Recording Academy Rethinks Asian Pop Grammy Category
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- Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. issued a statement saying the organization will reconsider its new Asian Pop category, just two months after creating it and weeks after BTS announced they wouldn't submit for the 2027 awards partly over the category's limitations.
- BTS said in part that they "hope our music can be heard and loved for what it is, rather than being divided by region or language."
- Grammy executives have been in discussions with artists and industry representatives from K-pop, J-pop, C-pop, and India, with the Academy convening its full Board and Awards & Nominations Committee to seek further advice.
- Academy volunteers from the Gold Music Alliance were "bullied and threatened by social media users" wrongly blamed for the category's creation, which was actually determined through the standard annual Awards & Nominations process.
- Genre-specific awards carry a structural risk: members of niche genres may see them as ghetto-ization rather than respect, and would rather compete in general categories like Record or Album of the Year.
- Under Mason's six-year tenure, the Academy has shown a pattern of revising policies and diversifying membership in response to community feedback.
- Billboard first reported the reconsideration; Variety says it will continue covering the situation as it develops.
Why it matters: If the Asian Pop category is revised or scrapped, the Grammy Awards would lose a high-profile diversity initiative just two months after launch — a rare public reversal that puts the Recording Academy's category-creation process itself under review and signals that artist-community input can override internal committee decisions.
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