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[Billboard] #BTS’s Grammy Decision: Was the Band Getting Ahead of Another Awards Show Sidelining? (Critic’s Take) "The restraint is telling as BTS have long expressed their admiration and respect for the Grammys as an institution. This is not an artist reacting to a snub, but rather BTS recognizing the importance of making a statement before History Repeats Itself." "Many say the Western industry has a habit of building an annex when confronted with music it cannot ignore and has not made room for, rather than widening the room itself." "In July 2019, the VMAs announced a new category, Best K-pop, arriving right after BTS had rewritten YouTube’s record books without a single nomination to show for it. Their stats put them squarely alongside artists like Eminem, Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande, all of whom already had multiple wins at the VMAs in long-standing categories. When BTS’s recognition finally came, it arrived in a new category — one many saw as being built specifically to hold them." "Other award shows made their own version of that same call. Since 2020, similar fan-focused award shows including the AMAs, the EMAs, and iHeartRadio Music Awards have added K-pop Categories, as have the data-driven BBMAs." "For their part, BTS did not opt out of this system but publicly committed to it for years as it was seen as a generous response to the growing impact of the K-pop Music Industry." "But the Recording Academy's newly added 'Best Asian Pop Performance Category' confused those close to these industries. Remove the “Asian” geography factor and the criteria could describe any pop category. Even that description leaves unresolved whether the Indian subcontinent, the SEA countries and the Middle East are also included as it specifically spotlights K-pop, J-pop and C-pop whose music have little in common sonically except belonging to East Asia." "The Recording Academy has always stressed that Grammy Awards are not based on commercial success. Still, an artist posting numbers like #BTS that rival that of Grammy's American favorites, they should not be still asking to be let in; they’re already here and should be allowed to take up as much space as they’ve earned." "The language test is even trickier for this category, criteria that recordings “must feature meaningful use of one or more Asian languages,” and anything performed predominantly in English is explicitly ruled out. But that not a factor at all for BTS as they could've easily submitted 'Swim' for Pop Duo/Group, and album standouts such as “Hooligan,” “2.0,” “Aliens” and “Body to Body” for 'Asian Pop Performance' as they are all easily Grammy-worthy, and #BTS’s name recognition alone could have led to the Academy giving them their first gramophone trophy." "But they seemed to have withdrawn because the win was more than likely to confirm a premise that they have spent their entire careers disproving: that their music is a regional variant or an alternative to the mainstream rather than being part of general pop culture itself." #ArtHasNoAliens @RecordingAcad billboard.com/music/awards/b…