The ousted head of the Grammy Awards says that music’s biggest awards are tainted because of conflicts of interest that infect how certain songs and artists are nominated.
Nevertheless, Deborah Dugan said in an interview on ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’ that she plans to watch the Grammys this Sunday (Monday in the UAE).
Dugan was fired only months into her job as head of the Recording Academy and this week filed an explosive complaint with the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission that alleged she was sexually harassed and that the music organisation was a ‘boy’s club’ that favours friends. The academy, which has accused Dugan of misconduct, has said it has launched an investigation.
The personnel allegations had largely overshadowed Dugan’s charges about the integrity of the Grammys’ awards process — a huge problem given that its annual ceremony is set to be televised on CBS in three days.
“The system should be transparent and there are incidents of conflicts of interest that taint the results,” Dugan said on ABC.
Her complaint charged that a ‘secret committee’ that decides who gets Grammy nominations contains people with business and personal relationships with artists, and that they push their favourites ahead. The Grammy membership generally selects 20 potential nominees in categories and internal committees whittle those lists down to the five or seven eventual nominees.
She charged that an artist who was ranked 18th out of 20 in the initial song of the year process last year got a nomination and the artist was actually on the committee that decided the nominees. The same artist, who Dugan did not identify, is represented professionally by someone on the Recording Academy board.
Dugan suggested the conflict was behind two notable snubs in the category, of songs performed by Ariana Grande and Ed Sheeran, although there has been some question about whether Grande had submitted her indelible hit, ‘Thank U, Next’, for the award.
Brandi Carlile, Kendrick Lamar and Lady Gaga were among the nominees for this award, which was won by ‘This is America’, performed by Childish Gambino.
Dugan also said that nominations were handed out to songs or albums because the producer of the annual awards show wanted them to be performed on the show.
