Excluded
Oops.
Sam Smith, the pop singer whose gender identity is non-binary, has been excluded from the gendered categories at the 2021 Brit awards.
Well he would, wouldn’t he. Or was he expecting to be nominated in both categories as opposed to neither?
The awards system has maintained its usual artist categories, with prizes for British solo male and British solo female. That means there is no room for Smith…
It’s not that there’s no room for him (poor little baby Jesus), it’s that he doesn’t fit. If you’re a sculptor you can’t expect to be nominated for a Booker prize, either. You have to fit the categories.
In a statement on Instagram, Smith said: “The Brits have been an important part of my career … Music for me has always been about unification not division. I look forward to a time where awards shows can be reflective of the society we live in. Let’s celebrate everybody, regardless of gender, race, age, ability, sexuality and class.”
All must win, all must have prizes!
You get a prize! You get a prize! You get a prize! Everyone gets a prize!
My brain is telling me that this happened last year, too. Is that not right?
If it is, it makes it all the more apparent that the non-binary thing is publicity nonsense.
But perhaps people only suggested that it ought to happen. Or it was that fake news I keep hearing about. Or I’m even further into my inevitable geriatric decline and another step closer to the sweet embrace of the grave than I thought (how would I know?)
Maybe he could take up surfing in Australia….
I think this is just wrong. While he claims to “be” or “identify” as non-binary, Smith does, in fact remain male and, if he has work worthy of attention, be nominated in that category. Non-binary, whatever the hell it is, is a gender classification, not a sex class. It’s not like he’s now neither (or both) of the sexes.
Why can’t everyone just compete together for best singer?
It’s not surfing or weightlifting, women wouldn’t have an unfair disadvantage.
Anna, surely you jest.
How many women’s albums make the top 100? How many singles? How many women’s bands get to fill mega stadia?
Women are at a disadvantage before they even get their first recording contract.
I’ve just pulled Rolling Stone’s Top 500 (2003) and out of 500 tracks, only 66 are by solo females, bands with a female lead singer (eg Blondie) or with a significant share of female artists (Eg Abba). try this yourself on any compilation album and calculate the way women are left out.
I see what you’re saying Roj but I feel like it’s better to try to make the judgement more fair than to separate everything. I mean, where does it end, do we need best gay singer and best non-white singer and on and on? If only there were some way to have blind judgements, like blind auditions for orchestras.
Anna, a lot of playwriting competitions have gone to blind judging, which has led to a lot more plays by females being selected. But I’m not sure how you’d have a blind competition for singing.
How does reducing women’s chances to 13% make anything fairer?
Maybe you haven’t noticed, but the range of women’s and men’s voices differs. They may both be singing, you won’t find many men signing soprano and very few women who can get down to Basso profundo.
We have separate male and female categories for a reason, and that is to give women a chance to be awarded. If sex categories were excluded maybe once in 20 years a woman would win.
Here’s a list of the now sexless Grammy Award for Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance, note how few women have won, how few are even nominated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammy_Award_for_Best_Solo_Rock_Vocal_Performance
That doesn’t meet my definition of fair.
Wow. They really should’ve called that “The Bruce Springsteen Award”. Or perhaps “The Past Their Prime Award”.
Excluded or just not nominated? The Guardian piece reports that the Brits have “maintained their usual categories” of male solo artist and female solo artist and that this leaves no room for Sam Smith, who has declared himself to be neither. Sounds to me like Sam Smith is the one who excluded himself. I would love to think that the organisers meant to make exactly that point, but the statement sounds rather more like they were afraid to nominate him in case they were put in the stocks afterwards. And introducing a “best non-binary artist” award didn’t seem feasible, at least until there are a few more of them.
Also, going on Instagram and whingeing about not being up for an award? Classy.
Male and female voices are different instruments.
You don’t compete for ‘best trumpeter’ when you’re a bassoonist.
Just not nominated, but that is exclusion. All must have prizes, I tell you!
It appears he’s removed his “statement” – Instagram says No Such Page.
If they was excluded because of some other reason, then they’s really milking they’s pronouns too much, isn’t them. I don’t follow UK pop music, but I have never heard of they, whoever them is. Maybe they is eligible for a bad grammar award for misuse of them’s pronouns.
We need a Kliban cat with a guitar singing “When they is excluded…”
@JtD#11
I’ve been going back and forth on this point in my mind. I agree that male and female voices are different instruments. In the classical world there are competitions for specific instruments or specific classes of instruments, and there are competitions that span a variety of instruments. The classical vocal competitions I’m aware of tend not to have male and female categories, although they often focus on specific repertoire.
