Grammy Chief Harvey Mason Jr. on Beyonce’s Big Country Nominations, the Beatles for Record of the Year, and the Problematic Best New Artist Category

variety.com:

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Being the head of the Recording Academy and the Grammy Awards is a very challenging job, and even one of the organization’s most joyful days of the year — the annual Grammy nominations — can be fraught with controversy and disappointment as well as happiness.

But every year, Grammy chief Harvey Mason Jr. gets on the line with journalists to talk about the year’s nominees and defend the process that he and the organization’s staff and members are continually transforming and evolving in order to reflect the year in music.

It’s an imperfect process — and one that Mason himself oversees but does not control — but there’s little question that the Grammys have become much more representative than they were 10 or 15 and especially 20 years ago.

Variety caught up with Mason about this year’s nominees. Even though the singles chart has been so male-dominated this year, the Grammys have another very female-centric list of nominees. This is a unique time for the Academy because of our voting membership — the makeup of that membership has changed and evolved so much, 66% of the voters are new.