The 60th annual Grammy Awards–aka the biggest night in American music–were Sunday and boy, do I have some words.

Bruno Mars won the awards show by a landslide, taking home six golden gramophones including the prestigious honors of Album, Song, and Record of the Year; he was only two awards away from beating Michael Jackson and Santana’s record for most Grammys won in a single night (eight).

However, the night wasn’t without controversy, and a fair share of the noise was directed towards Bruno Mars’ awards sweep. Listen, I’m the first one to exclaim my undying love for Bruno Mars; the man is veritable juggernaut with ties to every aspect of the music industry but he really didn’t need to win all of those awards.

His R&B awards are justifiable because that’s generally the kind of music that Mars is in the business of making, but Song of the Year? Over “Despacito”, which could’ve been the first non-English song to win that category since 1959, which is the most streamed song in history, which you cannot go ten minutes without hearing? Over “1-800-273-8255”, a song which not only broke records but also brought suicide prevention to the forefront of discussion in America? What a mess.

But alas, this is just one of the injustices that caused the Grammys to fall flat this year. Let’s talk about Kendrick Lamar, easily one of the greatest rappers of the decade. Kendrick’s work has been lauded by the Grammys for the last couple of years but he keeps losing out on the Album of the Year, first to Daft Punk and then to Taylor Swift.

Kendrick’s albums continue to pose challenging, thought-provoking questions about hot topics like racism, poverty, sexism, and corruption while also delivering some of the most popular hip-hop beats on the charts– “Humble” peaked at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed on the charts for 43 weeks. And then there’s Jay-Z, whose album 4:44 is widely regarded as his magnum opus. Kendrick and Jay-Z both make music that speak to the future of the industry, but only Bruno Mars’ nostalgic R&B tunes make the cut for the highly traditionalist culture of the Grammys.

And while we’re on the topic of traditions, I’ll take the time to list the final, most disappointing outcome of the 2018 Grammys–where are the women? I understand that feminism has started its resurgence as a more vocal and active movement in the past couple of years, with the advent of the #MeToo movement and the annual Women’s Marches; it is a topic that has monopolized the headlines and the national discourse for a long time, much longer than what is comfortable for most people.

I’m sure that there are those who would like to tell the feminists to just shut up already. But if feminism is such a tired topic, then why does the lack of it manifest itself in almost every aspect of the entertainment industry? Lorde’s sophomore album, Melodrama, was up for one of the most prestigious categories–Album of the Year–but she was never offered a solo performance slot; instead, U2 and Sting performed numerous times in spite of the fact that they had 0 nominations. Kesha’s poignant, complicated, powerful album Rainbow lost Album of the Year to Bruno Mars’ 24K Magic, which wasn’t a bad album by any stretch of imagination, but that action alone diminishes the incredible importance of Kesha’s emotional and uplifting journey to redefine herself after the abuse she endured for so many years.

When asked to comment about this lack of female representation at the “biggest night in music”, the president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences controversially stated that women themselves “[need] to step up.”

How interesting.

In all seriousness, though, I am but a child with layman’s knowledge at best about the music industry. My opinions about the outcome of the 60th annual Grammys are just that, opinions. But, I think it would do well for the Grammys to open themselves up to the future instead of romanticizing the past.