Pink fires back at Grammys president for saying women need to 'step up'

Count Pink among those who strongly disagree with Recording Academy president Neil Portnow’s belief that women in music need to “step up.”

After Sunday’s Grammys were dominated by men (Alessia Cara’s win for Best New Artist was the sole major award given to a woman), Portnow had a controversial response to the unbalanced results.

“I think it has to begin with women who have the creativity in their hearts and 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 the executive level — to step up,” he told Variety.

Pink, who was nominated for Best Pop Solo Performance (Ed Sheeran won), fired back Monday on social media. “Women in music don’t need to ‘step up’ — women have been stepping since the beginning of time,” she shared in a handwritten note. “Stepping up, and also stepping aside. Women OWNED music this year. They’ve been KILLING IT. And every year before this. When we celebrate and honor the talent and accomplishments of women, and how much women STEP UP every year, and how much women STEP UP every year, against all odds, we show the next generation of women and girls and boys and men what it means to be equal, and what it looks like to be fair.”

Ahead of the Sunday’s show, presenter Janelle Monaé tweeted a statistic from a USC study: “A total of 90.7% of nominees between 2013 and 2018 were male, meaning just 9.3% were women. #TimesUp #Grammys.”