The 2018 Grammy awards were underwhelming to say the least. Some (including me) may say that Bruno Mars didn‰’t deserve to win the three biggest awards of the night, but something was surprisingly lackluster at these particular awards despite Mars‰’ accolades.

One of the many faults of the Grammys this year was the lack of female representation in those nominated, those who won among those nominations, and those who performed. One of the more questionable things being that among all of the best album nominees, all of the artists were asked to perform except Lorde, the only female artist in that category. Of the 8 awards presented during the show, the only award given to a woman was Alessia Cara in the Best New Artist category. It seems a bit out of touch to neglect women in the year focused on the #MeToo movement and the gatekeeping done by men in the entertainment industry. The Grammys have historically been an institution that values more traditional white-centric music. So, it comes as no surprise that in this pursuit they disregard some of the most talented artists making music today. Kesha backed up by incredible music industry talents gave a memorable performance in solidarity with the movement shedding light on the sexual abuse and harassment in the entertainment industry.

One of the artists heavily neglected by Grammy wins was SZA. SZA had arguably the best album of the year, in my opinion unparalleled by some of the music giants who released albums and yet she didn‰’t take home a single award for all 5 of her nominations. Her performance of “Broken Clocks‰” was one of the best of the night and every song on Ctrl is an undeniable anthem for every moody teenager and beyond.

Although the Grammys this year had these deeper subtexts, I think this year in mainstream music was somewhat lackluster, none of the best albums even nominated were particularly spectacular and for Bruno Mars to sweep the top 3 categories it really says that either this was the year of Bruno Mars, the grammy board refuses to acknowledge artists are actually talented, or that something is happening to the music industry.

In my opinion it remains to be that the Grammys does not want to accept that black artists have come into further mainstream popularity and have dominated the music industry in the past few years. If “Lemonade‰” cannot even win a Grammy when it was so much obviously better than Adele‰’s album, who can?

It has been long time acknowledged that the way the Grammys operates excludes so many incredibly talented artists but it brings forth the extremely evident concept that something big needs to change in those who call the shots in not only the entertainment industry, but every industry and institution that marginalizes women and people of color.