Since Harvey Mason Jr. became President and CEO of the Recording Academy five years ago, Academy membership has expanded, the Grammy telecasts have received good reviews, and the Grammys finally seem to be getting things right in the big categories (Beyonce, Bad Bunny.)
There have been some missteps as well. Mason’s tenure has been more good than bad, but we still have a wishlist of improvements we’d like to see.
Mason has worked on various projects, and also serves as CEO of MusiCares, but this report card focuses solely on the Grammy Awards, and how they’ve changed since Mason took over.
While Mason may not have been directly reponsible for all of the decisions we’re going to discuss, as Academy President and CEO, he ultimately gets the credit or the blame for it. Let’s grade the work Mason has done on several fronts since taking over.
This analysis is just one writer’s personal opinion. Feel free to share yours in the comments!
Mason officially became Recording Academy CEO in May 2021, though he had served in an interim role for a full year before that. We’re grading how things have changed since 2021.
Diversifying the Recording Academy: A-
For many years, the stereotype of the Grammy voter was an old, white man who prefers boring adult contemporary music. Mason has gone to great lengths to bring more qualified women, younger voters, and people of color into the Recording Academy.
It’s hard to argue with the results. Beyonce finally won Album of the Year. Kendrick Lamar won both Record and Song of the Year, something that rarely happened for rap songs in the past. Bad Bunny won Album of the Year for an album entirely in Spanish.
The new-look Academy seems more in tune with current music, and seems far more willing to reward non-white artists in the major categories.
The reason we’re not giving Mason an A+ on this issue is that we’re starting to hear some questions about whether these efforts have had unfortunate side effects. For instance, country music (and, to a lesser extent, rock music) is now pretty much ignored in the major categories.
The omission of outstanding country newcomers Ella Langley and Zach Top in last year’s Best New Artist category was particularly egregious.
The Grammys have shown they now have the ability to reward rap and Latin pop music in the big categories, which is a fantastic thing. But have they lost the ability to reward deserving country and rock music in those categories?
Billboard reports that only 1% of the new Academy voters added in the past year are from the country music genre. That’s a problem.
Langley is the most promising young country star to come along in years. If she doesn’t get a nomination for Record, Song, or Album of the Year in 2027, Mason will have some serious questions to answer about whether this new crop of voters is fairly evaluating all genres.
Quality of the Award Shows: B+
In general, the Grammys have been really good since Mason took over. The 2021 show, held when Mason was still interim CEO, and during covid protocols, was particularly noteworthy.
Trevor Noah hosted for the first time and guided an entertaining evening that leaned more heavily into live performances and culminated in Taylor Swift winning Album of the Year for Folklore.
Noah has proven to be one of the best Grammy hosts, and the Best New Artist medleys in recent years have been an excellent way to showcase new talent. Billboard notes that the Grammys have surpassed the MTV Video Music Awards to become the “cool” award show.
Much of the credit for the show itself goes to behind-the-scenes folks like producers Raj Kapoor, Ben Winston, and Jesse Collins, but Mason deserves to take plenty of credit for its success as well.
All that said… they still need to find a way to get more than 9 awards presented on-air during a 3.5-hour show. Contrary to what some observers seem to believe, fans do want to see their favorites making acceptance speeches.
Removing the Secret Review Committees: C
One of Mason’s first big decisions was to remove the secret review committees that for years had determined the nominees in most of the prominent categories.
That has been both a positive and a negative. It turns out the curation performed by these committees was a valuable service.
Without the committees, the Grammys feel more transparent. People no longer complain that the winners are being decided by a small group of people in some back room. In terms of public perception, removing the committees has been a big PR win.
But the side effect is that great, under-the-radar music is no longer being spotlighted in the Big Three categories of Record, Song, and Album of the Year. A certain level of commercial success and/or name recognition is now required to get featured there.
The Grammys used to be a place where artists that mainstream audiences had never heard of, like India.Arie, H.E.R., and Brandi Carlile, could become stars by achieving major nominations. Sturgill Simpson even got a surprising Album of the Year nod in 2017. That would simply never happen today.
Deserving artists like Americana singer Sierra Ferrell, who could’ve been nominated in those categories if the committees still existed, do not have the name recognition to score a nom from an academy of 15k people.
The Grammys were created to reward the quality of the music, rather than commercial success. That was literally one of its founding principles. Now, commercial success is the most important factor to getting into any of the big categories.
