On the “Asian Pop” Grammy
The Grammys have announced the creation of a “Best Asian Pop” category that will debut in the 2027 Awards. I’ve seen two major strains of reaction to this news.
This is because they need to award Hybe (who have thrown a lot of money around) and they can’t produce a product that will win in any other category.
This is because they need to award Hybe but the Grammys are too racist to award them in the main category so they have to segregate them in this separate K-Pop award.
I probably won’t shock anyone when I say my take is right down the middle.
Hybe is incapable of producing a quality product even when the Grammys are basically handing them the award on a silver platter. Like much of the rest of American cultural institutions after 2020, the Grammys were acutely aware of how they were perceived with regards to identity politics. I strongly suspect that the Grammys wanted to award BTS for the year after “Dynamite” if they’d been able to produce anything more substantial than “Butter.” But they couldn't and “Rain On Me” carried the day.
As “K-Pop” has been absorbed into the American marketplace, led by Hybe, it has undergone a transformation from buzzy, critically acclaimed, trend forward pop music to… well, this.
Grammy 2027, here they come!
Netizens have been referring to this style as “skibidi toilet music” and that seems about right. (I’ll be adding it to my K-Pop Vocabulary post.)
But Hybe has thrown a lot of money around in America and the industry wants (or needs) to reward that somehow.
But here’s the other piece—“Asian Pop Music” as defined by Grammy is not a coherent category in any real shape or form. I won’t say it’s “racist” but it certainly seems like a giveaway category for K-Pop that can’t win anywhere else.
The Grammy guidelines are here for anybody curious; let’s go through them.
“This category recognizes artistic excellence in Asian pop music performances. Eligible recordings include contemporary popular music originating from or widely recognized within Asian markets, including K-Pop, J-Pop, and C-Pop.”
The first sentence already has me cringing.
K-Pop has come to mean exclusively idol music.
J-Pop is a catchall term somewhat analogous to 邦楽 (ho-gaku) or Japanese music that can include anything from ex-vocaloid singer-songwriter Yonezu Kenshi (whose song “Iris Out” has crushed it across Asia this year) to veteran rock stalwarts ONE OK ROCK to any of the numerous soggy, soft rock bands that dominate domestic rankings. Sure, idol music is part of that but that’s not all of what “J-Pop” is. Idol music is idol music.
“C-Pop” doesn’t mean anything. The term was crafted out of nothing in a response to “K-Pop” and “J-Pop.” There’s Mandopop in Mandarin, Cantopop in Cantonese, etc. but those terms—again—are more analogous to “J-Pop” in that they don’t mean exclusively idol music.
“Asian pop is a distinct and globally recognized form of popular music characterized by its integrated approach to music, performance, and presentation.”
So, yes, by “Asian pop” here the Grammys mean a specific kind of performance-based idol music that just so happens to be what Hybe specializes in and not the “Asian Pop” made by blockbuster domestic acts like Woodz in Korea, whose mega-hit “Drowning” involves him standing and singing (very well) into a microphone.
And, look, I love “integrated approach” idol music and think it deserves recognition. My favorite idol group of all time, A.B.C-Z, are kings of the “integrated approach.”
(Check out their new song, “TAP”!)
But idol music is not all pop music and idol music is definitely not all pop music from Asia. If this is meant to be a K-Pop Award, just say so.
“Eligible recordings typically feature melody-driven composition, mainstream pop songwriting, and commercially oriented production, as recognized within their respective markets, and may incorporate elements of pop-adjacent styles such as pop-rock, pop R&B, and other related forms. Recordings in this category are often characterized by genre-blending arrangements, layered production, and dynamic structural shifts designed to support both audio and performance-based delivery.”
So, “Asian Pop” is distinct for its “integrated approach” to performance, etc. but musically it’s just mainstream pop songwriting with some genre blending? What on Earth would separate “Asian Pop” then from, say, an “integrated” piece from somebody like Lady Gaga, who won a Grammy for “Best Dance Pop” for “Abracadabra,” which certainly seems to hit on most (if not all) the points in this description. (Not to mention that “melody-driven” compositions seem to be rapidly on the decline in K-Pop.)
“Recordings must feature meaningful use of one or more Asian languages. An Asian language should play a significant role within the song in bilingual or multilingual structures such that the recording is identifiable with that language. Recordings performed entirely in an Asian language are eligible. Incidental or minimal use (e.g., isolated words, adlibs, or brief phrases) does not qualify. Recordings performed entirely in English are not eligible in this category and remain eligible in other appropriate categories. The musical style is determinative of eligibility, not the ethnicity or nationality of the performer(s).”
Ah, here we go—recordings must be in “an Asian language” (not specified) but ethnicity doesn’t matter. So, if Lady Gaga released “Abracadabra” in Thai or something, would that count? What about Indian film songs which are in Asian languages and “integrate” performance and music? Or is this simply a carve out to award Katseye? I mean, BlackPink’s Rose didn’t have a problem competing in the main category with “APT” and did quite well for herself, so why the special new category? The whole thing is so ridiculous.
Did Grammy think they could waltz in and define “Asian Pop” as an outside authority? It’s quite audacious when you think about it. Stans, academics, critics, and other interested parties have been arguing for years about whether or not the English language is important or whether you can remove the “K” from “K-Pop” or if Asian music is just mainstream American music reskinned.
Well, according to Grammy, “Asian Pop” is essentially just regular mainstream American pop but with some “integrated elements” in performance and sung in an “Asian language” (unspecified) but it doesn’t have to be sung by people of Asian ethnicity.
In other words, what it appears like to me, is that Grammy wanted (or needed) a “K-Pop Award” but didn’t want to call it a “K-Pop Award” so they created a K-Pop Award based on who they wanted (or needed) to award and called it something else with the thinnest layer of plausible “Asian” deniability layered over it.
None of the explanations for this are remotely flattering to Grammy or to anybody nominated under “Asian Pop.”
Trend chasing? Audience chasing? Well, the AMAs had a K-Pop-palooza this year and ratings fell by a third over 2025 so good luck with that.
It can’t be the artistry, which has been on the decline for yearswith no signs of a rebound on the horizon. The one act in the past few years which had both critical acclaim and popularity in the US among non-K-Pop fans was NewJeans and they were unceremoniously tossed on the garbage heap by the dominant K-Pop company in favor of groups making “skibidi toilet music”
This “Asian Pop” Grammy announcement also comes as Korea announced grants to help small to mid-size companies compete on the export market. The idea, I think, is to give groups like RESCENE a boost when they manage to go viral online but may not have the capital to… capitalize on it outside of Korea.
It just makes me wonder, who even is K-Pop for in 2026? What is it for? Who is enjoying this? What are they enjoying? Streams and sales are a battlefield; the stan culture is beyond toxic; and the focus is not on creating enjoyable content.
What on Earth is Grammy rewarding? Money? Stan armys?
I’m happy to be proven wrong, if Grammy nominations aren’t just a Hybe/Export K-Pop giveaway and include “integrated” Asian pop aka idol music from groups like M!LK or Fruits Zipper from Japan. Is this an award for reskinned mainstream pop meant as a sop to American stan armys? Is it an award for Hybe groups that can’t win anything else? Or should we let Americans experience the “integrated” content for themselves, pure and uncut!