Grammys CEO on SZA’s Chances of Winning Top Album, Drake’s Return and Latin Music Snub: “There’s Still More Work for Us to Do”

History has shown that rap and R&B artists will dominate in Grammy nominations but never take home the coveted prize of album of the year.

Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, Jay-Z, Drake, Kanye West, Mariah Carey and John Legend are some of the acts who have played the role before — big Grammy contender, but top award loser.

This year, that artist is SZA, who scored nine Grammy nominations Friday, including album of the year for the record-breaking, critically acclaimed SOS. But, what are her real chances of winning the award with competition like Jon Batiste and Taylor Swift?

“I really will give you an interesting perspective here, but I think [SZA] has a 1/8 chance,” Grammys CEO Harvey Mason jr. tells The Hollywood Reporter with a laugh (the category has eight nominees). 

“No, I mean, I think she has a chance because she had an incredible record,” he continues. “The nominees this year all made such great music. It’s really going to come down to the second round of voting [and] this second listen [and] who moves the voters and who makes an impact with the voters. And I do believe she has a shot.”

Battling SZA, Swift (Midnights) and Batiste (World Music Radio) for the top prize are Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts, Miley Cyrus’ Endless Summer Vacation, Lana Del Rey’s Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, boygenius’ the record and Janelle Monáe’s The Age of Pleasure.

“It’s a competitive landscape,” Mason jr. adds. “There’s a lot of extremely talented artists with big projects, so we’ll see. It’s hard to predict where the votes will end up.”

In an interview with THR, the Grammys chief talks about the female-dominated presence amongst this year’s nominees, the lack of Latin and country music nominees in the top categories and Drake’s return to the awards after years away.

The top three categories are dominated by female acts, except for Jon Batiste. How does that feel?

Well, it is major. When you talk about the women nominees this year, you start to get a sense of how that’s going to impact the next generation of music people and music-makers who say, “I look kind of like that person.” Or maybe “I sing like that person” or “I play a little bit like that other person; I can do that” or “I can be in music” or maybe “I can be on the Grammy stage.” So for me, this gives us such a great opportunity to do the work we do, fighting for the rights of music people and advocating for people for music, community and education.

Within those top three categories we’re also seeing women behind-the-scenes recognized, including producers and engineers like Catherine Marks, Laura Sisk, Sarah Tudzin and Yáng Tan…

That gets me emotional. That’s really, really a lot of why we’re doing the work that we’re doing — so that we can make our industry more equitable, more representative of what’s going on in the world. And so a lot of these awards hopefully showcase that, and that’s some of the work that we’ve done over the last three years to try and be more in alignment with that and make sure our membership is aligned with that, and our staff and our processes and everything that we’re doing is pointing towards more diversity and more relevance and more representation, and just trying to get these things right.

This will be the third Grammys without the screening review committees that caused some controversy in the past. How do you feel things are going without those committees?

I’m really excited about it and I believe we’re seeing really good outcomes — this year’s in line with that thinking. The committees served a purpose before we had re-qualified our membership, before we had invited some more diverse members, some younger members, some people from around the globe, some different genre memberships. So those committees had some purpose. But now the time has changed, our membership has changed, the way we vote has changed; 10-3 [voting] has come into place, which really allows members who are specifically actively working in different fields to concentrate on those fields. (10-3 allows voters to have 10 votes across three different genre fields based on the genres in which they work).

That’s almost like creating enough expertise where people aren’t going to just vote for their favorite names across the ballot. So I love where we are. We continue to have work to do with our membership and with our processes, and we’ll keep doing that. And we evolve every year. We will take in new proposals from our members and from the music community to say, “How can we change this? How can we do that better?” And we’ll do that again this year.

Taylor Swift is nominated for album of the year and could be the first performer to win it four times. What do you think of that stat?

I think that goes to show you just how talented she is and what exceptionally high quality music she’s making; what a run she’s had as an artist, as a songwriter, as a talent. I am not sure if she’ll win or if she won’t. The voters will ultimately decide. But she definitely has a shot based on the excellence, based on what she’s been doing and the output she’s had over the last few years.

