The Grammys are coming this weekend, and it looks like it’s still bothering The Weeknd.
If you recall, The Weeknd was this years’ biggest snubbed artist. His song Blinding Lights has broken many records, such as longest Billboard Hot 100 Top 10 run. The songs success and album success also landed him the Super Bowl half time show last month.
From the Grammy Committee stand point…..they weren’t “wrong” in what happened. Although it was one of the biggest songs of the year, it was a tough field. Lets start off with the facts. Fact is, they tried to initially submit the song in the R&B genre, which would have given him a bigger chance of winning because R&B acts lately haven’t been as big as him. The committee rerouted him to the POP category, because the song is a POP song. In those categories, he is up against POP Stars like Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Dua Lipa, and new comer Doja Cat. They all had pretty big years, and in the POP world, The Weeknd isn’t really the biggest guy out there.
Moving on. A lot of Blinding Lights’ chart success was due to multiple factors, one being a pandemic and another being that he had a lot of radio play. While streams and sales were solid, they weren’t enough to keep him in the Top 10. I looked at a random week in July 2020 and he wasn’t even in Spotify’s Top 10.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, The Weeknd stated he would boycott the awards from now on. “Because of the secret committees,” the Weeknd said, “I will no longer allow my label to submit my music to the Grammys.”
Some would see this statement as him standing up to a long standing, flawed system. For me, he is throwing a temper tantrum. He’s in the music industry to express his creativity and bring his art to life. The awards and accolades are merely bonus. To have this much attitude over a predominately white award show is an example of him feeling as if he was entitled to the awards. Crazy thing about it, he didn’t mention his displeasure for also being snubbed at the NAACP Image Awards.
At the end of the day, you win some, you lose some…but you live to fight another day.