Why Did Taylor Swift Skip the 2020 Grammy Awards?
Few people know the Grammy Awards quite like Taylor Swift. The 30-year-old musician has been nominated for 35 Grammy Awards throughout her career, and she has won a remarkable 10 of them.
However, Swift decided to skip out on this year’s ceremony. What is Swift’s team saying is the reason she decided to forgo the event?
Which 2020 Grammy awards was Taylor Swift nominated for?
2020 was a big year for the Grammy Awards. In its 62nd year, the Grammys are always the culmination of the previous year’s top albums and artists in every genre, and receiving an award is widely considered to be a pinnacle of a musician’s career.
This year, Swift was nominated for three awards: Song of the Year for “Lover,” Best Solo Pop Performance for “You Need to Calm Down,” and Best Pop Vocal Album for Lover.
While she didn’t win any of them this year, she has previously held the title for Best Pop Vocal Album for her album 1989. She was beat out this year by Billie Eilish for Song of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album — and by Lizzo for Best Solo Pop performance.
Why are people speculating she didn’t show up?
According to Page Six, rumor has it Swift didn’t attend this year’s Grammy Awards because the Recording Academy would not confirm for her team whether she was winning an award.
“While it wasn’t an explicit demand, they certainly were fishing to find out if Taylor was a winner,” an anonymous source said. “It was understood in the conversation that if she’s not winning, she’s not coming to the Grammys.”
Another source close to the topic confirmed it’s not unusual for artists to want to know whether they’re winning ahead of time.
Taylor Swift’s team denied the rumors
According to Page Six, a spokesperson for Swift has denied the rumors that Swift refused to attend because of not knowing whether she would win. “These statements by anonymous, unidentified ‘sources’ are absolutely, 100% false and laughable,” the spokesperson said. “She just didn’t go to the Grammys. You guys need to calm down.”
Grammys producer Ken Ehrlich told Variety that they continued to hold a spot in the show for Swift in case she decided to attend and perform, but ultimately she was replaced because her team never confirmed she would be attending. Ehrlich said he understands her reasoning for not attending but would not go into detail about what that reasoning was.
Billie Eilish took home all four of the most coveted awards of the night: Song of the Year, Album of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best New Artist.
