Artistry Highlights Nods for Brooks, Yearwood, Gill, Harris

What’s the difference between a country artist and a contemporary folk artist?

Ka-CHING!

Superb albums by Lyle Lovett, Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams got nominations on Tuesday, but in the contemporary folk rather than the country album category, which was handed over to releases that made cash registers sing all year long.

The lesson: If it sells, it’s country; if it doesn’t, it’s folk.

Still, though Shania Twain’s “Come On Over” and Faith Hill’s “Faith” albums were distinguished only by the number of platinum awards each received, the Dixie Chicks’ major-label debut, “Wide Open Spaces,” showed strong songwriting and performance skills rooted in traditional country and bluegrass.

The country album Grammy could respectably go to either Garth Brooks’ “Sevens” or Trisha Yearwood’s “Where Your Road Leads,” both of which displayed significant artistic growth. The absence of Vince Gill’s deeply moving album “The Key” in this category is a major embarrassment, even if he did top the country field with four nominations.

Bob Dylan wangled a country song nomination for “To Make You Feel My Love,” recorded by Garth Brooks for the “Hope Floats” soundtrack, although the award belongs to Gill and Troy Seals’ heartbreaking “If You Ever Have Forever in Mind.”

Gill’s performance of that song also deserves the male country vocal Grammy among a generally strong group of performances by Brooks, Steve Wariner and Clint Black.

In a just world, it would never be a surprise to see Emmylou Harris’ name in the female vocal category. Yet her nomination for “Love Still Remains” is doubly unexpected because it’s a track from a multi-artist Kate Wolf tribute album and it’s on the independent Red House label. Her bone-chilling performance soars over comparatively routine recordings by Yearwood and Lee Ann Womack and business-as-usual hit singles by Twain and Hill.