Neil Portnow, the Recording Academy’s president, waded into the #GrammysSoMale controversy, saying women “need to step up to the plate” if they want to win Grammys.
Only one woman was presented with an award during Sunday night’s telecast, Alessia Cara, who took home best new artist, KPNX reported, sparking the #GrammysSoMale online movement.
While the spirit of empowerment was reflected among the artists, with many women wearing white roses in solidarity with the victims of sexual abuse, many felt this it wasn’t reflected in the awards themselves.
Portnow rebutted: “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,” per Variety.
“[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.”
During the show, Kesha delivered a heartfelt performance of her single “Praying” with Cindi Lauper, while Album of the Year nominee Lorde walked around with a poem by Jenny Holzer emblazoned across the back of her dress.
Entertainment Weekly noted that Lorde was the only Album of the Year nominee in the male dominated category who was not asked to perform a solo at the awards show.
When asked about this, Grammys producer Ken Ehrlich said that “these shows are always a matter of choices, and we know we have a box and the box gets full,” per USA Today.
“She [Lorde] had a great album, but there's no way we can really deal with everybody. Overall, we did the best we can to make sure it's representative of our show.”
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.