Why I’m Entering the Grammys’ New Asian Pop Category Despite the Backlash (Guest Column)

When I first heard that people were criticizing the Recording Academy’s new Best Asian Pop Music Performance category, my honest reaction was surprise. I didn’t understand why people were upset.

From where I stood, I saw an organization trying to recognize music, languages and cultures that have historically received less attention within the American music industry. Why wouldn’t we welcome that?

Then I started reading more about the concerns, and I began to understand where some Asian artists and fans were coming from. If you have spent years fighting to have Asian artists recognized simply as pop artists, the creation of a separate category can raise an uncomfortable question: Is this opening another door for us, or building another room that people expect us to stay inside?

The language requirement raises questions of its own. An artist can be Asian and create music that does not prominently use an Asian language. Does that make the music less Asian? Should language define genre or identity?

Those are legitimate questions, and I still decided to enter.

That choice is not because I think every detail of the new category is perfect. I don’t. I think the Recording Academy could have benefited from hearing from a wider group of Asian and non-Asian musicians while developing the rules and explaining the intention behind them. (I’m glad the Academy is doing that now.)

I’m entering because I see another possibility in this category, one that I don’t want us to lose sight of while debating its shortcomings: discovery.

As a Recording Academy voting member, I imagine listening to the entries and hearing artists from Japan, China, Korea and other parts of Asia whom I have never encountered before. I might discover a kind of J-pop I never knew existed or hear an independent Mandarin artist who otherwise may never have crossed my path. Even within K-pop, there are many different musical approaches that American listeners rarely encounter because our image of an entire country’s music can become defined by the few artists who achieve enormous global fame.

That matters, because some of the criticism surrounding the category seems to assume that it exists primarily for the Asian superstars we already know. But Asian pop is much larger than the handful of names that have broken through internationally.

For an independent artist working in Mandarin, Japanese, Korean or another Asian language, this category could provide something that is extraordinarily difficult to obtain: the attention of thousands of music professionals who might otherwise never press play.

At the same time, I don’t believe Asian artists should stop competing everywhere else. An Asian artist belongs in record of the year, song of the year and album of the year. Creating a place where Asian-language music can receive additional recognition should never become an argument for excluding those artists from the rest of the music world.

That tension feels especially personal to me because I have never thought of language as the thing that defines my music. I was born in China, but I began my professional music career in the United States. I reached the top 25 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary Airplay chart, yet I have recorded in Mandarin, English, Spanish, Italian and many other languages.

When I write, I don’t begin with nationality. I begin with emotion. Love does not become a different emotion when I sing about it in Mandarin. Heartbreak does not change because the words are Spanish. Fear, hope, loneliness and joy belong to every culture.

As a native Mandarin speaker, I know there is a difference between understanding words and feeling them. When I hear an important idea in English, I understand it, but sometimes I am translating it internally or processing exactly what it means. When I hear that same idea in Mandarin, it can reach me immediately. It goes directly to the heart.

That realization is one reason I have recorded so much multilingual music. When I released “Could You Lend Me a Smile” in 16 language versions, I didn’t want people around the world simply to receive a literal translation. We worked to adapt the message so listeners could experience it naturally within their own language and culture.

To me, that distinction is important. Translation tells someone what the words mean. Adaptation gives the listener a chance to feel what I felt when I wrote them.

That philosophy is also why I am submitting the Chinese-English version of “It’s Too Late to Love You,” my duet with three-time Grammy winner Narada Michael Walden.

Narada and I come from very different backgrounds. We grew up with different cultures, musical influences and life experiences, yet those differences have never created a barrier in the studio. If anything, they made the music richer.

Narada is extraordinarily open to sounds outside his own experience. When I first brought him songs influenced by the emotional storytelling I grew up hearing in Chinese music, he did not ask me to make them sound less Chinese or more American. He heard something beautiful in the difference and encouraged it.

That, to me, is what cultural exchange should look like. You don’t have to erase where you came from in order to connect with somebody from somewhere else.

I have spent much of my life moving between cultures, and over time I stopped thinking of that as something I needed to resolve. I began taking what I valued from each place I had lived and allowing those influences to become something new.

My Chinese identity is in me. It shapes how I communicate, how I approach people and how I create. But it does not require me to build a wall around myself.

That is also how I hope we eventually think about this Grammy category.

I understand why some artists may decide that the strongest statement they can make is refusing to participate, and I respect that choice. Mine is different. I would rather participate and help demonstrate what this category could become.

Five years from now, I hope voting members approach it with excitement because they know they are about to discover artists, languages and musical traditions that might otherwise have remained outside their world. I hope Mandarin pop meets J-pop and creates something neither culture would have made independently. I hope artists hear each other, collaborate and bring those discoveries back into the wider music landscape.

Most of all, I hope the category becomes a doorway rather than a destination.

I also hope the Recording Academy continues listening to the artists it is trying to recognize. If the rules need to evolve, let them evolve. If the language needs to become clearer, make it clearer. Inclusion works best when the people being included have a voice in shaping what inclusion looks like.

If Harvey Mason jr. were sitting across from me, I would tell him not to be discouraged by the controversy. The fact that people care enough to argue about this means the question matters.

Listen to the criticism. Learn from it. Improve what needs improving. But don’t lose sight of the possibility.

There are musicians across Asia, including independent artists whosebehin names American audiences have never heard, creating extraordinary work right now. Giving those artists another opportunity to be heard does not have to diminish anyone else. It can expand the conversation.