I was surprised there was no Latin representation in the top four categories. And then I was even more surprised that the best música urbana album only had three nominees, which means there were less than 40 submissions in the category. Also, the two biggest Latin hits of the year — “Un x100to” by Grupo Frontera and Bad Bunny and “Ella Baila Sola” by Eslabón Armado and Peso Pluma — were not submitted at all for nominations. Do you think there’s a disconnect between the Latin music community and the Grammys?

Well, first, I’ll say I was also very surprised by that because Latin had such a big year, a dominant year with the genre, and there was so much great music coming out. There’s still more work for us to do in the Latin voting community and getting our Latin membership [together]. We want to continue to work on that. Same with country music. We have to make sure we are reaching into the genre communities from Latin and country and make sure we have relevant voters. And if we don’t have relevant voters, we’re not going to have the right outputs in the right representation in those genres. And they’re both extremely important genres. They both had very, very big years this year, so those numbers did surprise me.

It’s something we’re going to have to pay really close attention to and dig back into the membership and look back and make sure that we have people who know that music and know the genres, because that’s the only way we get the right outcomes is if we get people that can vote in the fields. Especially with 10-3, you’re only voting in the fields that you work in or you have some expertise in. So with 10-3, you got to get enough really, really experienced voters, experienced music makers to evaluate that music.

Drake submitted this year after a few years of not participating in the Grammys. Were you excited to see that?

I’m not sure where the submission came from, whether it was 21 [Savage] or Drake or whatever. So I guess I won’t address him specifically, but I will say for me it’s really important that I never want to see somebody not participate in the process. I love to see all of our artists — big, small, indie, major, rap, country, rock — I want everybody to be part of what we’re doing at the Academy because the awards are one-step of our process in a year-round process. So when artists submit and they’re nominated or they’re not nominated and they win or they don’t win, it’s all part of the music community that we’re trying to uplift and we’re trying to shine a light. And we’re trying to use these opportunities and utilize the Academy and utilize the platform and use the music to make a difference in the next generation of music creators lives and be able to monetize their music or be able to have a healthy music ecosystem to work in.

So when people submit and they’re part of the process, it only helps each other. It helps the community, helps the industry. So yes, I want to see everybody involved. I want to see everybody submit. I wish everybody could win. I wish nobody felt like they got snubbed. I wish nobody was angry when they left, because at the end of the day, this process, the show, the awards, us coming together as a community and the industry does nothing but help each other and help this whole business of music thrive and succeed.

The nominees for best rock song are cool and interesting. There’s Olivia Rodrigo and boygenius, but also The Rolling Stones, Queens of The Stone Age and Foo Fighters — so many age groups represented here. What did you think of that?

That’s a great sign of the diversity of different people that are making that type of music and the acceptance by our voters to just listen to the music as opposed to saying, “Wait a minute, that’s not a rock artist, or that’s not a rap artist. It’s just an artist making art and making music.” That’s what excites me about it — the voters really listened and did the work to pay attention. Do they like it? Does it mean something to them? Is it excellent in their eyes? If so, check the box.

A musician filed a lawsuit this week claiming former Grammys CEO Neil Portnow sexually assaulted her and that the Recording Academy failed to investigate the incident. What’s your response to this?

We put out a statement. And honestly, I’m just going to leave it at that. (The Academy’s statement: “We continue to believe the claims to be without merit and intend to vigorously defend the Academy in this lawsuit.”)

Was there anything that you didn’t get a chance to comment on that you’d like to?

I’ve said it before and maybe it’s worth restating: Somebody is generally upset at the end of the day when the nominations come out and that’s disappointing. And it’s hard for us, because we want everybody to feel good. We want everybody to be included and we want to be representing as many great creators as possible. But there’s a certain amount of slots in each category, and it’s not saying that there aren’t other incredible amazing records being created — it’s just these are the ones that happened to resonate in this particular year with this particular group of voters.