Grammy President, Neil Portnow defends lack of female winners

The 2018 GRAMMYs has come and gone, without many female winners to show for it.  

Alessia Cara, who won Best New Artist, was the only woman to be presented with an award during the live show on Sunday night, but according to Recording Academy President Neil Portnow, the onus is on female artists to “step up” to the plate. 

“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 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” he told reporters in the GRAMMY press room. 

He added that 10-time GRAMMY winner Taylor Swift was “kind of off cycle” this year. “Hopefully we’ll see her next year.”