For more than a decade, Taylor Swift has been a Grammy favorite, winning 10 awards since her first nomination at the 2008 ceremony, including two for album of the year. But the relationship has been less steady in recent years—she hasn’t attended since 2016, and her 2017 album, Reputation, didn’t receive any nominations in major categories. Swift has been outspoken about issues in the music industry, but despite the Recording Academy’s years of controversy, she hasn’t commented on the Grammys themselves.

On Thursday, Page Six claimed Swift only decided that she wouldn’t attend the ceremony after her team asked the Grammy coordinators for confirmation she would win a big award. “[Her team] called and wanted to be assured that she would win the Grammy. And while it wasn’t an explicit demand, they certainly were fishing to find out if Taylor was a winner. It was understood in the conversation that if she’s not winning, she’s not coming to the Grammys,” a source said. Another source said that the existence of the call was widely known around the music industry.

Swift’s team laughed off the claim. “I am on the record: These statements by anonymous, unidentified ‘sources’ are absolutely, 100% false and laughable,” her representative said. “She just didn’t go to the Grammys. You guys need to calm down.”

On January 24, Us Weekly broke the news that Swift would not be attending the Grammys despite her nominations for song of the year, best pop solo performance, and best pop vocal album. The timing made the announcement somewhat confusing—it came a week after Recording Academy president Deborah Dugan was put on leave, and three days after Dugan filed a bombshell EEOC complaint alleging sexual harassment and voting irregularities. But Swift’s 2019 music was not enthusiastically embraced by the Academy; there seemed to be no reason to believe she would have attended anyway. (The academy has denied Dugan’s allegation of issues with voting.)

Another aspect of Dugan’s complaint might have bothered Swift specifically. Dugan alleged that entertainment lawyer Joel Katz harassed her a few months before she took on the job as head of the academy. Last summer Katz arranged the sale of Big Machine to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings, an event that set the pop star on the warpath. (In a statement to the New York Times, Katz’s lawyer denied Dugan’s allegation.)

Ultimately the night went on without Swift—and without a few more major celebrities who received more minor nominations, like Beyoncé and Drake, leaving the ceremony a curious bifurcation between young upstarts and longtime industry vets. The song-of-the-year and best-pop-vocal-album awards Swift was nominated for went to Billie Eilish, and best pop solo performance went to Lizzo. Swift never commented publicly, and her social media has been focused around promotion of her new Netflix documentary, Miss Americana.

Though the news is presented in the tone of hot gossip, it’s impossible to see Swift as the bad guy here. The pop star was not alone in skipping the nearly four-hour ceremony, and besides, much of the country joined her—the 2020 Grammys set a new ratings low for a show that has been in stasis for at least a decade. As the extensive and strange Ken Ehrlich tribute inched on Sunday night, it became increasingly clear that the show isn’t really created for the viewers or the artists. This attempt to drag Swift into its orbit is further proof that the Recording Academy can’t stop trying to be a character in its own dramatic proceedings.

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