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| Neil Portnow |
According to The LATimes, Portnow came under fire after his comments Sunday regarding the lack of female representation at Sunday’s Grammy Awards ceremony.
“It has to begin with women who have the creativity in their hearts and their souls, who want to be musicians, who want to be engineers, who want to be producers, who want to be part of the industry on an executive level, to step up,” Portnow told Variety.
“Because I think they would be welcome. I don’t have personal experience of those kind of brick walls that you face,” he added. “It’s us as an industry making a welcome mat very obvious — creating mentorships, creating opportunities for all people who want to be creative, and, really, paying it forward, and creating that next generation of artists who feel like they can do anything, say anything.”
On Tuesday a representative for Portnow issued a statement to The Times to clarify his remarks.
“[Sunday] night, I was asked a question about the lack of female artist representation in certain categories of this year's Grammy Awards,” it read. “Regrettably, I used two words, ‘step up,’ that, when taken out of context, do not convey my beliefs and the point I was trying to make.
“I regret that I wasn't as articulate as I should have been in conveying this thought,” Portnow added. “I remain committed to doing everything I can to make our music community a better, safer, and more representative place for everyone.”
The backlash against his “step up” comment began almost immediately and reached the highest levels of women in music.
— P!nk (@Pink) January 29, 2018
Three-time Grammy winner Pink, who performed at Sunday’s ceremony, shared an image of a handwritten note Monday afternoon that she wrote in response to Portnow’s words.
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