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Now in his sixth year at the helm of the Grammy Awards, Harvey Mason Jr.’s tenure has been anything but easy. Amid the pandemic, last year’s wildfires in the Grammys’ home base of Los Angeles, the ugly ouster of his predecessor Deborah Dugan, and several controversies around winners and nominees — some valid, some less so — he has worked tirelessly to update the Record Academy’s membership and voters and all of its operations, bring estranged artists back into the fold, and has moved quickly and decisively when problems have arisen.
Perhaps most significantly, he has mobilized the Grammys’ membership, staff, and its charitable partner MusiCares to help music people in need, between distributing over $25 million in pandemic relief and, along with fundraising during last year’s Grammys, a total of $24 million toward wildfire relief.
“We’ve given out pretty much all the money over this last year to music people who needed help — that’s a massive stat,” he says. “I’m so proud of the show and proud of what our music community does when it comes together, and last year was a perfect example of that.”
Sunday’s show, taking place this Sunday at the Grammys’ longtime home of the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, will see Kendrick Lamar, Lady Gaga and Bad Bunny competing for the biggest awards, and performances from Sabrina Carpenter and all eight best new artist nominees, with many more performances expected to be announced this week. It will also mark the Grammys’ final show in a 50-year run with CBS, the Academy has signed a new $500 million, 10-year deal with Disney to bring the ceremony to ABC, Disney+ and Hulu.
Variety spoke with Mason — himself a veteran songwriter, producer and musician with Jennifer Hudson, Toni Braxton, Lionel Richie and many others — late Friday about the show, the Disney deal, Trevor Noah’s sixth and final turn as host, the ongoing challenge of ensuring the Academy and the show reflect the music world as it is, and the latest controversy: a surprisingly low turnout for country music in the main awards.
How’s it going so far?
It’s going so well, I’m really enjoying this year and the fact that there’s not an external factor like fires or a pandemic — well, hopefully I don’t jinx it, but so far it’s going really well and the show is shaping up to be incredible: great artists, a great range of genres and experiences, young people, icons, superstars. It feels really good.
Are a lot more performer announcements coming?
Yeah, how they decide to roll it out is over my pay grade, but it’s a great lineup of artists this year.
It seems like they’re being announced later than usual. Was that intentional?
I think that’s just the function of how the world works now, the attention economy and trying to make sure that things are announced closer to the show — “Oh, the performance by this artist is going to happen this week,” instead of announcing weeks ago. A lot of it is driven by our artist community, and we tend to announce when they ask.
It’s your last year with CBS — maybe not bad timing! — how do you feel about moving over to Disney and ABC next year?
We’ve definitely had an incredible run with CBS — 50 years, and we’ve done great things together. This will be our last show together and we’re going to celebrate that partnership. But we’re also excited about the future, and I think what ABC-Disney brings to the partnership is a fresh perspective, and obviously the reach of their platform and their ecosystem. It’s exciting and an opportunity to do more storytelling, more content around music and music people. So we’re thankful for our old partnership and excited about the new one.
Which other platforms are you referring to?
They just have such a wide ecosystem. It’s not just ABC, it’s Disney Plus, Hulu, ESPN, the parks, the cruise ships. They’re everywhere, and they place such an importance on creators and creativity and art and music. It’s a culture that’s exciting to us and an opportunity to do more and reach more people.
Why is Trevor stepping down?
I don’t want to speculate, honestly, on why he’s stepping down. But what I will say is that he’s been an amazing host for us for six years. He’s a bit of a unicorn because to me he’s the perfect mix of funny and smart and entertaining, and quick on his feet. But the thing that I have really loved about him over the last six years is that you can tell he’s a music fan. When he gets on the stage, he’s geeking out on the performers and singing and dancing along with them. I can say for sure the show wouldn’t be where we are now without Trevor’s input.
Is Ben Winston going to stay on?
Yes.
Looking bigger picture at the membership, over the last six years you’ve… I don’t want to say upgraded —
I like to say “evolved”!
Do you feel like it’s where it needs to be at this moment, in terms of representation?
At the moment, yes, it is feeling very well balanced. But the moment is changing, and it continues to change every week, every month, all year long, and we’re going to keep an eye on how we can make sure we’re being reflective of what’s going on in music, so from time to time, we’ll need to add more members in different genres — maybe there’ll be a category member, producer, or an engineer that we’ll need more of. And that’s work that we do literally 365 days of the year.
And as membership classes come up, we do the work, we reach into different communities, and we invite people to be a part of our membership because there’s nothing more important than our members. It’s never going to be exact, it’s never going to be perfect. But we will absolutely be paying attention to it and adjusting as we need to.
Do you think that adjustments will be made in light of what was a surprisingly low representation for country music in the big categories this year? It’s almost red meat for the right wing that country, which is so popular, was closed out of a lot of the bigger categories. It’s what people used to say about hip-hop.
Yeah, and I really hope it doesn’t turn into that type of dialogue based around politics or right or left, because it really is not that; it’s really about what the voters choose to vote for every given year, and it is cyclical. There have been other times where there’s been different representation. We will be looking into all our genre categories and the voters associated with them and making sure they are balanced, like we do every year. And after this year, we’ll do it again.
It’s generally not based on who gets nominated, though, to tell you the truth. It’s based on, do we have a representative voting body of the different genres? And provided that we have the right percentage and ratios, then we’ll be in the right spot. We can’t tell what those people will vote for, but we can make sure that we have a representative voting body.
Do you have any thoughts on why it turned out that way this year? In 2018, the year that both Kendrick Lamar and Jay-Z were big nominees, it felt like they split the vote. I know we’re talking about nominees here, but do you feel like something like that might have happened? It must be really difficult to pinpoint because it’s such a long process from the voting body to the end result.
It is, and it’s hard to predict why we get the results that we do. All I know is it’s heartbreaking for me when somebody’s not represented, whether that’s an individual artist or a genre, because I know how hard people work in this business. I want us to make sure we’re getting it right, so we continue to do everything we can as an organization, along with our elected leaders, to make sure we’re positioning our voters to make the best decisions they can.
How do you determine whether a genre or region is fairly represented?
Again, we look at the number of voters and make sure that it matches the amount of music that’s being created in that specific genre or region or that age group. There’s so many different ways of cross-sectioning it, but we have to make sure we have enough qualified voters representing genres not even just in the general field, but in the specific genre categories.
I think the question you’re trying to get to is, [do a year’s results] change how we recruit? I would say it’s more towards the underpinning of the process, which is the number of members that we have that represent the genre, as opposed to being specifically around outcomes.
Do you still have time to produce and make music?
Yes! I am getting in the studio late at night and whenever I have free time. I think staying in the studio and working with other writers and producers and artists keeps my eye on what’s going on in the industry and how we can make sure we’re serving our members. Me being a producer and a writer has given me unique access to the community because I know so many of the people that we represent artist-wise and member-wise. So when we have an issue or somebody has a complaint or a suggestion, I’ll oftentimes just reach out and call them directly and say, hey, I’d love to hear from you. So I’m thankful that I’m able to still do that. If I wasn’t making music, I would just dry up and shrivel away.
English (US) ·