Ariana Grande is skipping the Grammys because they won’t let her perform ‘7 Rings’

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i can’t wait part two @sweetener

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I’m not looking forward to The Grammys this Sunday, but we’re going to watch, tweet and cover the fashion of course. It always seems like the Grammys are shoehorned into the crowded awards season and that they should be in the fall, like the AMAs. Last year Lorde was the sole female artist nominated for Album of The Year, which went to Bruno Mars. She decided not to perform when producers told her that she couldn’t perform solo and that she’d have to join the Tom Petty tribute. She was nominated for AOTY and was told not to perform! So the Grammys have a history of this kind of shenanigans, and they just did it again to Ariana Grande. Ariana wanted to perform her new single, 7 Rings, which is number one on the charts and has broken records on Spotify. She was told she’d only get to do a medley and that they would choose the next song she would do. Ariana then decided not to even go to the Grammys, which is absolutely her right. It’s a major blow to them because they used her image on billboards for the Grammys.

Due to a disagreement with Grammy producers over which songs she would perform, Ariana Grande, who has been featured on billboards promoting the show all over Los Angeles, not only won’t be performing at the Feb. 10 show, she will not even be attending it, according to sources close to the situation.

An insider tells Variety that Grande felt “insulted” after producers initially refused to allow her to perform “7 Rings,” the latest single from her forthcoming album “Thank U, Next” (which arrives Friday, two days before the Grammys). A compromise was reached whereby “7 Rings” would be part of a medley, but Grande pulled out after producers insisted that the second song be of their choosing. The source added that such stipulations were not imposed on other performers at the show. Reps for the Grammys did not immediately respond to Variety‘s requests for comment.

With this development, the Grammys find themselves not only without a twice-nominated artist whom they have been using to promote the show, but also without one of the most vital artists of the moment.

[From Variety]

We’ve seen that Ariana is smart about her career and that she knows how to negotiate. She shouldn’t even have to do that in this case, because it’s doubtful producers would make these demands of a male artist. This was a baller more by Ariana and maybe it will make producers think twice about how they deal with women artists.

As an aside, The Cut has an interview with Ariana’s Japanese tutor, Ayumi Furiya. Apparently Ariana has been studying Japanese for four years. Ayumi praised Ariana for how down-to-earth and great she is to work with. She explained how Ariana’s mistaken tabletop barbecue tattoo happened. It’s what we thought, Ariana left a character off because it wouldn’t fit. Then she tried to fix it by putting the symbol for finger around it, and it was still wrong. Ayumi doesn’t shade Ariana for that at all and she said it was touching that Ariana wanted to learn Japanese for her fans. She did have one hilarious line though. She said that when she first started the job she thought “Oh my gosh, I’m going to meet someone very famous and what if they’re very stupid?” That made me laugh so hard!

Ariana also just released a behind the scenes video from the making of 7 Rings. You can see that here.

This photo is from December:
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photos credit: Getty, Backgrid and via Instagram

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41 Responses to “Ariana Grande is skipping the Grammys because they won’t let her perform ‘7 Rings’”

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  1. Mindy_dopple says:

    The fact that the Grammys didn’t refute the comment about this stipulations weren’t being made of other artists speaks volumes. They were singling her out because they thought she needed them more than they needed her. Well look who has egg on their face. And because women are being more outspoken we can see a pattern.

    • otaku fairy says:

      Agreed. Good For her.

    • Tiffany :) says:

      I don’t think they were singling her out. They typically like the songs that are nominated to be performed. She’s nominated for God is a Woman and the album Sweetner, and 7 Rings isn’t on that album. I can see why they’d request that she do a medley so nominated songs could be included.

      At the same time, I don’t fault her for wanting to do her newest song. She does have a lot of power, and I think the show would have benefited from letting her do her thing.

  2. girl_ninja says:

    Why would they place these constraints on her? How obnoxious and disrespectful.

    • velourazure says:

      These award show producers are ridiculous, music, movies, all of them. I imagine them be Hollywood morons with massive egos who believe these shows are about them personally.

  3. me says:

    Meh. The show will go on without her then. I think it’s pretty cool she’s been learning Japanese for 4 years now. It’s not an easy language to learn.

  4. Grant says:

    I hope Ariana wins the categories she’s nominated in, although I wouldn’t be surprised if the Grammys swerved and awarded the pop trophy to someone completely random like Beck.

    • Bryn says:

      Random? Beck is a great artist and Has been round for years. His new album was really good, he has so much musical talent. Every album he does is completely different from the last and they are pretty much all great

      • Grant says:

        Fair enough, but I would argue that his AOTY win a few years back was completely random and I think it would be pretty random to award him again this year. I didn’t even know he had released a new album until the nominations were announced.

      • Erinn says:

        And the man plays 12-14 instruments. He’s insanelyyyy talented. You don’t have to like his music, but my god. You can’t deny he’s got more ability than most.

      • Bryn says:

        Yeah beck is not in your face, releasing trailers for music videos, if you aren’t a fan you might not know he has a new album. He deserves any award he gets, the man is a musical genius

      • Bryn says:

        I don’t think it was random that morning phase won for album of the year, it was the best out of the other choices, probably not the most popular but definitely more talent gone into it

      • K-Peace says:

        I agree with Bryn; Beck deserves any awards he gets. He plays all the instruments on his albums, he writes his own songs, he produces his albums, and even after being in the music business for more than 25 years he’s always trying new things. Compared to all the formulaic, unauthentic, auto-tuned, written-by-10-different-people-in-a-boardroom GARBAGE passing for music these days, I’ll take Beck ANY day.

      • Tiffany :) says:

        ” I didn’t even know he had released a new album until the nominations were announced.”

