Analysis: Are the Grammys marginalizing men? After Sunday’s historic sweep by women artists, it’s about time!

LOS ANGELES — 

Are men being marginalized by the Grammy Awards?

That is, at first glance, a preposterous question regarding an event that has been dominated by men for much of its seven-decade history. But Sunday’s 66th edition of the annual music awards saw women artists score an historic sweep with wins for Best New Artist and Record, Song and Album of the Year.

Those victories went, respectively, to Best New Artist winner Victoria Monet, Record of the Year-winner Miley Cyrus (for “Flowers”), Song of the Year-winner Billie Eilish (whose stirring ballad, “What Was I Made For” from the film “Barbie” was co-written with her brother, Finneas O’Connell), and Taylor Swift (who became the first artist in Grammy history to win a fourth Album of the Year award).

In doing so, Swift surpassed three-time winners Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder and Paul Simon. Her two triumphs during the telecast — her “Midnights” was also voted Best Pop Vocal Album — were the 13th and 14th Grammy wins of her career.

Swift used her Best Pop Vocal Album acceptance speech to disclose the title and release date of her next album (“The Tortured Poets Society,” due out April 19). Her doing so may have seemed like a crassly commercial exercise in self-promotion to some.

But Swift is hardly the first — and certainly won’t be the last — Grammy-winner to plug their work during the show long billed as “music’s biggest night.” She took on a more earnest tone when she returned to the stage later in the telecast.

“I would love to tell you that this is the best moment of my life,” Swift said as she accepted her Album of the Year award.

“But I feel this happy when I finish a song or when I crack the code to a bridge that I love or when I’m shooting a music video or when I’m rehearsing with my dancers or my band or getting ready to go to Tokyo to play a show. For me, the award is the work ….”

Except for hip-hop superstar Jay-Z — who received the honorary Dr. Dre Global Impact Award — all nine of the other Grammys presented during the rain-soaked telecast at Crypto.com Arena (formerly the Staples Center) were won by women artists.

Women also fared well in the categories awarded during Sunday’s online-only Grammy Premiere Ceremony, which was held at the adjacent Peacock Theater prior to the telecast.

Lainey Wilson won for Best Country Album and the sister duo Larkin Poe for Best Contemporary Blues Album. Jessie Montgomery became the first Black woman in Grammy history to win the Best Contemporary Classical Composition award.

Colombian singer-songwriter Karol G becoming the first female artist to win the Best Música Urbana Album award. South African singer Tyla won the Best African Music Performance award in the category’s inaugural year.

“I never thought I’d say I won a Grammy at 22 years old,” Tyla said as she accepted the award. “Thank you to the Recording Academy for this category. It’s so important.”

Karol G, 32, was similarly awed by her own win.

“Hi everybody, my name is Karol G. I am from Medellín, Colombia. This is my first time at the Grammys and this is my first time holding my own Grammy,” she said. “I’m super happy, I’m super nervous, I’m super excited to be in front of so many legends that I admire and respect. This is such a beautiful thing. My album has given me the best memories in my life, my whole life!”

Molly Tuttle, who hosted a segment of the Premiere Ceremony, won the Best Bluegrass Album award with her band Golden Highway, a two-woman, two-man group.

Brandy Clark entered Sunday’s awards fete with a career total of 17 Grammy nominations and no wins — a record for any country-music artist. She walked away with a Best Americana Performance victory for her wrenching “Dear Insecurity,” which features a guest vocal by Brandi Carlile and lyrics that take aim at self-doubt.

Icelandic singer Laufey, 23, won the Best Pop Vocal Performance award during the pre-telecast, then played cello during Billy Joel’s first Grammy performance in 30 years. She was understandably shocked to win in her category over the heavily favored Bruce Springsteen.

“I never, in a million years, thought that this would happen,” said Laufey, a social media phenomenon whose full name is Laufey Lin Jónsdóttir.

These were the first Grammy victories for Laufey, Clark, Wilson, Larkin Poe, Montgomery, Tyla and Colombian native G, whose full name is Carolina Giraldo Navarro.

In addition, Elaine Martone won the award for Producer of the Year, Classical. Former First Lady Michelle Obama won the Best Audiobook, Narration and Storytelling award for “The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times.”

But it was the major category wins by women artists that drew the most attention — and raised some key questions.

Was this historic night a tectonic shift? A fluke? Or a temporary course correction that will be followed by a return to business as usual — that is, male artists dominating — at next year’s Grammy Awards?

The answers are, for now, impossible to determine with any accuracy.

Accurately predicting how the Recording Academy’s 12,000 or so Grammy voters will cast their ballots has always been a tricky proposition at best. And the odds for a sweep by women artists in the top categories this year was immeasurably boosted by the fact that Jon Batiste was the only male artist nominated this year in the top categories. He went home empty-handed.

The day’s biggest victor was singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers, who had three wins as a member of the all-women trio boygenius and another for her collaboration with neo-R&B maverick SZA, who went home with three awards Sunday. Monet also won three Grammys, while Swift, Eilish and Cyrus had two wins apiece.