For those of us who care about the quality of the music being nominated, removing the committees has been a bad thing.
Grammy Category Management: B-
The addition of a Songwriter of the Year category seemed a bit out of left-field at the time, but it’s become a highly-respected award on par with Producer of the Year. Solid win there for the Academy.
There have been calls to add even more new categories, including one for K-Pop, but the Grammys have been wise to resist those voices. There are already too many categories, and K-Pop music easily fits into the existing Pop field. (UPDATE: K-Pop now does have its own category.)
Back in 2012, the Grammys drastically cut the number of categories from 109 to 78, part of an effort to make sure that winning a Grammy remains a “special honor.” But seemingly every year since, new categories have been added, and we’re back to a bloated number, with 96 total categories. That’s not ideal.
On another note, naming a special merit award after Dr. Dre was a highly questionable decision. Dre has an alleged history of physical abuse, including a 1991 no-contest plea for battery of a female journalist.
Dre admits, “I was out of my f—ing mind at the time. I f—ed up, I paid for it, I’m sorry for it, I apologize for it.” It’s good that he has owned up to his mistakes, but did the Recording Academy really need to name such a prestigious honor after someone with that history?
De-Alphabetizing the Nominee Lists: A+
Hard as it may be to believe, the Grammys had a minor problem for awhile with artists getting undeserved nominations if their name was an the beginning of the alphabetical list of contenders.
Apparently, some voters would start scanning the list, see a name they like, and vote for them, without looking over the full list of entries.
This was especially embarrassing in 2021 and 2022, when ’70s disco troupe Abba, 40 years after their heyday, got nominated in consecutive years for Record of the Year for tracks that virtually no one had ever heard of. It continued when Andre 3000 got nominated for Album of the Year in 2025 for a record of instrumental flute music.
Finally, in 2026, the Recording Academy decided to randomize the submission ballots so they were no longer in alphabetical order. This was an easy, logical fix for a problem that shouldn’t have existed in the first place.
Adjusting the Grammy Calendar: F
For years, the Grammys have had a calendar problem. Typically, the “Grammy year” used to end in September, meaning that albums that came out in the last three months of the year were not eligible for the Grammys until the following year.
We’ve been hoping that the Grammys will rectify this, and create an eligibility window that more logically aligns with the calendar year. But under Mason, they’ve done the opposite.
The Grammy year now ends on August 31. That means an artist can release a new album on September 1 – that’s still summer! – and it won’t be eligible for the next year’s Grammys. That defies all logic, and it confuses the hell out of the average fan.
We appreciate that it takes time to sort through and properly categorize the thousands of submissions each year. But the Grammys have got to do better. We now have songs and albums that are 17 months old winning awards because of this preposterous calendar.
The Grammy year should end on October 31. Spend the month of November reviewing and categorizing the entries. Hold the initial voting in the first two weeks of December. Reveal the nominees before Christmas, and send out the final ballot for voting in January. It’s doable.
Stability: A
The last few Grammy CEOs have endured their fair share of controversy. Michael Greene (1985-2002) and Neil Portnow (2002-2019) guided the Academy through lengthy, successful tenures, but both were ultimately ousted following sexual assault allegations.
Portnow had also received huge backlash for his infamous 2018 statement that female artists need to “step up” instead of complaining about being overlooked in major categories.
In 2019, Deborah Dugan became the first female Recording Academy CEO, but she only lasted six months after being accused of bullying an assistant. She fired back on her way out the door, accusing the Academy of corruption and conflicts of interest.
In the middle of this storm, Mason took over as interim CEO in February 2020, before officially assuming the permanent role in May 2021.
Mason’s scandal-free tenure has been a welcome break from what came before. He’s respected throughout the music world, handles himself well in interviews and onstage, and comes across as a calming and reassuring presence. His friendly, confident demeanor has been precisely what the organization needed.
The only minor controversies that have come up during Mason’s tenure were the Weeknd calling out the Grammys for getting snubbed for “Blinding Lights” in 2021, and a handful of other prominent artists, such as Drake, Zach Bryan, and Morgan Wallen, refusing to submit their music for Grammy consideration.
Overall Grade: B
Looking at the big picture, Harvey Mason, Jr. has done good work as Recording Academy CEO and President. The Grammys are better since he took over.
There’s still work to be done, so we can’t give him an A just yet. But he looks like the right man to continue guiding the Recording Academy into the future.
How do you think Mason has done as Recording Academy CEO?
Last Updated on June 16, 2026