Women suck at entertaining
If you believe the country music industry, that is.
The 2008 Academy of Country Music Awards nominations just came out, and it's business as usual. The ACM awards are presented in the spring, the CMAs in the fall. They're technically run by two different groups, but they're pretty much the same. They both give out an Entertainer of the Year award. And every time, when the Entertainer of the Year nominees are announced, the contenders are four solo men, and one male group, usually Rascal Flatts or Brooks & Dunn.
Seriously, how could Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift not have been nominated this year, with all the huge hits they've had? Or how about Miranda Lambert? Are we really supposed to believe they were lesser entertainers than George Strait and Rascal Flatts during the past 12 months?
For a woman to get an Entertainer of the Year nod, she has to do something superhuman. In the past 10 years or so that I've been paying attention, only a handful of women have gotten nominated: Shania Twain, Faith Hill, and the Dixie Chicks. In Shania's case, she had to sell 10+ million copies of two consecutive albums before she finally got recognized.
Interestingly, Shania and the Chicks both won the award, which seems to suggest that the general academy has no problem recognizing women. It's just the elite group that chooses the nominees, the Good Old Boys' network of Nashville, that is keeping the girls down.
I'm always amazed that more people don't get upset about this.
5 comments:
Really? Reba hasn't been nominated? I'd have thought...Well, but then, I'd think a lot of things, wouldn't I? Among the things that I think...No, wait...KNOW: Rascal Flatts SUCK! (And they're ugly.)
Reba did win once in the early 90s. Reba, Shania, and the Chicks are the only women to win the award in the past 28 years.
That IS pretty pathetic. But the reason people don't get upset about it is probably because the majority of the people who listen to country are good ol' boys themselves. Sad, really.
I bet you're right about that. Good call.
Actually, the more I think about it, the more it seems like female country artists are more often embraced in pop and top 40 communities. Does the Academy frown on crossover artists receiving the award, perhaps?
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