He told women ‘step up’; now he’s stepping down
Neil Portnow, who sparked protest with remark, will leave helm of Recording Academy in 2019.
Earlier this year, when women protested the dearth of female winners at this year’s Grammy Awards, Recording Academy President and Chief Executive Neil Portnow responded that the music industry was open to more diversity but that women had to “step up.”
It was not a popular answer and on Thursday, the Recording Academy announced that Portnow would be stepping down. His current contract, which ends in July 2019, will not be renewed.
The news follows months of criticism leveled at Portnow and the academy over those comments and came after the Grammys celebrated its 60th anniversary. Initially, the nominees for the 2018 Grammys were hailed as a progressive move forward, as they honored many R&B and hip-hop acts in the major categories.
Yet the narrative quickly changed after January’s ceremony. Of the nine awards handed out during the televised portion of the Grammys, only one went to a solo female; meanwhile, a USC study released around the same time highlighted that the awards have been far from diverse in the major categories.
“There’s an overall stewardship issue with Neil Portnow in this position,” Britney Spears’ manager, Lou Taylor, told The Times on Thursday. “We’re not seeing the evolution of the Recording Academy come into to-
day’s time, and that’s not just with the female market. It’s people of color and people who identify as LGBTQ.”
Thursday’s announcement made no reference to the #GrammySoMale controversy that went viral after a preponderance of nominations and awards were bestowed on male recipients, continuing a trend that has long characterized the music industry and which ignited this year after the emergence of the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements.
Portnow had earlier apologized via a statement: “Regrettably, I used two words, ‘step up,’ that, when taken out of context, do not convey my beliefs and the point I was trying to make.”
After the intense backlash, many felt Portnow’s departure was inevitable.
“The people in power have been a bottleneck for change,” said Andreea Magdalina, the founder of shesaid.so, a networking and advocacy group for women in the music industry. “By bringing someone else on board, maybe the process of voting and how the winners are selected will change as well. Having allies in power will have a domino effect.”
Still, before these controversies, Portnow had long been credited as a stabilizing force for the Recording Academy after his predecessor, Michael Greene, resigned amid allegations of harassment and mismanagement of charitable funds.
“Since taking the helm in 2002, Neil has been instrumental in evolving the Recording Academy to address the needs of our creative community in a changing music landscape,” said John Poppo, the academy’s board chair.
“From critically important music advocacy initiatives and financial assistance for our music community, to the music education and preservation programs of the Grammy Museum and Grammy Music Education Coalition, Neil has not only advanced the academy’s mission, he’s extended its reach and impact.”
“I’m saddened,” said the show’s longtime executive producer, Ken Ehrlich, on Thursday. “We’ve had 15 years of a pretty unique and remarkable relationship between the network, the academy and my company. I don’t know if those things come along that often. He will be missed.”
Portnow more recently came under fire after an accusation by a former academy executive that he’d misdirected funds from the group’s philanthropic wing, MusiCares, to help pay the added expenses incurred by holding the Grammy ceremony and ancillary activities in New York this year, rather than Los Angeles, in observance of the organization’s 60th anniversary celebration.
Portnow and the academy have denied any misuse of MusiCares funds, and the academy’s board of trustees praised his leadership in the statement announcing his decision to end his 16-year tenure at the top.
Before becoming president, Portnow was on the Recording Academy’s board of trustees; on his watch, the organization established the Grammy Museum, strengthened its voice in Washington, D.C., and expanded MusiCares into a multimillion-dollar charity.
Portnow also signed a 10year deal with CBS to keep the Grammy Awards on that network through 2026 and is credited with building up the academy’s finances and brand — but the controversy about female inclusion at the Grammys and elsewhere in the music industry has continued to roll on.
Portnow told the board last week that he would not seek an extension of his current contract, which expires in about 14 months. He couched the decision as part of a long-held plan to craft “a thoughtful, well-planned and collegial transition” whenever he decided to exit the post.
