On the 29th of last month, BTS announced through their official social media account under the names of all seven members that they would not submit any music for the 69th Grammy Awards, scheduled to take place in February next year. The move was seen by industry insiders as an indirect criticism of the Recording Academy’s newly established category, “Best Asian Pop Music Performance.”
The new category targets K-pop, J-pop, C-pop, and other forms of Asian pop music, and requires songs to contain at least one Asian language in their lyrics to be eligible for nomination. However, the fact that the category was announced only around two months before the submission ∂єα∂line, combined with the fact that the main tracks on BTS’ new studio album ARIRANG are primarily performed in English, sparked controversy: “Was this rule deliberately created to target BTS?”
BTS expressed their hope that “music can be heard and loved as music itself, rather than being divided by region or language.” Meanwhile, Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. explained that the purpose of establishing this category is simply to honor the growth and diversity of Asian pop music, with absolutely no intention of discriminating against or treating anyone unfairly.
However, contrary to this statement, a series of actions by the GRAMMYs and its community since the controversy emerged seem to suggest otherwise, further fueling speculation that BTS was in fact being singled out!
Specifically, the Reddit community dedicated to the GRAMMYs, r/grammys, recently made a decision that left many ARMYs outraged. The subreddit announced that because of the allegedly overwhelming number of posts and comments related to BTS, all posts specifically about the group would be removed, while all discussions would have to be consolidated into a single “megathread” — essentially, a separate space dedicated exclusively to discussions about BTS.
Although r/grammys is a community created and managed by Reddit users and is not officially affiliated with or representative of the Recording Academy, the move was nevertheless seen by many as soмєтнing that had “grown out of” or was “following the lead of” the way the GRAMMYs itself has recently treated BTS, especially after the group announced its boycott of the awards at the end of last month.
Just days after BTS’ announcement, some fans noticed that two of the group’s iconic performances, “Dynamite” and “Butter,” from the 2021 and 2022 Grammy Awards, respectively, had disappeared from the official GRAMMYs website. Not only that, older articles published by Billboard and Rolling Stone that once contained links to the original videos on the GRAMMYs’ YouTube channel no longer led to the content as they previously had.
The GRAMMYs later explained that the removal of the videos had nothing to do with BTS’ decision to boycott the awards, but was instead due to the expiration of licensing agreements. Licenses for performances typically remain valid for around one year or even less. However, this explanation was quickly challenged by ARMYs. Fans pointed out that if this was truly “standard practice,” the aforementioned videos should have disappeared years ago rather than at such a sensitive time. They also claimed to have evidence showing that the GRAMMYs had removed only two BTS videos from the website’s feed around this period.
Ultimately, however, fans argued that this only made the GRAMMYs appear even more bitter, doing nothing to calm the situation and instead intensifying the public backlash. ARMYs declared: “Even if you remove it from your website, you cannot erase history” and “ART HAS NO ALIENS.” The public reaction to r/grammys’ latest announcement was much the same.
Rather than calming the situation, r/grammys’ decision further reinforced what many fans perceived as racial discrimination, unfair treatment, and retaliation against BTS by the GRAMMYs. The fandom’s reaction quickly spread, with fans leaving sarcastic comments such as:
- So this is the ‘Best Asian Pop Performance’ category of this subreddit?
- LMAOO they really think a megathread is gonna stop ARMY. @RecordingAcad bestie, wanna share your experience to your lil minions?
- Do we have to speak in an ‘Asian way’ now to be allowed to comment?
- BTS went from Grammy segregation to Reddit segregation. No matter how many walls they make, we will break it nicely
- They’re triggered bcuz they expected smth completely different from BTS. they thought BTS would go along with that kind of segregation and ŕäċïṩṃ and that they could get a sh1t ton of views off BTS. we all need to keep talking about this
- The people at the Grammys are so spineless in every way! Now they are just trying to silence everyone!
- They follow the example of the Recording Academy who introduced a new “Best Asian Pop” category. But idiots you CANNOT silence us
- BTS is really a threat to the music industry. creating a separate category specifically for bts seems like the only way to prevent their domination
- They wanna silence us but nice try. But sadly, We are well spread on every other platform to keep the convo going & whack u more. BTW @RecordingAcad can u pls come here on twt. Give us the chance to whack u in our own playground as well. Why u scared