        Pop culture is so splintered, though. You not knowing about something isn’t to be expected anymore. We’re all in these little bubbles, not hearing about music from the outside of that bubble.

      • Aotearovian says:

        Is he still a Scientologist?

      • Haapa says:

        If only he wasn’t a Scientologist. I LOVE his music but I just can’t with the Scientology.

    • Lua says:

      Umm… random?! He’s been a brilliant artist for way longer than you’ve clearly been alive 😂

    • Muffy says:

      Grant, are you secretly Kanye? https://consequenceofsound.net/2015/02/kanye-west-makes-amends-with-taylor-swift-interrupts-becks-album-of-the-year-victory/

      Beck is awesome, has been around for decades and is still making amazing music.

  5. Case says:

    It’s crazy that they’d dictate what the artists perform. Why can’t she sing her new single and let it stand on its own? Crazy.

  6. Lululemon says:

    Her face looking jacked…

  7. Livethelifeaquatic says:

    So much makeup in the last pic that you can see lines where it’s cracking.

    • yop says:

      Yes, so much makeup, I am amazed by how much she uses, she is a pretty girl but her neck and face always have different shades of color, I always giggle because of the meme “donitas bimbo” as a makeup joke.

      She is very talented as a singer, not a fan of her last album but right now she is massive (huge streaming numbers, incredible popular with young demography) and they should have let her sing 7 rings (is a short song anyways). The Grammys telling the artist what they should sing is awful, I am glad she is standing up for herself as Lorde did last year.

      Will she win a Grammy? maybe best pop vocal performance, I wouldn´t mind if Beck win it to be honest. Best pop vocal album I have no idea, I like Pink but her album is not that great, maybe Kelly Clarkson will get it.

  8. Kiki says:

    At this point, I have been done with the Grammys since last year and years before that. I don’t care for it not do I care for mediocre, generic music today. I have said that Music today sucks and it still sucks now.

  9. Natalie S says:

    Power move. I like it. Good for her.

  10. Lady D says:

    Okay, I’m impressed. Good for her. I watched the Kid’s Bakeoff show on the Food Channel last night. I thought this young girl was going to get steamrolled by her partner who took over from the first word and refused to listen to the first two things she said. Turns out I was wrong, that young girl had no problem sticking up for herself and getting what she wanted from him. (mostly) I was quite proud of her, girls like her make me hopeful for their future.

  11. Pearlime says:

    Once again, I have troubles believing the story about the tatoo. If she has been studying Japanese for FOUR years, she should know better than to leave out characters.

    • Kumquat says:

      That occurred to me as well. Also, why not just make the characters smaller to make them fit? IMO they seemed oversized even if it HAD been done correctly originally.
      I enjoy many of her songs and wish her well, but I’m not a big fan of 7 rings.

    • lboogi says:

      Amen! She should know this after year two at least!

    • BB4U says:

      Not just that but she messed up the correction by reading it the wrong way. Literally the first thing you learn when learning to read kanji is that it reads right to left and up and down.

    • sammich says:

      If you guys read the interview with her tutor that CB linked, she literally discusses all of this.

      • BB4U says:

        She still ignored her supposed tutor (who by the way still isn’t saying the new tattoo is correct, only that she likes the “art”.). She made a stupid mistake, now she has to deal with the fallout.

  12. Nacho_friend says:

    I wish she would scale back on her spray tan and heavy foundation. It’s almost like she wants to be a different coloured person when you look at her older pictures

  13. Valiantly Varnished says:

    The Grammys have become irrelevant. They have proved that when Adele won album of the year over Beyoncé- and even Adele didnt agree with it. Like the Oscars, The Grammys are run by old white men who are out of touch. They want big names to bring viewership but don’t actually respect or even like the artists’ work. Eminem said it best: he called them parasites.

  14. boogi says:

    @Pearlime Amen! She should know this after year two at least!

  15. Jujumanji says:

    Ariana wasn’t the only woman slated to perform so if the song constraints were placed SOLELY on her and her performance then it’s personal and NOT a gender thing. Camila Cabello is performing as is Lady Gaga, if they have the artistic freedom to perform what they want then maybe Ariana was just being difficult cause her song is number 1, her album is about to drop and maybe she thought she was more important then the Grammy’s believed she was.

    • Kumquat says:

      Someone above mentioned that the Grammy’s are run by old white dudes and IMO they probably just don’t like that 7 Rings song very much. The most they could stomach was letting it be part of a medley.
      That is my guess as to why they aren’t similarly limiting other female performers.

  16. Pandy says:

    On Monday, I watched a woman who was AT LEAST late 40s in thigh high leopard boots, a bomber jacket and a sweater that skimmed her crotch walk by. She had on black pantyhose with it. All I could think was that she looked like a hooker heading home from a stint AND that we need to thank Arianna Grande for this dumb trend.

    • sammich says:

      What age should we be hanging up our boots, bombers and sweaters? Is 33 too old? Have I brought shame to my family?!

  17. Dana Marie says:

    I love that she stood up for herself!

  18. Annalise says:

    Ariana supposedly thinking she can just “leave off” one of the Japanese characters on her tattoo, or just put the character somewhere else, without realizing it could DRASTICALLY change the meaning, is nothing short of ABSURD. And I DO believe that she stupidly didn’t realize she had changed the meaning, otherwise she wouldn’t have posted the pic of her new tattoo on social media, along with it’s incorrect translation, resulting in the epic clowning.
    All this reminds me of a hilarious cartoon I saw, you don’t even have to see the art to appreciate it. It went something like this;

    The Importance of Proper Capitalization
    * I went to help my uncle jack off a horse.
    * I went to help my Uncle Jack off a horse.

    Just goes to show how ONE little thing can DRASTICALLY change the meaning of a sentence!