Grammys to Have Fewer Categories Next Year

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The Recording Academy announced today that next year's 54th annual Grammy Awards will have 78 categories, 31 fewer than the ceremony held in February. The Academy has consolidated several categories, most notably by doing away with gender-based categories in pop, R&B, country and rock. Several instrumental categories have also been eliminated.

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The Recording Academy has also changed its eligibility requirements. From now on, each category much have at least 40 artist entries to move forward. If a category receives between 25 and 39 entries, only three recordings will receive nominations. Categories with fewer than 25 entries will be cut for the year, and if there are fewer than 25 for three consecutive years the category will be permanently removed. This is bad news for the recently added categories for Hawaiian, Native American and zydeco music, which consistently have very few entries.

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"I think the positive side is we've taken a good, serious look at what we're doing," Recording Academy president/CEO Neil Portnow told Billboard. "We contemporized it, we organized it and we visioned it in a way that will suit us going into the future. In other words, if you just continue business as usual, at some point, typically, you're going to hit some sort of a pothole in the road."

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Song Stories

“Push It”

Salt-N-Pepa | 1987

Originating as a B side to their cover of the Stax classic “Tramp,” Cheryl “Salt” James, Sandi “Pepa” Denton and Dee Dee “DJ Spinderella” Roper came up with the goods on this career-making, Grammy-nominated platinum single about working it on the dancefloor. “Push It” has been sampled and spliced to death since it debuted in 1987, yet the original track is as fresh and fly as when SNP — among the few original women of hip-hop — debuted it. “Most men will never believe ‘Push It’ was never about sex,” said James. “And that’s why the record went to Number One,” said Denton. “Everybody thought it was about sex.”

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