After BTS, Stray Kids snubs Grammys over New Asian Pop category

The Recording Academy has had a busy week, and it is not going well. Less than a day after confirming its contested new Asian pop category, the Grammys lost another contender: Stray Kids will not take part in next year's awards.

JYP Entertainment, the group's agency, confirmed to the BBC on Friday that Stray Kids submitted no music for the 69th Grammy Awards. "Stray Kids did not submit for the Grammys," the agency said. The move puts the group alongside BTS, which pulled out earlier in protest against the same category.

The timing was pointed. On Thursday, the Recording Academy, which organises the Grammys, announced that its Best Asian Pop Music Performance award would go ahead.

A front-runner steps aside

Stray Kids would have been one of the obvious names to watch for the new award. The eight-member group has reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 nine times, a record among groups bettered only by The Beatles. All eight members are also voting members of the Recording Academy, a sign of how firmly the group has established itself in the US industry.

How the controversy unfolded

The Academy unveiled the category in June, presenting it as a way to honour contemporary Asian popular music, including K-pop, J-pop and C-pop. Critics took a different view. To them, placing these genres in a separate, region-based category looked discriminatory and risked pushing Asian artists to the margins of the Grammys' main awards.

The objection rested on how far K-pop has travelled. It now commands a global audience and a major place in the international music business, so critics said a separate label was increasingly hard to defend. They argued that instead of widening recognition, the category could confine Asian acts to a regional corner rather than letting them compete as equals in the established genre and general categories.

BTS made its position clear in July. In an online post signed by all seven members, the group said it would not submit music for consideration in any Grammy category. The members said they hoped music could be heard and loved on its own merits, not sorted by region or language.

As the backlash grew, the Academy suggested it might revise the category. It ultimately chose to keep it, saying on Thursday that support for the award had outweighed opposition.

Who might follow?

With two of K-pop's biggest acts and strongest potential contenders now out, the question is whether others will join them.

ATEEZ's Hongjoong has already spoken about the issue. In a recent interview with US magazine Variety, he said he sympathised with BTS's stance and was still weighing his own. Speaking for himself, he said the full reasons might never be clear to outsiders, but he found himself at least partly in agreement with the decision BTS made.