Amid the Grammy snub for K-pop groups including BTS, Stray Kids, and NewJeans, foreign media also expressed their surprise at this exclusion.
The Recording Academy announced the 66th Grammy Awards nominees on the 11th KST through a live stream. Despite active performances from October 2022 to September 2023, popular groups like BTS, NewJeans, FIFTY FIFTY, and Stray Kids were unexpectedly left off the nomination list.
Particularly, BTS, who had been nominated for the past three consecutive years, faced a letdown this year. Despite constraints on group activities due to their military enlistment, BTS members continued their individual activities and achieved significant results on the Billboard charts with their solo songs, heightening the disappointment among fans.
Billboard’s Hot 100 chart-listing girl group NewJeans was anticipated by prestigious pop music media such as Rolling Stone to be nominated for the “Best New Artist” category. However, the act was also not included on the list.
In addition, K-pop giants like Stray Kids, who topped the Billboard 200 with two albums this year, TWICE, who successfully held a U.S. stadium concert, and FIFTY FIFTY, who achieved impressive results on the Hot 100 with “Cupid,” also didn’t make the list of nominees.
Following the announcement of the nominees, USA Today commented, “Even with 94 categories, the Grammy Awards somehow manage to overlook some obvious contenders.” One of them was K-pop; as they noted, “Outside of BTS, the K-pop world produced numerous critically appreciated and commercially flourishing releases, including albums from Seventeen, Tomorrow X Together and NewJeans. If the Grammys are going to ignore the genre in general categories, maybe it’s time for even more specialty adds.”
AP News also mentioned, “The eligibility window ran from Oct. 1, 2022, through Sept. 15, 2023, which means quite a few K-pop heavyweights could have been nominated: TOMORROW X TOGETHER (TXT), Stray Kids and the Y2K-loving girl group NewJeans. But they weren’t.”
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