There is a whole lot of terrible stuff going on in the US right now, and many of the speeches at Sunday’s Grammy Awards ceremony were reflective of that.
And throughout the ceremony, host Trevor Noah also made several jokes about Donald Trump, while stars like Olivia Dean and Bad Bunny used their acceptance speeches to uplift immigrants.
“Before I say, ‘Thanks to God,’ I’m gonna say ICE out,” the Puerto Rican star said while accepting the award for Best Música Urbana Album for Debí Tirar Más Fotos. “We’re not savage. We’re not animals. We’re not aliens. We are humans, and we are Americans.”
Similarly, during her Song of the Year acceptance speech for “WILDFLOWER,” Billie Eilish — who has been very vocal about her opposition to ICE — told the crowd: “As grateful as I feel, I honestly don’t feel like I need to say anything but that no one is illegal on stolen land.”
“It’s just really hard to know what to say and what to do right now,” she continued, standing alongside her brother and collaborator, Finneas O’Connell — both of them proudly wearing “ICE OUT” pins. “I feel really hopeful in this room, and I feel like we just need to keep fighting and speaking up, and protesting, and our voices really do matter, and the people matter. And, fuck ICE is all I want to say.”
There’s no doubt that political statements were a major theme of the night — although this didn’t necessarily go down well with everyone.
Online, some have expressed fatigue with celebrities making political statements at award shows. Among the critics was Ricky Gervais, who took to X on Sunday to share a memorable moment from his 2020 Golden Globes monologue, in which he advised celebs not to get political in their acceptance speeches. “You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world,” he said at the time. “Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.”
Re-sharing this excerpt after the Grammys aired, the British comedian pointedly wrote: “They’re still not listening.”
With all that criticism in mind, Grammys executive producer Ben Winston has now weighed in on the politically charged moments from Sunday night, firmly defending artists’ “freedom” to speak out on matters close to their hearts.
“I rarely play anybody off, ever. It’s just not worth it,” he said while discussing the speeches in a post-Grammys podcast interview with Rolling Stone. “People have the freedom to say stuff. They’re musicians, they’re artists…These artists are creating the music, like, of course they’re gonna have something to say, it’s why they’re artists. They’re successful because they say something that means something to us as a listener.”
Clarifying that he wasn’t at all “surprised” by the political nature of the night’s speeches, Ben argued that it’d almost be “bizarre” if the artists didn’t comment on what’s going on in the world around them. “It would be odd if they went up on stage and said, ‘I wanna thank the sound engineer, I wanna thank my agent, my publicist,’” he said. “These are beautiful, creative people who feel things. Their job is to feel things and make you feel something.”