When called out for the lack of female winners at the 2018 Grammys — the only televised win for a female artist was Alessia Cara's best new artist trophy — Recording Academy President Neil Portnow told Entertainment Tonight, "It has to begin with … women who have the creativity in their hearts and souls, who want to be musicians, who want to be engineers, producers, and want to be part of the industry on the executive level. [They need] to step up, because I think they would be welcome."
He added, "I don't have personal experience of those kinds of brick walls that you face, but I think it's upon us — us as an industry — to make the welcome mat very obvious, breeding opportunities for all people who want to be creative and paying it forward and creating that next generation of artists." He also noted that Swift, who's previously won 10 Grammys, was "kind of off cycle [this year] … Hopefully we'll see her next year."
Grammy Awards Executive Producer Ken Ehrlich sidestepped a question about Lorde's absence from the stage. "It's not for me to talk about. I produce the TV show … I don't know if it was a mistake. These shows are a matter of choices. We have a box and it gets full. She had a great album. There's no way we can really deal with everybody."
Sure, but this show was almost four hours long. You couldn't throw "Green Light" a bone?