SZA, whose real name is Solana Rowe, had a field-leading nine nominations. The fact that she did not triumph in any of the major categories, which were all won by white women, is a reminder that the Grammys still have a lot of work to do.

Ballots are cast by the 12,000 voting members of the Recording Academy, under whose auspices the Grammys are presented. In the event’s 66-year history, only three Black women artists have ever won the Album of the Year award — the most recent being Lauryn Hill’s “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” in 1999. Beyoncé, whose four wins last year gave her a record 32 Grammy victories, has never won for Album of the Year or Record of the Year, despite multiple nominations in those categories.

SZA’s acclaimed “SOS” was critically acclaimed and topped the national album charts for 10 weeks in 2023, longer than any other album released last year. But like Beyonce, who had a field-leading nine nominations last year and won in four lesser categories, SZA did not win for Album, Record or Song of the Year.

That feeling of déja vu made the speech by Jay-Z, Beyoncé’s husband, all the more pertinent.

“I don’t want to embarrass this young lady, but she has more Grammys than everybody and never won Album of the Year,” he said, as Beyoncé watched from the audience.

“So, even by your own metrics, that doesn’t work. Think about that: The most Grammys — never won Album of the Year. That doesn’t work. Some of you are going to go home and feel like you’ve been robbed. Some of you may get robbed. Some of you don’t belong in the category.

He then added: “When I get nervous, I tell the truth.”

Jay-Z acknowledged that musical preferences — and Grammy votes — are subjective. But he stressed: “I’m just saying we just want you to get it right. We love y’all. We want y’all to get it right, at least get it close to right.”

That is what Harvey Mason, Jr. — the CEO of the Recording Academy — has been striving for since he began heading the nonprofit organization in 2021. Under his leadership, the academy has increased its membership of people of color from 24 to 38 percent and has nearly reached its goal of adding 2,500 new female voting members by 2025.

“We always need to make sure we are bringing active and relevant voters,” Mason said in a recent San Diego Union-Tribune interview.

“Maybe in the past, there have been things we didn’t (focus on) as much, as far as the outcomes of our show. You always want to have the right voters voting in a knowledgeable way with an understanding of the genres.”

As in previous years, Sunday’s telecast included fewer awards presentations (10) than it did performances (15). And while some were negligible — take a bow, U2, Travis Scott and Payboi Carti — women artists accounted for all the highlights.

One of the most memorable performances — and the most moving — came from Joni Mitchell, who won her 10th Grammy Sunday and who, at 80, was making her debut appearance on the show. Her much older-but-wiser rendition of her 1966 classic, “Both Sides Now,” took on new meaning as she sang in a voice deepened and frayed by time, yet filled with tear-inducing gravitas.

Nearly as stirring was the duet by Tracy Chapman and a suitably deferential Luke Combs. Their collaboration on Chapman’s 1988 gem, “Fast Car” — which became a 2023 county hit for longtime fan Combs — was stunning for its melodic grace and heartfelt lyrics about confronting hardships and striving for a better life.

Other strong performances were delivered by Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, and — during the show’s extended in memoriam segment — Annie Lennox, whose rendition of the Prince-penned Sinnead O’Connor hit “Nothing Compares 2 U” was deeply felt and beautifully sung.

“Artists for ceasefire, peace in the world,” Lennox said at the conclusion of “Nothing.” She was the only performer of the night to make a political statement of any kind.

With her two wins Sunday, Eilish now has nine Grammy victories to her credit, including a 2019 Album of the Year trophy. But speaking in the backstage media room after the telecast concluded, she stressed how meaningful her latest awards are to her.

“As a woman it feels a lot of the time like you’re not being seen, and I feel that this makes me feel very seen,” said Eilish, 22, of her two Grammy wins for “What Was I Made For?”

“Sometimes it feels really good to have somebody tell you, ‘Good job’ and the smallest thing goes a long way,” she continued.

“When we made (the song) I felt like, ‘I don’t know how much this is going to translate.’ I felt kind of outside the box, and I felt isolated in my own world. I really was in a period of my life where I did not feel seen at all. And the way people reacted when it came out, I was completely blown away by the way I felt understood.”

Sunday’s awards ceremony came six years after then-Recording Academy CEO Neil Portnow created a furor by saying women needed to “step up” if they wanted to be better represented with Grammy nominations and wins. That was in 2018, when Lorde — that year’s only woman nominee for Album of the Year — was not given a performance slot on the telecast.

Phoebe Bridgers, Sunday’s biggest Grammy victor with four wins, had Portnow in mind when she and the other two members of boygenius were asked backstage about the role of women in rock music.

“I have something to say about women,” Bridgers replied “The ex-president of the Recording Academy, Neil Portnow, said that if women want to be nominated and win Grammys they should ‘step up.’ He’s also being accused of sexual violence. And to him I’d like to say I know you’re not dead yet, but when you are, rot in piss.”

Bridgers then evaluated her scathing riposte to Portnow: “That’s pretty rock ‘n’ roll.”

george.varga@sduniontribune.com