It may be the case that, say, a tuba player or a saxophone is unlikely to win an open concerto competition just because the judges are not fond of the tuba or the saxophone. It may be the case that a basso profundo is unlikely to win a certain vocal competition because the judges don’t like the sound of that kind of voice in that repertoire. And it may be the case that women’s voices are not favored by judges in certain popular music competitions based on sound. But it might be because they are biased against women. It’s difficult to tell.
It is certainly fair to have tuba-specific competitions, and saxophone-specific competitions, and separate competitions for men’s and women’s voices. I’m not convinced the lack of such things is unfair.
Sackbut, I think the ratio of women who win awards when there is no separate category can suggest it is unfair unless you assume that women are inherently worse singers than men. I don’t. And I don’t believe women are worse playwrights than men. But the same pattern holds there, unless the competition is blinded. Since I see no way to blind competitions for singers, the best thing remains, in my opinion, to have a separate competition. If there was a way to quantitatively assess best voices, etc, like there is in math, we could find out if it was bias or just that women are, in fact, not as good as men in singing.
Since assessments have shown the bias to hold even in math, which arguably has a right and wrong answer and yet still shows females ranked lower for the exact same test, I suggest the most likely explanation is bias, not inherent inferiority of female voices.
Iknklast, it may well imply that there is bias against women. It may also imply that women’s voices are less preferred. Just like flute winning much more often than saxophone doesn’t necessarily imply flute players are better, but that people like flute more.
I would say that I have known far more good women singers than men singers. But I much prefer all-male choral groups or small vocal ensembles to all-female. I like trombone ensembles to trumpet ensembles. I probably prefer male solo singers. Were I a judge, I hope I’d be able to put my preferences aside and be more objective, but I can’t guarantee that.
I’m not sure that pop music awards necessarily go to the person with the best voice. I like Leonard Cohen’s work, but god knows there are lots of people who have a better singing voice than he had. But he did so much with what he had. For so much of his material he had an effective and convincing voice, where someone who had a technically better voice might not have been as believable or convincing singing the same song. In fact I prefer his later work where his voice is lower, and more world-weary (particularly 1991’s (!?) The Future),to his younger voice. (Insert your own singer with kinda limited, growly, gravelly, croaking, yet appropriate voice here.)
While we’re on the subject of “worse singers,” maybe I’m not aware of someone that you all know, (and I’m admittedly not including punk bands or singers), but I can’t think of a female equivalent of someone with a “limited” singing voice (like Cohen, or Neil Young, Tom Waits, Tom Petty, etc.) making it big. The fact that they’re usually singing their own material (where they know what they can and can’t do) might help them a lot. I think, given the right material, men are allowed to get away with this more than women can. Again, I might just be missing someone but, but I’m wondering if female voices are expected to be more pleasant, harmonious, or “prettier” than male voices to begin with, perhaps this is the sonic equivalent to the expectation and requirement that women are supposed to be more physically attractive, or “prettier” which is something not usually expected of men.
I don’t think Billie Holiday’s voice is considered as “good” as the voices of Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan. But she definitely had the right voice for those songs.
I was curious, so I searched and found this totally-not-authoritative article. It lists 10 Most Popular Raspy-Voice Singers, four of whom are women, and it’s entirely possible they had a goal to include around half women. (The four are Joan Jett, Bonnie Tyler, Janis Joplin, and Adele.) Just by way of somebody else’s information. I am only passingly familiar with one of the ten.
I think that’s a good point about what male singers can “get away with” doing. I suspect it’s a combination of factors, at least some of which has to do with the tessitura. There are some things that simply sound better in the lower part of the audible range. But surely some of it has to do with what’s acceptable for a man to sound like versus a woman, as suggested.
I suppose Courtney Love would have been excluded with the “no punk” proviso, though Hole is arguably more grunge than punk and Love is arguably famous mostly for being Kurt Cobain’s troubled lover. I would posit also Melissa Ethridge, Carla Bruni, Nina Simone, and Joan Baez as non-punk female singers with rough/smoky voices which have the highest levels of fame for their singing talent in North America in the mid-late 20th Century. I’d say that all of them are of comparable fame to Tom Waits or Leonard Coen. I am also partial to the band Dorothy, which is fronted by a woman whose voice is angelic if you like hard rock.
Some of my favorite female singers who don’t necessarily sing in a conventionally “pretty” way most of the time (although most of them know how to do so, and often do) include Björk, PJ Harvey, Alanis Morissette, and Dolores O’Riordan (R.I.P). To a lesser degree maybe even Kate Bush, Tori Amos, and St. Vincent.
Brody Dalle of the Distillers may be punk and not comparable to Cohen or Waits in terms of fame, but definitely someone who eats most male singers for breakfast. In Courtney Love territory.
Cristina Llanos of the Spanish band Dover is more straight up rock, and once again not world famous, but another one of the coolest voices I have ever heard. You might describe her as the female Rod Steward, but I prefer to think of Steward as the male Cristina Llanos.
