The music man
Boss of Sony Music, new chair of tomorrow night’s Brit Awards and personal friend of Beyoncé —
IT’S the height of awards season and, in his Kensington High Street office, the man in charge of Britain’s biggest annual music ceremony is reflecting on America’s equivalent.Jason Iley, 48, is CEO and chairman of Sony Music UK, and the new chair of the Brit Awards, a post that rotates among record-label heads every three years. He’s just back from a flying visit to Los Angeles where, wearing both hats, he was a guest at the Grammys. While in town Iley attended legendary music man Clive Davis’s starstudded, exclusively VVIP party, the show’s traditional precursor.
“Mary J Blige performed and she was amazing,” enthuses Iley. “She did No More Drama, which is a record I worked on at Island years ago.”
The big winner on the night itself, taking home the main five awards, was Adele, who is signed to Sony outside the UK. The big “loser” was Beyoncé, another Sony artist. Even Adele thought it unfair that 25 beat Lemonade for album of the year. “What the f*** does [Beyoncé] have to do to win album of the year?” superfan Adele railed as commentators pointed out that a black artist last won that Grammy in 2008.
Ask for his view on this setting of one Sony artist against the other and the diplomatically minded 48-year-old demurs, citing personal and professional courtesies. For one thing, in the UK Adele is signed to indie label XL, not Sony, so he doesn’t think it his place to comment. For another, in 2013-14 he was President of Roc Nation Records in New York and counts founder Jay-Z and his wife Beyoncé as family friends. Mindful of that relationship, he would rather not be drawn on the ins and outs of who should have won what.
Fair enough. The politics in the upper echelons of the music industry are as
‘This year we refreshed the awards. There were a lot of opinions on diversity — I think that we listened’
intense as they are in, well, politics. But more generally, wearing neither hat, Iley says: “The reality is that both of them made amazing records. Lemonade is a very special record, and any other year would have won a Grammy. But this year Beyoncé was up against Adele, who also made an incredible record, and that sold millions of copies. She came back with a third album that was a difficult record for her, but it connected with the audience again.”
What, though, of the broader question? Last year, before Iley assumed the chairmanship, the Brits were embroiled in the #britssowhite controversy. Do the Grammys have a similar problem with race?
“It’s not really for me to comment on the Grammys Academy and how they vote,” begins Iley’s equally politic response. “But what we did this year was look at the Brits Academy, and refreshed it, as we do on a regular basis. And this year the diversity of the nominations is very broad. I don’t know what to say about the Grammys; all I can say is what we did, [which was to] try our best to adapt the Academy. There were a lot of opinions last year on diversit y, and I think we listened.”
“Adapting” and “refreshing” the Brits Academy (full disclosure: I’m a member) meant adding voters who were “much younger, and the percentage of BAME [members] has been increased. There were quite a lot of people who’d been on the Academy for a number of years, so we looked through the whole of the list and made sure that it was totally relevant to music… and the new generation.”