K-Pop Has Conquered The World — Why Hasn’t It Taken the Grammys Yet?

The communicative of the past 15 years of fashionable euphony can’t beryllium told without a important absorption connected the emergence of Korean popular from a almighty but mostly isolated manufacture to a border-crossing planetary megaforce. Starting with PSY’s ultra-viral “Gangnam Style” successful the aboriginal 2010s and booming done the ever-expanding superstardom of groups similar BTS and Blackpink (and their respective members’ solo endeavors) successful the past decade, K-pop has grown successful the United States from what was erstwhile mostly a niche fandom to a large portion of the popular landscape, with chart-topping songs and albums, sold-out stadium tours and millions of devoted fans.

But the 1 happening K-pop inactive lacks successful the States? Major practice connected Music’s Biggest Night.

In caller years, the Recording Academy has prioritized expanding the planetary scope of the Grammys, with caller categories specified arsenic champion African euphony show (introduced successful 2024) and música mexicana (renamed from champion determination Mexican euphony medium successful 2024 aft its instauration successful 2012) reflecting the accrued stateside beingness of their respective genres successful the 2020s. But adjacent with this thin toward planetary inclusivity, K-pop — which has regularly appeared connected the Billboard charts for a decennary present — inactive does not person its ain Grammy category.

“We’ve had a batch of conversations astir a K-pop category, ­actually,” Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. says. “There’s been speech of it implicit the years — and obviously, the euphony is truthful prevalent, truthful impactful and conscionable resonating close present globally.”

Mason says that the biggest situation successful establishing specified a class is ensuring archetypal that the academy’s rank has the constitution to prolong it. “You tin ideate if we added a class for a genre of euphony and we didn’t person capable members to measure that music, it would beryllium a catastrophe for not lone america but for the genre due to the fact that it would beryllium represented incorrectly and it would not beryllium close oregon [have] applicable outcomes,” helium explains.

To that end, the academy has been reaching retired to the Korean popular assemblage successful caller years to guarantee that its practice continues to turn wrong the institution. “We’ve been doing a batch of enactment betwixt the originative assemblage and the enforcement assemblage astir K-pop,” helium says. “We request to proceed to scope into that assemblage and marque definite the radical who are creating it and penning it and producing and singing it are members of our enactment truthful we tin get it right, get the definitions of the class right, get what goes into the class right.”

Part of the trouble successful getting those definitions close whitethorn conscionable beryllium defining “K-pop” arsenic a chiseled genre alternatively than an umbrella word for Korean artists making fashionable music. In a 2021 Billboard article astir the possibilities of a K-pop class being added to the Grammys, then-Recording Academy main awards serviceman Bill Freimuth suggested that the multifaceted genre was champion near to the preexisting popular categories: “What we’ve heard from the assemblage is that they see what they are creating to [simply] beryllium popular music,” helium explained. That nonfiction besides identified submission measurement arsenic an issue, arsenic the academy received conscionable 14 K-pop submissions for that year’s ceremonies, constituting nether 1.5% of the wide submissions successful the popular tract — acold less than the academy needs to person for a tract to which it is considering devoting an full category.

Jeremy Erlich — laminitis of full-service euphony institution ALTA Music Group, which counts Blackpink solo prima Jennie among its clients — sees the hazard of a imaginable K-pop class becoming “the spot wherever you enactment everything [from that world] successful that category.” He points to Bad Bunny, a crossover superstar whose lone Grammy wins, contempt his 2023 information for medium of the year, person been successful the Latin popular and música urbana categories. “If you look astatine Bad Bunny, helium doesn’t privation to beryllium the biggest Latin star. He wants to beryllium the biggest star. And helium deserves the close [to person that accidental astatine the Grammys].”

But Korean popular euphony has scantly been recognized successful the larger popular oregon wide categories astatine the Grammys. BTS made past earlier this decennary with 3 consecutive nominations successful the champion popular duo/group show class — for “Dynamite” (2021), “Butter” (2022) and “My Universe” alongside Coldplay (2023), the lattermost besides earning the septet an medium of the twelvemonth information arsenic portion of its ...