Grimes Points Out Juno Awards’ Glaring Lack of Female Nominees

The Juno Awards set out to honor the best in Canadian music each year, but this year’s nominations failed to recognize female artists in several major categories.

Grimes was the first high-profile name to point out the lack of female nominees in a series of since-deleted tweets.

“Women r kinda absent from the junos this year. No female noms for album, artist, engineer or producer of the year etc," she wrote, according to a report from Exclaim. "I don’t expect recognition, but I believe there were qualified women besides myself for many categories.”

Grimes went on to point out that continued lack of recognition, especially when it comes to the behind-the-scenes side of the industry, can be particularly discouraging: “I can’t help but feel that if women were equally rewarded for technical work they would feel inclined to participate more.”

“Example of sick female Canadian producers off the top of my head: wondagurl, Allie x, mozart sister.. I know there’s more but I’m sleepy,” she wrote.

Grimes also noted that she’d likely delete her tweets eventually: “Anyhow I’ll probably have to delete these tweets and there r way bigger problems on planet earth but that’s my 2 centz.”

She’s not wrong. Not a single female artist is up for either Album of the Year or Artist of the Year, despite a solid release from Grimes herself -- the excellent Art Angels -- as well as the oft-overlooked Carly Rae Jepsen. Jepsen, who released one of 2015's best pop albums with the '80s-influenced E•MO•TION, was somehow snubbed from all categories save for Fan Choice Award.

Fellow Canadian artist Allie X tweeted in support of Grimes shortly after:

Grimes later explained why she deleted her tweets as a response to Exclaim's post, writing "I'm not blasting anyone, just discussing an issue, and I explicitly deleted my tweets to avoid inflammatory press like this."

Check out the full list of nominees for the 2016 Juno Awards over at their official site.

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