What Does the BTS Fallout Mean For the Grammys’ New Asian Pop Award?
Billboard ·
The Grammys set out to highlight Asian music, only to wind up with controversy. What is the best path forward?
On Sept. 3, native Chinese singer Miist found herself on a Zoom call with more than 80 other artists, executives and stakeholders from the Asian music community, as well as trustees and governors from the Recording Academy. She was there to explain her point of view on the recent introduction of the Grammy category for best Asian pop music performance. The new category, one of five to be introduced for 2027, had come under fire after K-pop juggernaut BTS alluded to its introduction as the reason the group would not be submitting its music, including monster comeback album ARIRANG , for consideration at the forthcoming Grammy Awards — prompting the academy to call for a review process.
“We all understand this new category needs to evolve, but everybody mostly had the attitude of, ‘We’re here to help,’ ” Miist says of the meeting, called A Conversation With Leaders in Asian Music, one of several that the academy convened following the BTS blowback. “Asians make up over 50% of the world population. If the Grammys represent the best in the world, shouldn’t Asia be represented?”
Backlash was not what Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. had in mind when introducing the new category. Upon the announcement in June, he said he was excited to recognize the impact being made by Asian performers on music around the world. “As Asian pop’s influence has continued to grow within our process, our members and trustees felt this was the right moment to create a category that more accurately reflects the genre’s scale, artistry and global impact,” he wrote in a statement about the new category, which would be classified under the pop field. “Asian pop music is one of the most significant and sustained forces in the global music industry. Its impact is well-established, and it continues to grow and shape music culture around the world.”
The category — designed to honor “excellence in Asian pop music performances originating from or widely recognized within Asian markets, including but not limited to K-pop, J-pop and C-pop, with meaningful use of one or more Asian languages” — had been under discussion for years, as the academy sought a way to acknowledge the global rise and wild popularity of K-pop acts in particular. And its addition felt even more urgent after the record-setting success of animated film Kpop Demon Hunters and its breakout single, “Golden,” in 2025, when the song spent eight weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 . “As we move forward,” Mason added, “we can continue to explore additional ways of recognizing even more creators within the broader Asian music community.”
That enthusiasm didn’t last. Six weeks after the category’s announcement, the members of BTS — the most popular K-pop group in the world and one of the most significant Asian pop bands in history — wrote in coordinated social media posts that they would withhold their music from the 2027 Grammys. “I hope that music can be heard and loved for what it is, rather than being divided by region or language,” the members each wrote individually. “Thank you to ARMY and everyone who is always with us.”
In recent years, the Recording Academy has sought to broaden the Grammys’ scope and become more inclusive, annually inviting thousands of new members into its ranks and touting the diversity of those new classes; of the 4,000 invited in 2026, for example, the academy said that 50% were under the age of 40, 43% were women and 55% were people of color. That has manifested in new categories, too: In 2023, the academy introduced a new best African music performance award a year after Rema and Selena Gomez’s “Calm Down” spent 10 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard ’s Radio Songs chart; this year, following Bad Bunny’s album of the year victory, it also introduced best Latin song to honor songwriting in Spanish.
In each instance, the academy has said that the aim was to find a way to honor artists from around the world in an increasingly global music business. But those efforts haven’t always been welcomed by those they are intended to boost. As Latin categories have been introduced in recent decades (from best Latin pop album in 1984 to best música urbana album in 2022), some have suggested that region-specific categories pigeonhole artists and gatekeep them from the general field categories of album, song and record of the year and best new artist.
That appears to be BTS’ argument. (HYBE, the group’s label, declined to comment for this story.) No one is entitled to a Grammy, and BTS is in good company alongside artists including The Beach Boys, Cat Stevens and Snoop Dogg, to name a few, who have not yet received a competitive one. They’re not alone in withholding their work from consideration as protest, either: Drake, The Weeknd and Morgan Wallen have all done so in recent years for various reasons.
But since BTS helped usher in the global K-pop explosion in 2019, the year the group first reached the Hot 100’s top 10, just two K-pop artists have been nominated in the marquee categories — Rosé for record and song of the year for “APT.,” her collaboration with Grammy darling Bruno Mars, and HUNTR/X’s EJAE among the “Golden” writers nominated for song of the year, both in 2026 — and both lost. BTS received a nomination for album of the year for its appearance on Coldplay’s “My Universe,” though that song’s parent album, Music of the Spheres , also lost. Across all Grammy categories, BTS has received five nominations and lost each one; HUNTR/X is the only K-pop act to have won any Grammys, after “Golden” won best song written for visual media this year.
Still, many believe that any representation is welcome, even if the Asian pop category itself needs work. (Miist said that “95% of the engagement was positive” after she wrote an op-ed for Billboard about why she would be entering the category despite the backlash.) “I understand what BTS is saying, but I don’t think that having a category, much like everybody else has a category for their region of the world, deters us from achieving greatness,” says Sean Miyashiro, founder and CEO of Asian music company 88rising. “I would assume that if an Asian artist made a really good jazz album or made a really good pop album or eventually makes the album of the year, that the Grammys see and acknowledge that.”
The issue that the Grammys often have to contend with in introducing new categories is garnering enough submissions to make a category viable, sources say, as well as with a voting community that is not particularly fluent in K-pop or other Asian genres. That could mean that some acts find themselves confined to region-specific categories while the voting bloc gets up to speed. But, several sources add, that will also get artists in the door in the first place.
Latin music artists, then, are providing the blueprint for what is possible for rising global regions. In 2019, Rosalía became the first artist who sings primarily in Spanish to be nominated for best new artist; this year, Bad Bunny’s DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS became the first Spanish-language album to win album of the year. “It’s been a journey to get here,” says Rebeca León, who managed Rosalía at the time of her nomination and currently works with Ozuna and more. “Things have been happening in that direction for a long time. Since the democratization of music with Spotify and YouTube and Apple Music, that barrier that was there is gone.”
As of press time, the academy was still debating any changes following its listening sessions and review of its new category. Miist, for her part, suggests that the name of the category was part of the problem, and that it should be reconfigured to emphasize language as a defining feature of the category; BTS, for example, sings primarily, though not exclusively, in English on ARIRANG . But the fact that the Grammys have been widening their scope has generally been seen as a net positive in recent years.
“It’s like the Mecca, right? You haven’t really become a global superstar until you’re mainstream in the U.S.,” León says. “So I think having that institution, which is synonymous with music achievement, [recognize it] is so important because it puts it on the global stage in a real way, and they deserve it. And the communities — Latin communities, Asian communities — they show up. They buy tickets. They’re online. They’re on Twitter. They’re on TikTok. They’re supporting. [These artists] deserve to have a space where they’re recognized.”
This story appears in the Oct. 3, 2026, issue of Billboard.