The 60th Annual Grammy Awards saw an enormous amount of backlash, namely surrounding Ed Sheeran winning the Best Pop Solo Performance for his song 'Shape of You', over his competitors Kelly Clarkson, Pink, Lady Gaga and Kesha.
Kesha, who began a highly-publicised and difficult legal battle against her former producer, Dr. Luke - who she accused of rape and battery - in 2014, was up for the Grammy Award for her popular song 'Praying', a powerful track about her alleged rapist.
The singer also performed the emotional track at the awards ceremony with Cyndi Lauper, Bebe Rexha, Camila Cabello, Andra Day and Julia Michaels, which was received with thunderous applause and enormous amounts of praise online.
Viewers seemed largely dumbfounded that Sheeran won the award for a song about being physically attracted to the body of random woman in a bar, over Kesha's hugely important and popular track about forgiving her alleged rapist, which was also her re-entry into the industry after the tumultuous court battle.
Sheeran winning, particularly considering the current mainstream #MeToo conversation and the extremely visible 'white rose' movement at the ceremony, received heavy backlash from viewers:
After the ceremony had ended, Grammys president Neil Portnow made matters even worse with a bizarre and out-of-touch statement, implying that if women wanted to win more Grammys, they simply need to try harder and make better music:
"It has to begin with… women who have the creativity in their hearts and souls, who want to be musicians, who want to be engineers, producers, and want to be part of the industry on the executive level… [They need] to step up because I think they would be welcome. I don’t have personal experience of those kinds of brick walls that you face but I think it’s upon us — us as an industry — to make the welcome mat very obvious, breeding opportunities for all people who want to be creative and paying it forward and creating that next generation of artists."
The inappropriate "step it up" comment came after a ceremony where only one woman won an award (Alessia Cara, who won Best New Artist), and the only woman musician to be nominated for Album of the Year (New Zealand's Lorde) was not asked to perform, while all her male counterparts were. Portnow's comment was also ill-timed - only days before, a study was released showing that 90.7 per cent of Grammy nominees in the last five years were men.
The statement was not taken to kindly by fans, or by some of the women musicians to which Portnow's comment referred:
Portnow has now walked back this statement - and rightly so. He gave a statement to Variety:
"Sunday night, I was asked a question about the lack of female artist representation in certain categories of this year’s Grammy Awards. Regrettably, I used two words, ‘step up,’ that, when taken out of context, do not convey my beliefs and the point I was trying to make.
"Our industry must recognize that women who dream of careers in music face barriers that men have never faced. We must actively work to eliminate these barriers and encourage women to live their dreams and express their passion and creativity through music. We must welcome, mentor, and empower them. Our community will be richer for it.
"I regret that I wasn’t as articulate as I should have been in conveying this thought. I remain committed to doing everything I can to make our music community a better, safer, and more representative place for everyone."
It was a smart move to walk it back - the original comment was insensitive and naive at best, as well as factually incorrect and harmful. As Pink said - women have been "stepping it up" since the beginning of time - they've had to, due the institutionalised barriers placed on women in a male-dominated industry. Talented women are creating incredible music every single day, and some of last year's most successful and incredible albums were released by women - and the Grammys somehow do not reflect that.
Sure, in a wholly equal society, awards would simply be given on merit. But in a world where women still face significant barriers due to a historically patriarchal society, merit just doesn't make sense - equity is needed in order to address systemic sexism.
In a time of #MeToo, where women are speaking up and finally being listened to about ingrained sexism and harassment in a number of different industries, women should be reaping rightly-deserved glory.
