A new round of scandalous history around the dismissal of the head of the Deborah Dugan Music Prize.
There is just over a day left before the Grammy’s main music world award ceremony — the names of the winners will be announced tomorrow night in Los Angeles. But how exactly the ceremony will take place is still unknown. So, today it became known that Taylor Swift, whose name was nominated in three categories, removed her musical number from the program.
According to insiders, the singer was supposed to perform the feminist anthem “Man”, the text of which contains the following lines: “I’m so tired of running / as fast as I can / I wonder if I would get there faster / if I were a man.” According to the organizers of the award and Taylor herself, these words could provoke another wave of accusations of sexism, launched by the former head of the award Deborah Dugan.
The first woman president in the history of the National Academy of Art and Recording Techniques was dismissed on 16 January. According to Variety, the reason for the dismissal of Deborah was “abuse of power.” One of the assistants, Claudie Little, sued Dugan, who accused the leader of “improper behavior, verbal abuse and abuse.” It is also reported that Deborah was preparing a “coup” at the Academy and was blackmailing the head of the human resources department and financial services.
The other day, Deborah herself made a statement. She made a series of accusations against the Academy, alleging that while working for the Grammy, she had suffered from sexual harassment and gender discrimination more than once. In addition, she found out that she was paid half as much as the previous leaders of the Academy. Dugan also said that former Grammy leader Neil Portnov raped one of the nominees. Allegedly, this was the real reason why his contract was not renewed.
At this revelation Dugan did not end. She said that the Academy often faked the results of the vote. Members of the selective committees promote shortlisted artists’ awards, which initially did not even make it into the top 20 nominee candidates. So, last year, the song No Tears Left To Cry, recorded by Ariana Grande, was to be among the nominees in the Song of the Year category. But at the last moment she was replaced by another – “necessary” – track, and the singer’s obvious hit was left without a nomination.