Back in March, The Weeknd pledged to boycott The Grammys due to "secret committees" involved in the nomination process, after not getting a single nomination this year despite having one of 2020's bestselling albums (After Hours).
Last Friday (30 April) the Recording Academy announced that the controversial "secret committees" would be eliminated from its process going forward. The anonymous nomination committees have decided many of the Grammy nominees for decades, including the "Big Four" which consists of Album, Song, Record of the Year and Best New Artist.
Speaking to the New York Times earlier today (3 May), The Weeknd, real name Abel Tesfaye, confirmed his boycott of the Grammys still stands. He said, "Even though I won’t be submitting my music, the Grammys’ recent admission of corruption will hopefully be a positive move for the future of this plagued award and give the artist community the respect it deserves with a transparent voting process."
In an interview with Variety over the weekend, Grammys interim president/CEO Harvey Mason Jr. spoke briefly about how much Tesfaye's boycott played in the elimination decision, "The discussions about possibly removing nominations review started long ago and the real work of putting together a subcommittee to get this right started about eight or nine months ago, so, this isn’t a direct “reaction” to that situation. That said, any time an artist, especially one of that stature, calls our process into question or thinks something is unfair… the Academy is of course going to be affected by that, and want to work to make things better."
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