Portnow took over the reins at the academy in wake of a controversy surrounding his predecessor, Greene, who came under fire after a series of stories in The Times showed Greene to be the highest paid executive of a nonprofit organization in the country, with figures indicating that only about 10% of money raised for MusiCares ultimately going to needy musicians for whom it had been raised.
“I’ll be working with our board to put the various elements in place that will ensure transparency, best practices, and the academy’s ability to find the very best, brightest and qualified leadership to take us into our seventh decade of operation,” Portnow’s statement said. “I truly look forward to continuing my role leading the academy in the year ahead, and to continuing the pursuit of excellence and the fine missions we embrace and deliver.”
A recent addition to the academy’s mission — and one crafted in response to Portnow’s post-Grammy comments — has been the creation of a task force to study systemic biases that have resulted in the strongly male slant among Grammy nominees and winners over time.
A USC study last year indicated that 90.7% of nominations in the awards’ highest profiled categories went to men, while just 9.3% recognized women.
A significant part of that disparity stems from nominations in the record and album-of-the-year categories not just for musicians but also for producers and engineers, two fields that remain overwhelmingly male-dominated. When musicians and other members of the industry took to social media after the Jan. 28 Grammy ceremony, Portnow was asked about the imbalance, and his response fanned the flames.
“It has to begin with women who have the creativity in their hearts and their souls, who want to be musicians, who want to be engineers, who want to be producers, who want to be part of the industry on an executive level, to step up,” Portnow responded, a remark that quickly came back to haunt him.
Musician Pink tweeted, “Women in music don’t need to ‘step up’ — women have been stepping since the beginning of time. Stepping up, and also stepping aside. Women OWNED music this year. They’ve been KILLING IT. And every year before this.”
Similarly, singer-songwriter Vanessa Carlton said, “It’s time for him to step down.” A number of female music executives also called for Portnow to step aside.
But Portnow and the academy made no such immediate move. Instead, Portnow subsequently said he regretted the remark.
“... I regret that I wasn’t as articulate as I should have been in conveying this thought,” Portnow added at the time. “I remain committed to doing everything I can to make our music community a better, safer, and more representative place for everyone.”
Shortly after, the academy announced the formation of a diversity and inclusion task force to be headed by Tina Chen, former chief of staff to First Lady Michelle Obama. At the beginning of May, the academy revealed the names of 16 others who would work with Chen — 13 female and three male musicians and entertainment industry veterans.
“Not saying that Neil’s a bad guy,” Taylor said. “He has done good. But there does come a place and time when you have to as a leader [say], ‘Maybe I’m not the best person to continue to take… the academy into the next 20 years.’ ”
Rock group Garbage, fronted by singer Shirley Manson, issued a singleword tweet Thursday in response to the Portnow announcement: “Victory.”
A key part of Portnow’s job as the Recording Academy’s top executive was his collaboration on the annual Grammy Awards telecast with Ehrlich and CBS-TV’s executive vice president of specials, music and live events, Jack Sussman.
Ehrlich said the blowback over Portnow’s “step up” remark overshadowed what he considered one of the most socially progressive shows in Grammy history.
“When you look at the pieces we did on gun control following the tragedy in Las Vegas, how we handled the issue of immigration with Camila Cabello’s introduction of U2, the performance by Logic at the end of the show, there were several moments that were more, I don’t want to say political, but social, and they totally got lost,” Ehrlich said.
The Recording Academy’s statement tacitly defended Portnow’s role supporting MusiCares, stating that the organization “provided more than $5.9 million to 7,900 members of the music industry in the last fiscal year alone — the largest number of clients served and dollars distributed in a single year in the charity’s history — and anticipates it will provide $6.3 million to nearly 9,000 members of the music industry this fiscal year, again reaching new milestones.”
Yet some are calling for more transparency with the charity organization.
“Moving forward, for the benefit of everyone in the industry, there needs to be total transparency,” Paul McCartney manager Scott Rodger told Billboard, “and the full accounts need to be published after each event so that we can all see exactly what was raised against the costs to stage the event and, more specifically, the salaries paid and the operational costs.”