K-pop supergroup BTS has announced that they will not be entering their music for the 2027 Grammy awards. The decision seems to be a response to the addition for 2027 of the category “best Asian pop music performance”.
The Grammy rulebook describes Asian pop as a “distinct and globally recognised form of popular music”. The new category is intended to reward recordings that make “meaningful use of one or more Asian languages”.
Announcing their withdrawal from the Grammys on their Instagram accounts, the seven members of BTS expressed a wish that “music can be heard and loved for what it is, rather than being divided by region or language”.
Looking more closely at the wording of the Grammys category, the rulebook contends that Asian pop is “characterised by integrated approach to music, performance, and presentation”, giving “K-Pop, J-Pop, and C-Pop” – all nominally east Asian genres – as examples. This “integrated approach”, is intended here to suggest the “idol” approach to production.
Originating in post-war Japan, “idols” are pop performers who commence their intensive training in singing, dancing, acting and languages in their teenage years, with some even starting work before then. All of their publishing, marketing and events are usually handled by a single agency, though the genres they perform vary by country, region and even by agency.
Idol production is especially common in Japan, China and South Korea, but not exclusively so. Filipino girl group Bini, who debuted (first performed publicly) at Coachella in 2026, are described as being an “idol group”. While K-pop as a term is fairly synonymous with idol production as something that is exported to the world, the term J-pop is less so, having originated as a phrase to distinguish Japanese-language tunes from English-language ones for Japanese radio in the 1980s.
The Japanese artists being tipped as strong contenders for the best Asian pop music performance category at the Grammy’s include singer-songwriters such as Kenshi Yonezu, who have little to do with idol production. And while Chinese contestants have featured prominently in Asia-wide talent shows to create idol bands, C-pop spans multiple regional and linguistic sub-genres with nuance that is not reflected in the wording of this new category.
Why ‘Asian pop’?
The Grammy Awards are based in the US, so the wording of “Asian pop” could also be an expression of shared diaspora identity for Asian Americans. BTS have previously expressed solidarity with Asian Americans in the wake of a series of high-profile hate crimes against these communities in the US in 2021. But the privileging of idol production implied in the category wording to the detriment of other systems of pop production, and the seeming disregard of western or South Asian popular music demonstrates what should be obvious – that the Grammys are poorly positioned to be setting out what Asian Pop is.
I was researching K-pop and J-pop artists when BTS were really beginning to gain visibility in English-speaking markets. I found that discussions of their “global” success in English-language media tended to assume that “making it” in the US was the gold standard for measuring their international achievements. Not only does this ignore the fact that Japan and China are respectively the second and third largest music markets in the world as of 2026, but it also disregards the long-standing popular musical and popular cultural exchange happening across Asia.
This phenomenon has been referred to as “inter-Asian referencing”, by cultural studies scholar Koichi Iwabuchi. Iwabuchi sees this referencing as means to question “approaches and theories that are derived from Euro-American experiences”.
One demonstration of the possibilities of letting Asian popular music performers define their own creations is demonstrated in an international project by Japanese musician Awich – a popular Japanese hip-hop artist who has also lent her voice and songwriting skills to rock and pop projects.
In 2025, she lead on a song and promotional video featuring other well-known rappers from Korea, China, India, and Cambodia titled ASIAN STATE OF MIND. Each verse features the artists exploring what motivates them to make music and how it has been shaped by the places they call home. Cambodian rapper Vannda notably utters the English lyric “I told you it’s time, I de-colonise” in his concluding verse.
The CEO of the Recording Academy (which owns, administers and presents the Grammy awards) Harvey Mason Jr. has, in recent years, been keen to defend the consultation that has gone into new award categories. For example, he has spoken of the best African music performance category as having been informed by “trips to Africa”, and an acknowledgement that African artists “weren’t being heard in our process”.
In the wake of BTS’ withdrawal of their music for consideration for the 69th Grammys, Mason Jr. announced that the Recording Academy will “continue to listen to the global music community, and work to honor and celebrate all the artists whose music moves the world”.
We are then left with a major question: who was consulted on the creation of the new Asian pop music performance category? At the very least, the discussion surrounding BTS’ non-submission to the 2027 awards has succeeded in creating a “spotlight” on Asia’s pop music – although perhaps not in the manner the Recording Academy intended.
Dorothy Finan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.