Former President of the Recording Academy exposed the Grammys’ rigged process, for snubbing artists that rightfully received proper votes from The Academy and replaced by artists that people in The Academy have a personal relationship to. Two artists listed were Ed Sheeran and Ariana Grande.

Deborah Dugan was the President and Chief Executive Officer of The Recording Academy from August 1, 2019 to January 16, 2020. The Recording Academy consists of people that are responsible for the Grammys and decide the nominations. Within the Academy, is a group known as The Board that has the final say. Deborah Dugan filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and attached a 46 page paper dictating allegations that she believes were responsible for her termination.

Dugan alleges that she was sexually harassed by the Recording Academy’s lawyer and she claims that her termination was because she was exposing the ‘Boys Club’ that’s basically powerful men getting away with whatever they feel like doing.

The allegations are very thorough so I’m not going to discuss that because I know my audience is more interested in learning about the snubbing that goes on behind the scenes for their favorite artists. You can read Dugan’s full story here.

I do wish Dugan the best. Powerful men will continue to silence and scare women in the industry from coming out and exposing them. We need to support their resilience and continue supporting the #MeToo movement.

In one part of the documents that Dugan brought up, she mentions the voting process and how it was biased.

This is generally how the Academy votes:

1. They pick 20 nominations per category.

2. The board members vote from 1-20, 1 being the highest consideration for the category and 20 being the lowest.

3. These nominations then get narrowed down to the chosen 5 to 8, depending on the category.

This voting process is actually stated in the documents which I will show you in a moment.

She goes onto say that “the Board uses these committees as an opportunity to push forward artists with whom they have relationships.”

Note that a Board member doesn’t have to have a direct relationship with the artist directly, but rather their management. You know, they can get creative with the connections. Basically, if a Board member has a great relationship with Camila Cabello’s manager and they want to further push Cabello’s career, the Board member will vote to have her in the top spot despite her originally ranking in the bottom. Now I’m not saying this is what happened with Camila’s nominations (or am I?), but I am just using her as an example.

Dugan says this biased process led to a song that was “ranked at the bottom of the initial 20-artist list to end up receiving nominations.”

Excerpt from the court documents

Big yikes.

It proceeds to get worst because the Board starts adding artists in that didn’t even get voted on in the first place during the creation of the 20-artist list. This happened due to their personal or business relationships that members of the Board have with the artist or their management. Dugan says that for the 2020 Grammys, 30 artists were added to the possible nomination list without being selected by the members of the Academy to begin with.

She continues her exposing marathon by saying that the Board has even chosen artists that were possibly about to get nominated, to sit in on the committee that was voting for the category that they were likely to be nominated in.

If the artist is sitting right in front of me and I’m about to vote on whether to nominate their ass or not, of course my decision is gonna be impacted by them staring at me!

Due to this corruption in the nomination process, an artist that ranked 18 out of 20 in the consideration process, ended up with a nomination for the 2019 “Song of the Year” category. This artist—that Dugan does not name—sat in on the committee while they were choosing the “Song of the Year” nominees. This artist also has a relationship to a member of the Board.

Excerpt from the court documents

I know we’re all wondering who was nominated for the 2019 “Song of the Year” category, so I’m here to tell you.

And the following are the songs.

Who do we think was the artist that sat in on the nomination process? Take your guesses down in the comments below because I really don’t know.

What I’ll tell you though is because of this rigged process, Ed Sheeran and Ariana Grande—two artists that have had an immensely successful and impactful 2019—were not nominated despite being rightfully chosen by the members of the Academy and ranking high in the 20-artist list.

This is also something that Dugan exposes.

Excerpt from the court documents

She cites the voting process for the Grammys as “ripe with corruption” and states that “trustees that have conflict of interest on particular artists that are nominated, but more importantly there are even artists that are nominated that are in the room.”

And that’s the backstory of everything she exposed.

Let’s talk.

Everything she’s saying is true. Like she said above, this process could be fair, but there are people on the Board that would rather choose corruption. Also, just because she didn’t say it, doesn’t mean that the Board rigs the categories based on connection alone. No no, this connection can also be bought. In other words, there’s something in it for them and the Board member can get paid.

The Grammys are known as this prestigious and important show because it was supposed to be different than the other award shows that allow management to literally buy awards. That’s why they were held to such a standard. Now? I don’t even know. It seems like with this public scandal, they’re going to do a cleanse out of the Academy and the Board in hopes of regaining trust from the audience.

I don’t know if you guys remember, but I did a whole post exposing award shows and showcasing the different types of award shows, the nomination process, and how the winners are chosen. In that post, I spoke about the Grammys and said the following.

I was ahead of my time, damn. Put some respeccc on my name! My tea sure ages well.

But anyways, the only thing I’d clarify is that the committee being corrupt isn’t as “dark side” as I made it seem. Rereading that part in 2020, makes it seem like they were putting guns to their head and threatening the lives of the Board. Maybe that has happened though lmao idk.

However, what I said still stands. When I said that you need to have “some serious power,” it means you can’t be some random. Although, a random celebrity could have a personal or business relationship to the Board. It’s honestly all about connections.

I think that’s all there is to this topic.

Hope you guys enjoyed this post and I hope it was informative.

Comment down below any thoughts or questions you have! You can comment anonymously so take advantage of that. I will be replying back!

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