“It only makes sense”: Grammy Awards Break a Record No One Thought was Possible
The ladies were ladying at the Grammy Awards 2024 as they swept the golden trophy from every single category in the main telecast for the first time in the history of the award show. This comes as a big win, despite the Oscar snub towards women this award season.
To think that not long ago in 2018, only one woman won a solo award (Alessia Cara for Best New Artist), and the former chairman of the Grammys, Neil Portnow, infamously said that women need to “step up” their game to get recognition at the prestigious award, to now have an award night that was dominated by women, Grammys have come a long way.
Women Dominate All Aspects Of The Grammy This Year
Phoebe Bridgers and her bandmates, the three-time Grammy winner Boygenius, probably had the best slap across the face comeback for Neil Portnow’s infamous “step up” comment that made women across the globe roll their eyes so far back, they could see their own grey matter. In a matter-of-fact manner, Bridgers says to the pressroom on Sunday night,
“I have something to say about women and rock music. The ex-president of the Recording Academy (Portnow) said that if a woman wanted to be nominated they should ‘step up’ … I’d like to say to him, I know you’re not dead yet, but when you are, rot in piss.”
Also Read: After Dominating the Golden Globes, Barbie and Oppenheimer Stand as Grammy Winners
Fans were ecstatic, to say the least. When X account Talk of the Charts posted the update of women dominating all the televised categories at the Grammys, emotional responses overflowed the social media platform. Check out some of the reactions below.
https://twitter.com/ryano5130/status/1754631096682090784?s=20
HERstory 😍😭🥳🏆🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
— ladidai (@ladidaix) 💋 see linkinbyeo (@ladidaix) February 5, 2024
And this is why the views were the highest in four years 😌👏
— Ḱ@яεη 🌊🦈 (@britneyxcyrus) February 5, 2024
a historic moment! It’s great to see recognition for the talented female artists at the GRAMMYs 👏❤️❤️❤️
— Julia 🍂🤎 (@hottie_becca) February 5, 2024
— RockLey (@ObsessedSmiler) February 5, 2024
Apart from participation trophies for Finneas O’Connell and Jack Antonoff with Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift, respectively, all nine televised awards were won by women. The Big Four Awards of the night were won by Miss Taylor Swift for Midnights in Album of the Year, who, by the way, made a record by winning four Album of the Year awards, the highest in Grammy history. Previously, Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder, and Paul Simon had three wins in this category.
Billie Eilish deservingly won Song of the Year for What Was I Made For, whereas Miley Cyrus had her breakthrough moment in her two-decade-long career with her first ever Grammy for Flowers, which won the Record of the Year (and Best Pop Solo Performance). Victoria Monét won Best New Artist and Best R&B Album for Jaguar II.
Karol G won the Música Urbana Album and made history by being the first woman ever to win this category. She commented on how she wants to show the girls, “we are made for big and great things.” Leading nominee SZA, who entered the show with nine nominations, won a third of her categories and became emotional with her win. It was truly a historic moment for women in the industry and quite a retort to the generation-long patriarchal dominance that women faced in Hollywood.
Grammys Removed Gendered Categories, When Is It The Turn For The Oscars?
The Grammys were much more progressive when it came to bending the gender rules and seeing beyond the established societal binaries. In 2012, the award show removed all the gendered categories, allowing men and women to compete against each other in the same category. However, the Oscars are still in the Roman Empire era, where men and women cannot compete against each other in the same category. It would have to be in the Best Male Actor or Best Female Actor categories at the time of the vote.
Also Read: Miley Cyrus Says She Forgot to Wear Underwear at Grammys 2024
This approach goes back to the time of the inception of the Academy Awards in 1929 when society was still plagued by strict gender roles and women recently won over the right to vote. Equal rights in the workplace were still a distant dream. However, now that the landscape is changing so much and society is trying to make so much progress, it seems remarkably regressive to still hold on to segregation awards on the basis of gender. Elliot Page, the transgender Oscar nominee of last year, told EW how he hoped for a change and wished Hollywood would “start moving beyond that degree of binary thinking.”
One can stream the Grammys on Paramount+ Essential.