tens of millions of fans around the world, they don't want the Grammy to increase business, after all, in the streaming era there is no Grammy bounce, but as a cherry-on-top, a victory lap, an acknowledgement of their status and success. And in these top categories, the Grammys keep blowing it. Giving awards to jazz albums most people have never heard or the usual suspects. You can't have it both ways. You can't say you want to play in the mainstream and disregard it at the same time. But the bottom line is no one has more contempt for another's work than a musician. Music is a solitary enterprise. It's you against the world. This is very different from movies, which are a collaborative field. So do you expect musicians, especially those who could never dream of being nominated in one of the big categories, to pay fealty to some rapper or some K-pop act? No way! They are the enemy! So they award the acts who they believe deserve their respect. Oftentimes those who've had previous success to the degree that they can't be denied. So you've got acts in these boundary-pushing genres pissed that they're excluded from the big awards, even though hip-hop has been around for nearly half a century at this point. But it still can't get respect from the white men who run the Grammys. They put a woman in charge and they had to excise her, pay her a tidy sum to go away. It's a cabal, and they like it the way it is. Now if the Grammys wanted to boost their esteem, they'd eliminate nearly all of the categories, boil it down to ten or fifteen. But every time they try to eliminate a category, those who make music in it go hog wild. Meanwhile, the public doesn't give a sh*t. If it did, millions of viewers would watch the pre-telecast, but they don't. Most big acts won't even show up for these awards, because they're meaningless to them. So BTS is saying it needs to be acknowledged as a legitimate competitor or it won't play. And the funny thing is the Grammys need these commercially successful acts to appear on the telecast, to maintain ratings, after all it's the check from the network that pays the bills for the entire organization. The biggest recording act in America won't even submit his work. Yes, that's how big Morgan Wallen is. Does he need the Grammys? Absolutely not, he sells out stadiums. The Grammys need him. But rather than acknowledge his success, they want to hold some bad behavior against him and keep him out, even though they award winners with gunfire and physical violence in their backgrounds. But lower class whites who don't know how to behave, who don't clean up to Grammy standards, there's no room for them. Now the Grammys tried to solve the problem of inaccurate nominations with its secret committees. Making sure the out of touch voters did not have the final say. But this doesn't align with transparency and accuracy. But it did have these committees passing around the Grammys in smaller categories. Oh, my friend hasn't been nominated yet, let's put him in there. Could never happen in a major category. But even some of the biggest acts can't win in the major categories! Maybe there needs to be a fan vote. A Grammy for that. But really, the best way out of this is to eliminate the bogus undercard and only focus on a few categories and make sure the true successes are nominated and sometimes win. But this is anathema to those involved. It's like high school. You know, the nerds in school government who are unpopular who want to render irrelevant judgments in a world run by the football team and the cool kids. This is their way to teach the popular a lesson. To try and show them up. It's laughable, like so much of the Grammys. Now in truth, it's only a loser who displays their Grammys. I mean a winner in the irrelevant categories. As for the winners, if the Grammy statuette is not in the bathroom, they oftentimes don't even know where it is, that's how meaningful it is to them. Undercutting the gravitas of the whole thing. But if you're going to have an awards show, you've got to keep up to date and acknowledge those who are foremost in today's culture. So far, this has been a problem. And throwing crumbs at those offended will not solve it. Music is about dominance, didn't Freddie Mercury sing that he wanted it all, and he wanted it now? That's the goal, you want to be the toppermost of the poppermost. A consolation prize won't do. Give me the best, say I'm great, or forget it. After all, who are you? I'm bigger and I have fans and will outlast the arbiters. So give me my props or I'm OUT! -- Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/ -- Listen to the podcast: -iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj -Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp -- http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz -- If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter, http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1 If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25 To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
