Are the Grammy Awards as Honest as They Say?

The Grammy Awards, presented by the Recording Academy, are held annually as a prestigious ceremony honoring all contributors to the music industry for their impact on the art. The Recording Academy is responsible for selecting the ultimate winners through an intricate voting process.

Over 13,000 Recording Academy Members participate in this poll, and it consists of two rounds. It starts in October when the final nominees are narrowed down. Once it is finalized, mid-December to early January is spent submitting and concluding votes for the big-time winners, in time for the February show.

Despite the officiality they claim to maintain, the audience often questions the Academy's choices from the start. Countless artists have been neglected as part of the nominations, and the ones that are chosen bring in arguable controversies as well.

1. Genre Divisions

As all common viewers know, the Grammys are separated into different categories: pop, rock, rap, R&B, country, Latin, classical, jazz, and more. Now, what people may not know is how these categories are divided throughout the night. The pre-Grammys start at 12:30 Pacific Time and showcase the awards for rock, classical, jazz, gospel, and more.

Nevertheless, what most people are unaware of about the pre-Grammys is that they are not broadcast on live television because they are represented as some of the less popular categories. Instead, they are solely mentioned during ad breaks during the official ceremony.

However, Statista claims that about 37% of the world listens mostly to rock, alternative, and indie, 27% listen to classical, and about 20% favor jazz. These numbers are not too far from the statistics of pop and country, two of the most important genres for the ceremony. Shockingly, country even holds one of the lowest statistics with a percentage of 23%.

The Recording Academy determines which genres are featured on which show and obviously chooses to focus on pop, Latin music, country, and rap. With so much additional music being put aside for a segment most people don't even know about, the world is missing out on so much talent and are being trained to believe pop, rap, country, and Latin music builds the foundation of world music, which completely blinds the main point of this award show, which is to showcase musical talent contributions around the world.

Without enough diversity, national music is represented primarily through pop music, which is a biased and inaccurate representation of talent all over the world. Especially since the Grammys are considered one of, if not the most significant and acclaimed, award shows of all time for music, they should be more considerate of which genres are included in which broadcasting segment and what they choose to highlight once it goes live.

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Surprisingly, this isn't even the main issue. A large portion of the audience has caught on to the fact that the Grammys are biased, but only a partial fraction of these viewers have discovered that the voting academy is racist.

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2. Black Grammys

A lot of people can take this the wrong way, but it's unfair to true artists who work to fight through the barriers of each genre to be unfairly stripped of a chance to win this prestigious award. Numerous people believe Black artists deserve greater recognition, but that is not the case.

First of all, there is a specially made Black Grammy just for this situation. A Black Grammy is a special award given by the Recording Academy to recognize Black artists for their contributions to music. Yes, this is just as prestigious as a normal Grammy award and does an amazing job at recognizing Black talent, but this is the reason why it is unreasonable to assume that people from areas that have African American musicians and producers are not being credited for their work.

Nonetheless, with this award and a whole segment about recognizing past and current Black artists, as well as presenting the Dr. Dre award, Black artists have lots of recognition for the work they produce. Some of these people include Ella Fitzgerald, Beyoncé, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, and Aretha Franklin.

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3. Latin Grammys

Latinos are targeted as one of the groups that are ethnically neglected during this award ceremony. Once again, there is a separate, distinct event called the Latin Grammy Awards, solely for this reason. The Latin Recording Academy chooses the Latin Grammy Awards and even makes specific requirements to qualify to be considered Latin enough to win one of these awards.

Even with this separate award show, Latin artists are still involved in the primary Grammy award show, and they are still nominated for numerous awards in different genres. In 2026, Bad Bunny received the Album of the Year for his new album DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS. The Recording Academy is not discriminatory and has recognized talent from other parts of the world, especially Latin Music.

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4. K-pop

Even though this is controversial, the only other main music genre that is ignored is K-pop. Billboard, one of the world's most reliable news sources, conducted a survey and came to the conclusion that "82% of respondents listen to K-pop seven days a week." This is greater than any other statistic of genre of music, yet Korean musician don't have their own special Grammy award nor do they have a separate section contributed to their nationality.

One of the world's largest and most well-known K-pop bands is BTS. BTS was only nominated for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for their song "Dynamite" for the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards, same catagory for their new song "Butter" in the 64th Annual Grammy Awards, and the same catagory for "My Universe," Best Music Video for "Yet to Come," and Album of the Year for "Music of the Spheres" in the 65th Grammys. In total, these are five nominations, not even wins, for over 12 years that they have been a band.

To list some of their major achievements, BTS hit No. 3 on the World Albums Chart after the release of "Skool Luv Affair" in 2014. "The Most Beautiful Moment in Life, Part 1" hits the Heatseekers Albums chart at No. 6. Part 2 of this album is their first album to debut on Billboard 200, ranked at No. 171 in 2015. "The Most Beautiful Moment in Life: Young Forever" later peaked at No. 107 in 2016. Their new album "Youth" shot up to No. 1 on the Oricon chart in 2016.

Another album, "Wings," lands at No. 26 on Billboard 200, kicking off their own record. Fast forward to recent years, late 2022 were some of their last moments before they were sent off to the military, but in these last few months, BTS managed to be the only artist with six No.1s on the Hot 100 in the past decade, and became the first group to exceed 30 billion streams on Spotify.

Regardless of these achievements, K-pop is seen as a joke and is easily dismissed by music professionals. Even though they have broken through many musical challenges and fought their way to the hearts of the U.S. and other countries of the world, they are still considered one of the lesser-known genres and are not recognized enough for what they have done for our musical community.

Only five nominations and zero wins for this boy band is outrageous considering everything they have accomplished over more than a decade, and this proves that the Grammys are racially biased towards nationalities that the Recording Academy favors rather than the ones that have topped the charts for that year or have been recognized in other award shows in that same year.

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It's important to keep in mind that BTS is only one of millions of people who have been unfairly rejected, and some solo artists or other boy and girl Korean idols who have sold out world tours are underestimated and disregarded just for something that they couldn't control, their ethnicity.

Additionally, there are so many artists from other countries, even excluding Korea, who have created such unique and wondrous music or productions that are discriminated against by the Recording Academy. The rejection of artists hasn't been emphasized enough, considering that when artists apply to be part of the nominations, they lose to people who have nothing on them.

If it is recognized publicly in the news and magazines as well as published as ground-breaking statistics as a breakthrough in music, these artists should be acknowledged instead of being unjustly ignored by the official Recording Academy.

5. Final thoughts

The Grammys are meant for the best musicians and producers, but there is so much doubt as to whether or not this award is genuinely an award. With so many racial barriers as well as favoritism regarding genres, it's hard to tell what's real and fake. Significant genres are rejected, awards are not ethnically diverse, and the Recording Academy chooses people who are popularly known for that year, not the ones who have produced an actual good record or album that year.

Now, I am not saying that every single winner was undeserving of that reward, but as time goes on, the Grammys are getting more and more criticized for fraud and inequality. Next year, the Grammys will hopefully change and represent more of the real artists who deserve to be recognized.