The 60th Annual Grammy Awards, 2018, where the focus was on sexual harassment and gender equality hosted just one woman winner. Alssiea Cara was the only female winning a major award on Sunday’s show. The 21-year-old Canadian singer-songwriter bagged Grammys for 'Best New Artist', one of four top categories. American musician Bruno Mars picked up the Song, Record and Album of the Year - completing the major four categories. Social media users called out 2018 Grammys, the biggest music award ceremony for its lack of gender diversity. In no time, the netizens started trending #GrammysSoMale to express their dissatisfaction for putting up a male-dominated show.

Not just the big four awards but 2018 Grammys failed to acknowledge female musicians in other segments as well.  American singer Kesha gave an impressive performance on Praying, her first single  after years of long legal battle with music producer Dr. Luke, who she accused of sexual assault. The emotional performance was applauded and was called by many the highlight of the night as well as a significant contributor to the powerful #MeToo movement (worldwide campaign against sexual harassment and assault). However, the song lost out to Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You in the Best Pop Solo Performance category.

The most awaited award ceremony this year chose to the honour the song about a woman’s body by Ed Sheeran over Kesha’s song on overcoming sexual abuse Praying, Lady Gaga’s Million Reasons, Kelly Clarkson’s Love So Soft and Pink’s What About Us. Ironical, is it not?

 

If pseudo 'women-empowering' claims of Grammys 2018 was not clear enough by their nominations and results, it definitely did by Recording Academy President Neil Portnow's response which he presented to female musicians as an advice. A Time report quotes him saying, “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.”

Pink, who was nominated for Best Pop Solo Performance took to social media and slammed his comments, "Women in music don't need to 'step up' - women have been stepping since the beginning of time. Stepping up, and also stepping aside. Women OWNED music this year. They've been KILLING IT. And every year before this".

American singer-songwriter SZA who was most-nominated woman in this year’s Grammys in in five different categories sadly had to go home empty handed. 21-year-old New Zealander, Lorde, the only female musician nominated for the Album of the Year, lost to Bruno Mars who bagged the Grammys for 24K Magic.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 30, 2018 06:31 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).