Lorde is not clapping back with negativity, even after the hotly-debated Grammys turnout on Sunday (Jan. 28).
The 60th Annual Grammy Awards presented a disproportionate ratio of male to female winners, resulting in backlash and the initiation of the trending Twitter hashtag, #GrammysSoMale. And the numbers didn’t lie. Despite that, many found a way to turn #GrammysSoMale into anger and lack of opportunistic motion on behalf of the ladies of music, including the Recording Academy President, Neil Portnow.
The 21-year-old singer-songwriter Lorde was the only woman to be nominated for the largest award of the night, Album of the Year, although her album lost to Bruno Mars’ 24k Magic. Additionally, she was the only AOTY nominee not invited to perform. During the male-dominated show, only 11 of the 84 awards were given to women and only one female award was televised (“Best New Artist” went to Alessia Cara). In the face of it all, Lorde felt compelled to give the women of music some praise.
Yesterday, (Jan. 30) the singer reserved a full-page ad in the New Zealand Herald to give shoutouts, reflect on her Grammys experience, and to say her thanks. Underneath small doodles of celebrity names and micro exchanges, she began her letter with “Oh, Hi there!” in large font.
She prefaced her letter with, “I’m writing this from New York City. Angelo and I sat in Madison Square Garden last night and saw a lot of crazy and wonderful things.” The singer then mentioned that the letter’s intent was to express gratitude for the embrace of her last album, Melodrama, and for “believing in female musicians.”
Full-page letter from @lorde in today’s @nzherald: ‘Thank you, also, for believing in female musicians’ pic.twitter.com/Z86VXCCpvl
— Shayne Currie (@ShayneCurrieNZH) January 30, 2018
The letter is undoubtedly a response to the general feeling of award disparity at the award show. But in a very Lorde fashion, the singer was graceful about the show’s outcome.