What Happened To the Female Rock Vocalist Grammy?
Click to viewThough it should've been implemented since at least Janis Joplin's first solo record (1969), for whatever reasons, Best Female Rock Vocal Performance didn't make the cut as an official Grammy category until 1980. And though solo female artists continue to release great rock records every year, The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) stopped with the category after 2004.
Why?
The Best Female Rock category featured some of the most interesting diversity of nominees from Lucinda Williams to Alison Moyet to Tina Turner to P.J. Harvey to Ani DiFranco to Donna Summer to Lita Ford. These ladies ROCKED, forging powerful, musical statements, and often left their male counterparts looking stale by comparison.
According to NARAS, it was eliminated due to "a lack of eligible recordings in the female rock category."
Really?
One look at 2012, and you'll find plenty of Grammy worthy rocking new music by solo female artists including former winners in the category, Melissa Etheridge, Pink, and Alanis Morissette. Bat For Lashes, Me'Shell Ndegeocello, and Cat Power stretched the boundaries of female driven rock with their respective albums this year. Bluesy rock veterans, Bettye Lavette, and Bonnie Raitt scored with fiery new records as did punk pioneer, Patti Smith, and first lady of rockabilly, Wanda Jackson (who recorded WITH Elvis Presley). If that's not a bumper crop, I don't know what is. One thing it isn't is "a lack of eligible recordings in the female rock category."
Since 2005 (as well as in 1988, 1992, and 1994) the Rock Female Vocal category was combined with Rock Male Vocal, and presented as the genderless, and blander, Rock Vocal Performance. And since 2009, there has not been ONE female nominated in the Rock Vocal Performance category.
Bands fronted by women (Blondie, Heart, Garbage, Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, etc) are not eligible in the Best Female Rock Vocal category - only solo female acts.
While an official confirmation of the category's retirement was never announced by NARAS, we pray for its return as rock women have NEVER gone away nor are they vanishing anytime soon.
Here's a look back at [some of] the winners in the Grammy category of Best Female Rock Vocal Performance...
1980: Donna Summer, "Hot Stuff"
1984: Pat Benatar, "Love is a Battlefield"
1987: Tina Turner "Back Where You Started"
1991: Alannah Myles "Black Velvet"
1998: Fiona Apple "Criminal"
2004: Pink "Trouble"
The 2013 Grammy Awards air Sunday, February 10th on CBS. 8pm/7central.
[OP Note: Stevie Nicks was robbed in 1982 so I'm putting in her Edge of Seventeen Video, because I can]
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