Why we need more women in the 2018 Grammy nominations

The last few months of 2016 should serve as a reminder that the media, in general, isn’t very good at prognostication. There’s the coverage of the presidential election, of course – that’s the big lesson. But Billboard offered another example of how bad so-called experts can be at predicting the future.

In a brief analysis of the 2017 Grammy nominations that ran last December, Chris Willman foresaw an “‘urban takeover” by Beyoncé, Drake, Rihanna, Kanye West, Chance the Rapper and Anderson Paak.

“Whatever controversies the 59th annual Grammy Awards may face, an Oscars-style #GrammysSoWhite hashtag campaign won’t be one of them,” Willman wrote, lamenting the absence of “alt-rock and baby boomer guitar acts.”

We know how that turned out – Willman’s roster of “urban takeover” artists had a collective 41 nominations but only won six awards, while the night was dominated by Adele, whose breathy throwback pop is a warm blanket for boomers. #GrammysSoWhite was trending on social media before the broadcast was over.

It was just the latest 21st-century entertainment-industry awards show called out for its paleolithic attitudes toward race, gender, diversity and representation. And the Recording Academy deserved it. The Album of the Year award has been given to a solo female artist (or all-female band) 15 times. That’s 15 out of 59. And only three of those 15 have been black women. Beyoncé has more nominations than any other women, and 22 wins – but 21 of those have been in R&B, not the major all-genre categories.

We’re heading into another awards season, and the outlook for fair representation isn’t promising. At October’s CMA Awards, the country music equivalent of the Grammys, solo women performers and all-female groups were nearly shut out, particularly in the major categories – Entertainer of the Year, Album of the Year, and Single of the Year all went to men, as did the awards for musical duo, musician, music event, and new artist.

Worse, the unofficial theme song of the awards show was Keith Urban’s new single, “Female.” Supposedly written in response to the revelation of Harvey Weinstein’s predatory behavior, “Female” is well-meaning but tone deaf. It’s an anodyne song performed by a man, co-written by two other men (along with Nicolle Galyon), that’s serving as Nashville’s statement on assault and abuse in the entertainment world.

So here we are, on the eve of the 2018 Grammy nominations, the prelude to the music industry’s biggest night – what can we expect? The contenders for the major categories so far include Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, A Tribe Called Quest, Lady Gaga, Lorde, the Weeknd, and Kendrick Lamar, with Imagine Dragons, the Foo Fighters, Kesha, and Jason Isbell discussed as dark horses. It’s a good opportunity for members of the Recording Academy to correct #GrammysSoWhite – Tribe’s excellent final album and Lamar’s profound and personal “Damn.” are exactly the kind of progressive, socially conscious hip-hop the Grammys prefer. Yet again, however, a woman of color seems to stand no chance at a major award, and men are overwhelmingly being named as potential Album of the Year nominees.

It’s not just in the major categories that women are overlooked. Some of the niche fields, like metal and jazz, are so overwhelmingly dominated by men that they smell like a gym locker. Up and down the list, year after year, old stereotypes of the music industry are reflected in the nominations and reaffirmed by academy voters. Men can be pop auteurs, guitar heroes, producers, arrangers, composers, and engineers, but women are assumed to be packaged pop product. They can sing, maybe write some songs, but the real work? That’s men. (It’s telling, too, that only one woman in more than 50 years has won the Grammy for Best Album Notes – the story of pop music is being written by tweedy scholars and record nerds, for other men just like them.)

Representation is important. It helps these industry showcases reflect what the business is really like – who’s in it and what they do – rather than just embodying gender stereotypes. It’s fair, too – credit should go where it’s due. And it encourages girls and young women to participate – to sing, to start bands, to write songs, to produce records, to start labels and open recording studios.

The industry belongs to women – artists, executives, producers, radio programmers, concert promoters, and fans – as much as it belongs to men. It’s time the industry itself recognized that.