BTS Skips 2027 Grammys Over New Asian Pop Category
SkimNews Take
BTS opting out turns the Academy's "additive" framing into a test: without boundary-crossing acts populating regional categories, the slots risk functioning as silos rather than bridges, making prestige contingent on which global artists validate the structure.
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- BTS — all seven members (RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V, Jungkook) — posted identical statements on their individual Instagram accounts announcing they will not submit for Grammy consideration for 2027, saying they hope their music "can be heard and loved for what it is, rather than being divided by region or language."
- Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. said he was "saddened to hear" the decision but respects it, and clarified that the new Best Asian Pop category was created "to celebrate the depth, diversity and extraordinary growth of pop artistry coming out of Asia" — "never to divide, but to expand who is recognized."
- Mason stressed that submitting in a genre category like Asian Pop does not exclude artists from the General Field categories (Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year), and that genre and General Field recognition are "not mutually exclusive."
- The Best Asian Pop Music Performance category was unveiled roughly a month before BTS's announcement; it covers K-pop, J-pop, and C-pop performances with "meaningful use of one or more Asian languages."
- BTS has been previously nominated for Grammys in Best Pop Duo/Group Performance and Best Music Video but has never won.
- BTS is not the first major act to boycott — Drake, Jay-Z, and the Weeknd have all opted out at times, though Mason has historically succeeded in bringing alienated artists back into the fold.
Why it matters: BTS's boycott puts the Recording Academy on the defensive just one month after launching its first Asian-specific category, and Mason's track record of reconciling with Drake and the Weeknd suggests BTS's absence is unlikely to be permanent — but the optics of the world's biggest K-pop act rejecting the category it was ostensibly designed for undercuts the Academy's diversity messaging.
