At the most recent ceremony in February, K-pop nominations broke through with HUNTR/X for “Golden” (from KPop Demon Hunters), Rosé for “APT.,” and KATSEYE for “Gabriela.” “APT.” pulled three nominations, including Record and Song of the Year, to become the most-nominated song by any Korean or K-pop artist in Grammy history, and the first time a K-pop lead artist landed a Big Four nomination. But the only act that left a winner that night was HUNTR/X, who took home for Best Song Written for Visual Media.
Retrospectively, with the new category only considering music that “meaningfully” uses of one or more Asian languages, songs like “Dynamite” or “APT.Apt,,” despite their undeniable crossover success, wouldn’t have qualified anyway.
The new category raises some interesting questions of how it will ultimately affect K-pop, J-pop, and C-pop representation at the award show moving forward. Perhaps an optimistic look at the category is that it will give room to Asian pop without pandering to music that simply draws inspiration from Asian culture. Netizens online, however, are pointing out that the category could, on the other hand, further silo K-pop and J-pop from “western” music and only serve to segregate them out of consideration in the general categories entirely. Only time will tell how things will shake out.
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