Grammy Roundtable: Insiders on Adele Vs. Beyonce, Sturgill Simpson's Surprise Nomination & James Corden as Host

Grammy Roundtable: Insiders on Adele Vs. Beyonce, Sturgill Simpson's Surprise Nomination & James Corden as Host

There are three types of Grammy viewers, according to Ken Ehrlich, the telecast's producer since 1980. "There are people for whom this is the only music show they watch all year," he says on Dec. 8, two days after The Recording Academy announced its 59th annual ­nominations. "There are hardcore music fans, and then there's this third element who think they're going to see something they don't see on other [awards] shows -- and that's what we try and give them."

For the ceremony's Feb. 12 telecast on CBS, that likely means the ­combined spectacles of pop supernovas Beyoncé, who leads the year's nominations with nine, and Adele, who faces off against Bey in three of her five ­nominated ­categories, including album of the year -- vying against Justin Bieber, Drake and alt-country upstart Sturgill Simpson. With all that star-power ­potential on one show, Ehrlich admits, "I have to be very optimistic."

That race and other storylines provided fodder for Billboard's second Grammy Roundtable, held at the Recording Academy headquarters in Santa Monica, Calif. Joining Ehrlich, 74, and president/CEO Neil Portnow, 68, were Universal Music Publishing Group chairman/CEO Jody Gerson, 55, and Grammy-winning ­producer Om'Mas Keith, 40 -- who won the best urban ­contemporary prize in 2013 for Frank Ocean's Channel Orange -- along with two just-announced ­nominees: songwriter Greg Kurstin, 47, who's ­nominated in four categories, ­including song of the year (Adele's "Hello") and producer of the year; and singer/songwriter Elle King, 27, who's honored in the best country duo/group ­performance category for her featured role on Dierks Bentley's "Different for Girls."

Neil Portnow photographed Dec. 8 at The Recording Academy in Santa Monica.

During an hour-plus conversation, the six touched on everything from the music industry under a Trump administration (and the possible "positive") to the installment of 2017 host James Corden.

What was your first reaction to the slate of nominations?

GERSON: I applauded the diversity. ­[Voting members] did a great job. Yes, there will always be ­somebody who's missed, but I'm impressed.

KEITH: I was very pleasantly surprised. R&B and urban music was fully represented by artists you wouldn't normally think would be nominated -- people you may have ­forgotten about and people who are at the top of the game.

KURSTIN: I totally agree with Jody and Om'Mas. But I was happy when I saw my name. (Laughter, cheers.)

EHRLICH: Frankly, I was scared out of my skin until we saw what was in the envelope. That's the way it always is: We're dealt a hand and we have to play that hand. Some years are better than others. But I was ­really pleased because the palette we have to paint a three-and-a-half-hour TV show with is broad -- as Jody said, musically rich with a lot of choices.

KING: I woke up to getting the greatest ­surprise ever. Then I read about everyone else who was nominated. A lot of my friends are on there. It's fun to cheer everybody on and get to be a part of it.

Ken Ehrlich photographed Dec. 8 at The Recording Academy in Santa Monica.

Greg, did you talk to Adele on the day of the nominations?

KURSTIN: I did. We actually saw each other and had a little champagne. You just never know how anything is going to go. I was so nervous the night before. But then I woke up to the good news.

PORTNOW: (To Kurstin.) It's good that you were nervous. It means that it matters.

KURSTIN: It definitely does. You can tell ­yourself it doesn't, but it does.

KING: (To Kurstin.) Yeah, but come on. How did you not know? You had to know.

KURSTIN: You just never know. Crazy things happen in elections. (Laughter.)

One big surprise is Sturgill Simpson's nod for album of the year. How did his album come to the attention of so many voters?

PORTNOW: People have to remember who our voters are. To be a voting member, you have to be part of the industry ­community. You have to have credentials. So that levels the playing field in terms of it not being just about sales, marketing, market share, ­number of streams or chart position. There are no other layers to get in the way of the greatest music that you've heard over the course of the year. That's how we get that kind of a nomination.

Another major nomination storyline is Adele versus Beyoncé. Are both artists booked to perform on the show?

EHRLICH: Very few people say no to the ­Grammys. Over all of the years I've been ­doing the show, there have been [only] three or four acts who've actually said no.

Do you want to share who those are?

EHRLICH: Absolutely not. (Laughter.) But I can tell you that Adele and Beyoncé are not two of them. We have every anticipation that both of them will be with us in February. We love a good horse race. It's a fine line: We love the competition aspect of it, but it's really more -- here's the cliché -- the family of music. I don't know how many of those three categories they're in together that we'll announce during the telecast, but we'll probably come pretty close. When you can start with that as a foundation for a show, you're in pretty good shape.

EHRLICH: We went through a period when artists were reticent to go public either ­politically or socially -- a time when artists have said, "No, our marketing says I can't do this or I can't do that." I'm a child of the '60s, so I love the fact that we are returning to a time when artists are standing up. We saw it in this past political campaign: Everybody we needed to step up for Hillary Clinton stepped up. There's a real rebirth in the artistic community to stand up for what you believe in.

PORTNOW: My point

of view about the new administration, taking away all the other social issues, is that we as a music ­community have our own issues about advocacy, copyright, intellectual ­property, being paid fairly for the work that we do. I have optimism that there may be ­opportunities with this administration, who are business people and who may understand we are workers entitled to be compensated fairly. Some of the laws and legislation in place don't allow that. The fact that there isn't a performance right [for the use of sound recordings on ­terrestrial radio] means there's hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign income that doesn't come to the artists in this country. For example, because U.K. artists aren't compensated when their music is played on U.S. radio ­stations, U.S. artists aren't ­compensated when their records are played on U.K. stations based on the fact that there's no reciprocity. If that income came in, our ­artists would be paying income taxes on it. So if we can get a lot of policy on the radar, that may have some positive influence.