The first time she laid eyes on a drum kit, Tammy Hurt had a sense of what her future would hold.
“I knew right then and there,” she said. “I never wanted to do anything else other than play drums, be in music, record music, and tour.”
The out Atlanta-based musician, who is a longtime member of the Recording Academy and its current presiding officer, was recently named a 2025 Billboard Women in Music honoree. The ceremony was held March 29.
A love for music runs in Hurt’s family. Her mother was the keyboard player in an all-female cover band called The Body Shop in the 1970s, and Hurt herself (who moved to Marietta with her family when she was 10) participated in every conceivable band in school, including garage bands, marching band, and orchestra.
Following in her mother’s footsteps, Hurt joined an all-girl band called Gidget and later was a member of the Fabulous Scallion Sisters, a band headed up by DeDe Vogt, a trailblazer in the LGBTQ+ women’s music scene. The band changed their name to Paper Dolls and were mainstays at the Little Five Points Pub.
“It was a great time to be queer in music because there was a huge community of women singer/songwriters, bands, and music creators – and I had a front row seat,” Hurt said. “I was fortunate to enter my full-time professional career at that time.”
The independent women’s music community was growing, with Indigo Girls coming out of that period. Hurt has recorded and played with Indigo Girls a few times.
She has also been in the bands She Said, Superchick, and Goodpussy, and still records as Sonic Rebel, a passion project that came about during the COVID-19 pandemic when she realized she didn’t need a band to go out and play. Sonic Rebel, she said, is her way of taking different genres and mashing them together.
Hurt has also continued to work to push the industry forward. As part of Georgia Music Partner, a non-profit she co-founded, she led a campaign to create the state’s first standalone music tax incentive, the Georgia Music Investment Act. The act went into effect in 2017.
For 14 years, Hurt served on the board of the Atlanta chapter of The Recording Academy, and in 2021, The Academy voted her as the chair of the National Board of Trustees. She won re-election in 2023.
She’s the first openly LGBTQ+ officer of the Academy, which is the group that puts on the Grammy Awards each year. She said that designation means a lot to her.
“In 67 years there have been three female board chairs,” Hurt said. “Leslie Ann Jones was the first and is a member of our community, but at the time no one talked about it. Then there was Christine Albert, and now I carry the flag loud and proud and am happy to do so.”
Historically, she feels the music industry has been primarily male oriented. During the last six years, though, there has been an effort to diversify the Academy board and membership.
“I am super happy to report, as someone who has been on the board such a long time, that 50 percent of our board members are female and we have a contingency of LGBTQ+ trustees,” Hurt said.
Hurt credits out artists such as Amy Ray and Emily Saliers of Indigo Girls for blazing the trail and normalizing being out and proud.
“[We are where we are now] because of them, because they were bold and brave and had no qualms about who they are,” Hurt said. “People with platforms like that have to use it. Now if you look at the [Grammy] nominees, there are dozens of LGBTQ+ artists who are up and coming. The same with producers and engineers.”
Hurt is very proud of the diversity efforts of the Academy and its many programs, such as Academy Proud, which is a program that aims to amplify LGBTQ+ artists.
“We encourage people to come together, elevate voices, and uplift the people in the community intentionally,” she said.
The last four years have been a season of change for the Academy, and Hurt has helped spearhead some new Grammy categories like Best African Music Performance, Best Alternative Jazz Album, and Best Pop Dance Recording.
“It is imperative that the Academy be as diverse as possible,” Hurt said.
It’s been a busy season for Hurt. Besides the Billboard Women in Music honor, she was named one of the Top 50 Honorees of 2025’s She Is the Music, which is a nonprofit organization aiming to increase the number of women working in music.
“I am just someone who puts my head down and does the work,” Hurt said. “It’s really nice to be recognized and appreciated and seen.”
