In 2018, Neil Portnow, the president and CEO of the Recording Academy—the music industry body responsible for the Grammy Awards—was asked by reporters after the ceremony why just 17 of the evening’s 86 awards had gone to women. Portnow’s response?
“It has to begin with women,” he said, before suggesting that female artists needed to “step up.” (Thankfully, just a few months later, it was announced that Portnow would step down, in part due to those comments.)
In the years since, the Grammys have made progress in fits and starts: In 2021, women swept the top four awards, while in 2024, every single televised award was presented to a female artist. But Sunday night struck me as one of the most fun Grammy ceremonies I’d ever watched—and I quickly realized that could be chalked up to the fact that, even if they didn’t take home all the prizes they might have deserved, the past year in music was dominated by women. What finally shone through at this year’s Grammys was the sense that the artists being honored weren’t those who played by all the rules, or adhered to an industry mold to achieve success: Instead, the night’s true winners were whose visions were the most uncompromising.
Take Doechii, who took home the best-rap-album prize for the surrealist “swamp princess” genius of her mixtape Alligator Bites Never Heal, becoming only the third female artist in history to win the accolade, after Lauryn Hill and Cardi B. “I know there is some Black girl out there watching me right now, and I want to tell you: You can do it. Anything is possible,” she said in her acceptance speech. “Don’t allow anybody to project any stereotypes on you, tell you that you can’t be here, that you’re too dark, that you’re not smart enough, that you’re too dramatic, you’re too loud. You are exactly who you need to be… and I am a testimony.” As if to confirm that, she blew half of the night’s other performers out of the water with an electrifying rendition of “Denial Is a River,” in which she rapped while doing the splits, threw shapes with an army of dancers in matching Thom Browne uniforms, and even invited Issa Rae onstage.
