A Bold Idea to Improve Grammy Voting (And Why You Shouldn't Hold Your Breath for It to Happen)

Being a Grammy voter might sound glamorous, but it's a lot of work if you do it right, or even close to right. That's because, in the first round of voting, the Recording Academy presents voting members with very long lists of titles and asks them to pick the five they think are most deserving of a nomination.

How long is “really long”? This year, voters had to wade through alphabetical lists of 780 entries for Record of the Year, 707 for album of the Year, 978 for Song of the Year and 323 for Best New Artist. And that's just the four major categories!

You can imagine how much time and mental effort it would take to pick your five favorites anything from a list of 978 candidates? If this task were less overwhelming, it seems likely that the quality of voting would go up – and that the percentage of voting members who completed it would go up. If voters were presented with a list of, say, 100 candidates, it would make a difficult task manageable, and perhaps even enjoyable. (This number could be raised a bit, to 125, 150 or 200, but of course the higher it goes, the less benefit it would have.)

My idea is to have a group of experienced, connected and fair minded people take the huge entry lists down and reduce them to a more reasonable length. The big hits will probably stay on the list, as will the non-hits that people on the panel talked about.

You might say, “Didn't he get kicked out of the Recording Academy by the Nominating Review Committees a few years ago — now you're talking about bringing them back?” Good call back to the judging panels, including the primary one that determined the finalists in the Big Four categories every year from the ceremony held in 1996 to the one held in 2021. Most Grammy watchers (myself included) were glad to see the panel disbanded , but an important distinction must be made: The academy had the review committee at the end of the process, after the members had voted and shortly before the nominations were announced.

Here's how it worked back then: Committee members picked their five favorites from the top 20 or 25 ranked voters. They were essentially second-guessing the voters, which always seemed elitist to me, as if their taste and judgment were superior to that of the voters. I suggest putting the committee at the front of the process. They won't second-guess anyone, but simply do a reality check by eliminating records, albums, songs, and artists that have little to no chance of being nominated but clog up the list.

And why am I saying you shouldn't hold your breath because this is actually happening? Many voting members like to see their entries on the list. If they were no longer seen, they might not see any point in renewing their status. Membership fees are $150 per year. If, say, 2,000 of the current 13,000 voting members left because they didn't see their names on the entry list, that's $300,000 in lost revenue each year for the Recording Academy. But do the Grammys really want people to vote so shallowly and motivated only by narrow self-interest?

It is not only the four major categories that have a large number of entries. A total of 33 categories on this year's Grammy ballot had 200 or more entries. Of those 33, 14 had 300 or more innings. In addition to the Big Four, the categories with 300+ entries are Best Music Video (637), Best World Music Performance (456), Best album, Non-Classical (456), Best Cover, Instrumental and Vocal (444), Best Jazz Performance (420), Best Instrumental Composition (395), Best American Roots Song (373), Best Alternative Music Performance (331), Best Pop Solo Performance (314) and Best American Roots Performance (310). These categories could also be a margin, either by this committee or by committees closer to these genres and fields of endeavor.

A minor point, but to avoid confusion, voters are tasked with selecting their five favorites in the four major categories, even though there are eight candidates in those categories. This small numerical difference doesn't matter, but presenting voting members with a logical mission does.