‘Female’ Shouldn’t Be a Default Award Category

You can’t really judge an act’s cultural significance by its Grammy nominations, but this year’s dramatic showing by women in the high-profile album and record of the year categories does invite questions about the effect of the female voice in today’s pop experience.

Are female artists telling us something about the human condition we haven’t heard before?

Or is this just another minor aftershock of a trend--the never-ending Year of the Woman--already touted and analyzed ad nauseam?

The answers are as diverse as the nominees, who include pop singers Celine Dion and Madonna, hip-hop rapper-singer-writer-producer Lauryn Hill, rocker Sheryl Crow, country crossover queen Shania Twain and R&B-popsters; Brandy & Monica.

Which raises another question: Why is it that each time a preponderance of females shows up on some tally sheet--concert grosses, album sales, Grammy nominations--musicians who otherwise wouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath are all gathered under the “You Go, Girl!” banner?

It’s time to let the chicks out of their pop-music ghetto. Even if it is still news when women make good in this man’s man’s man’s world, the concept of considering “female” a sort of default pop category is not always the best way to look at things.

Like their male counterparts, female artists come in many stylistic shapes and sizes. Such best album and record nominees as Crow, Dion and Twain offer no insights whatsoever, generally churning out unchallenging “I love you” or “You did me wrong” material that’s always been pop’s meat and potatoes. However, like the men, a rare handful of women have truly original ideas that really shake things up or, like Hill’s solo album, present a compelling personal statement.

At the same time, a startlingly female point of view does sometimes rock the culture--and that such artists now have more opportunity to emerge is indeed reason to celebrate.

This year’s Grammy list includes several examples of women who have made singular contributions to pop, chief among them being Madonna, whose “Ray of Light” (nominated for best album and best record) offers another one of her seemingly endless supply of pop personalities in its techno-propelled spiritual explorations.

Sprinkled throughout the other categories are artists who have also earned distinction. As leader of Hole (whose “Celebrity Skin” earned three nominations, including best rock album), Courtney Love has sparked contentious debates with her raw ruminations on sexual power and victimization.

And, certainly, only a woman could have delivered the visceral “female” wallop Alanis Morissette packed in 1995’s “You Oughta Know,” a definite flash point in the gender wars. (Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill” won Grammys in 1995 for best album and best rock album, and her “Uninvited” is nominated this year for best female rock vocal.)

Female singers have raged about romantic betrayal before, but rarely has such explicit female anger struck such a popular (and populist) chord. Listeners usually are more comfortable with women singing sad love songs, as Dion does with James Horner’s and Will Jennings’ “My Heart Will Go On.”

Garbage, whose “Version 2.0” is nominated for best album, has often been cited as part of the women-in-pop revolution, although singer-songwriter Shirley Manson is the only woman in a quartet that was formed by celebrated record producer Butch Vig (he’s worked with Nirvana and the Smashing Pumpkins.)

That’s because Manson--in the tradition of such independent figures as the Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde--is the band’s most colorful member. Her she-devil charm is the source of the band’s sex appeal, and she also often serves as the group’s mouthpiece. In truth, however, Garbage is a genuine group operation--with her input augmented by the seamless melding of electronica and traditional rock ‘n’ roll that is supplied by the other members.

The Fugees’ Lauryn Hill is most notable for her determined pursuit of her own artistic voice. Chronicled on her solo debut, “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” her journey includes such “womanly” dilemmas as the decision to have a child while trying to maintain a career (“To Zion”). But the album’s appeal ultimately lies in its humanity, not its femaleness.

In “Doo Wop (That Thing),” Hill demands accountability in equal measure from both sides of the male-female romantic equation. Although she expresses traditional ardor in “Nothing Even Matters,” her language of love features a basketball metaphor--not a conventionally “feminine” image. These details help make Hill’s message universal. The experiences are drawn from a woman’s life, but the lesson applies to everyone. And, really, it’s nothing we haven’t heard before. Be true to yourself. . . . Didn’t Shakespeare say something like that?

The key to Hill’s success is that as personal as “Miseducation” is, it struck a common chord among listeners. Likewise, such hits as Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” indicate that audiences are more willing, even eager, to accept female points of view. Still, that didn’t keep Grammy voters from nominating a lightweight like Natalie Imbruglia as best new artist, rather than, say, substantive songwriter Lucinda Williams.

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But with the glut of “female” pop out there, perhaps it’s inevitable that some singular female voices would slip through the cracks. Just one example is singer-songwriter Amy Rigby, also not nominated for a Grammy, who explores almost uncharted pop territory with her personal tales of a single mother hurtling toward middle age in a tangle of unfolded laundry and self-doubt on her two solo albums, 1996’s “Diary of a Mod Housewife” and last year’s “Middlescence.”

These ripples spread slowly, but they do make progress for the waves of female artists who are yet to come. So maybe, just maybe, what this latest “unprecedented” showing of female Grammy nominees means is that soon, very soon, you won’t be reading articles like this anymore.