The late great metal guitar goddess Michelle Meldrum worked with some of the most seriously badass female vocalists ever, most notably Gigi Hangach (Phantom Blue), Moa Holmsteen (Meldrum), and Michele Maddden* (also Meldrum).
Guitar goddess and multi-instrumentalist (or more like one-woman orchestra!) Sarah Longfield actually has a very pretty voice, but is also capable of doing this:¨
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEodtWN7Xb0
How cool is that! :D
*The fist time I heard her sing, I thought I was listening to a duet between a male black metal vocalist and an equally male grunge singer!
Later Marianne Faithfull (Broken English) and Nico (both notably punk adjacent.)
And let’s not forget Édith Piaf!
I am not fond of gravel-voiced singers. I don’t listen to the styles of music where that kind of singing is widely considered appropriate. Were I a judge in a music competition, I would tend to give poor marks to someone who sang like that.
Music judging is subjective. People have preferences for styles, genres, and instruments. It’s easy to find examples of, well, let’s call it “unusual” judging from people who lack familiarity with the instrument or genre being presented. Someone used to standard classical chamber groups might not give a saxophone quartet a “fair” hearing; it sounds “wrong”, stylistically inappropriate. Someone used to hearing saxophones might find the saxes the most appealing, and the string quartet boring.
I don’t think it’s strange or inappropriate for someone to prefer male singers generally over female singers; they are different instruments. Some such preferences may indeed be due to animosity toward women, but that’s not necessarily the case.
Preferring listening to male voices versus female voices should not be used to discriminate against women in the workplace or in school, any more than preference for a nice voice versus a rough voice, or any particular accent preferences, should be. There are objective criteria for workplace and school evaluations, and subjective issues of appearance and sound should be disregarded.
But listening to music is a different matter. If it is important to have certain instruments represented roughly proportionally, be they oboes, tubas, or female voices, steps would need to be taken to ensure that is the case rather than to leave the judgment to chance.
@bjarte #23
I think you may like Sarah Wellbaum of Slothrust (“sloth-rust)” who is definitely in the grunge-riot grrl range, but she has a unique voice and songwriting style. Planeterium:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rewp0va-UGo
Of course, in all of this discussion about whether there should or shouldn’t be separate categories, the main fact remains. There are categories for male and female, so Sam Smith excluded himself by declaring himself neither. And as long as there are separate categories, men do not belong in women’s competitions.
The idea of whether it is preference for better (male) voices or bias is also sort of amusing, because we are willing to admit that men have an advantage over women in many sports, and that is why there are sex-segregated categories. So if women’s voices are inherently inferior (subjectively, of course), there is no reason to suggest that they need to remain with the men’s categories and not win. This idea about “why do we need separate categories? It might just be that male voices are the ones with the better range, or deeper, or more resonant” is exactly an argument you could use against sports. “It’s not unfair, it’s just that men are better.” So whether it is bias or simply the difference between men’s and women’s voices, it seems there is no real reason not to sex-segregate the categories to allow women the chance to succeed on their own terms.
iknklast, I really don’t see the sports comparison.
Women’s sports exist to give opportunities to women. It is certainly reasonable to have women’s music competitions to give opportunities to women, and indeed they exist; International Women’s Brass Symposium is one near and dear to my heart. And in some vocal competitions there are male and female divisions. These all exist to provide opportunities to women.
There are competitions for individual instruments and there are broader competitions. The former exist to provide focus and opportunity to the players of those instruments. Some of those instruments are unlikely to win broader competitions for a variety of reasons, but not because the other players are better. Women’s vocal categories are ALSO potentially an instance of this.
Both the broader competitions and the instrument specific competitions exist. I see no reason to get rid of either. I don’t see the existence of one implying that the other one is unfair.
So I agree with your last point, that there’s reason to have sex segregated categories in some vocal competitions, partly for the reason you state, allowing women to succeed on their own terms, but also because I support instrument specific competitions existing. I also support woman-only instrumental competitions, like the organization I mentioned before, for the former reason, not the latter.
As for the OP, sucks to be that guy, he’s no reason to change anything.
I was curious, so I looked up the winners of the Handel Aria Competition. It is not segregated by sex. Of the 24 winners (three prizes each year, eight years), six were male, and four of the male winners were countertenors (male alto or mezzo soprano). Lower voices did not win often. I didn’t check to see the demographics of the candidates; it’s entirely possible that women dominate the entrant pool. The repertoire may also favor sopranos. But most likely women are simply better, most of the time.
#27 Michael Haubrich
“I wanna take you to the planetarium
I wanna show you how ugly the sky is”
I disagree with this sentiment, therefore this song is violence. Cancel Slothrust!