The Grammys versus Weeknd drama is far from “over now.”
In his latest tweet lashing out at the Recording Academy, the singer is not backing down over being snubbed in Grammy nominations.
“Collaboratively planning a performance for weeks to not being invited? In my opinion zero nominations = you’re not invited!” The Weeknd, whose real name is Abel Tesfaye, tweeted on Wednesday. The tweet has racked up more than 105,000 likes as of Wednesday afternoon.
“You deserve a nomination more than Taylor,” reads one of the most upvoted replies. “She did nothing exceptional this year.”
The angry post, in which the 30-year-old equates receiving no Grammy nominations to not being invited to the virtual event, follows his Tuesday accusation that the coveted music industry awards “remain corrupt” and “owe me, my fans and the industry transparency.”
Despite his album “After Hours” having two number one hits — “Heartless” and “Blinding Lights” — The Weeknd, who is a three-time Grammy winner, was not nominated in any category this year, it was revealed after the nominations were announced Tuesday.
Recording Academy interim chief Harvey Mason Jr. told Variety that the omission wasn’t intentional, and who gets nominated “really just comes down to the voting body that decides. We have eight nomination slots to fill in, five in others, and the voters vote for their favorites. It’s really interesting, though.”
As to whether The Weeknd wasn’t nominated because the voting body couldn’t determine if the singer’s music should be categorized as pop or R&B, Mason responded that the committee will revise the process in the future — but not in response to the controversy with The Weeknd. “We look at it every year and make tweaks and revisions to the process; we did it this year, last year, we’ll do it next year. And I don’t think this calls it into question, honestly,” he said. “The process is there so we can continue to monitor excellence.”
