Words by Bailey Agbai
The Brit Awards recently abandoned gendered categories – but does the recent controversy change anything for future awards?
Last year’s BRIT Awards saw a shift in the right direction: the dropping of gender-labelled award categories in favour of gender-neutral ones. The awards for British Male Solo Artist and British Female Solo Artist became simply British Solo Artist, a simplification welcomed as an attempt to recognise “artists solely for their music and work, rather than how they choose to identify or as others may see them”.
Equity and equality in the BRITs prizing process seemed to be on the rise: a victory for the number of women and non-binary artists who had been pigeonholed or, especially in the latter’s case, often completely overlooked and overshadowed. In 2021 Sam Smith, who identifies with they/them pronouns, found their album-of-the-year-eligible Love Goes album disregarded from consideration due to Smith’s gender identity.
For the growing number of non-binary artists, the abandonment of gendered categories at the Brit Awards is a no-brainer. Identity is a big part of an artist’s work, but why should their identity decide to what level their art and talent warrant praise?
Naturally, with any progressive step there has been adversity and, in this case, it has reared its head in the highest echelons of the music industry. Queen guitarist, Brian May, called the removal of gender from the award categories “a decision that has been made without a lot of thought”, remarking that “everyone is scared of doing the wrong thing” and that he didn’t “think things [were] going very well”.
May’s comments were made in reference to the impact that genderless award categories would have on women rather than non-binary artists. The suggestion that women competing against men could ever be the wrong decision is, in itself, the wrong argument to try to make.
However, even though the BRITs’ categorisation revamp mimicked this sentiment, the make-up of the nominees this year seems to fail to uphold the idea of a brand new equal playing field. Nominated for the coveted 2023 Artist of the Year award are five male artists: Central Cee, Fred Again.., George Ezra, Harry Styles, and Stormzy. A very talented line-up with a very peculiar pattern: no women.
This doesn’t seem to be a fluke. The Album of the Year category tells a near-identical story. Four men and two women, with the added insult being that the two women are in fact Wet Leg, the Isle of Wight indie rock duo. So, in reality, four men are occupying the five spots that make up the category.
Suddenly, a fatal flaw in the BRITs initially very progressive decision to remove gender from the awards becomes apparent: the loss of the guaranteed exposure for female talent prior to 2022 thanks to the gender-protected categories.
Defenders of 2023, AKA the Year of the Male, may think that there simply were not enough eligible female artists or releases over the past year. In fact, this is the argument being adopted as the official stance of the BRITs: “While it’s disappointing there are no [female] nominations in the Artist of the Year category, we also have to recognise that 2022 saw fewer high-profile women artists in cycle with major releases, as was the case in 2021.”
As “fewer high profile women artists” cannot be equated to “no high profile women artists”, their argument fails to be airtight. Charli XCX, Mabel and Rina Sawayama are just a few of the women who were eligible for the top awards. Instead, the lack of women in the top two categories simply illuminates the ongoing problem of women facing discrimination in the industry.
We’re only on the second year of living in a genderless BRITs world, and it seems for the massive step forward that the change has been, it’s also seen a massive stride sideways. All artists, on paper, are now eligible for the same awards but in practice nothing is being actualised.
As for the BRITs themselves, their response to the lack of female talent being lauded this year is alarming, and their decision to review the use of gender in their categorisation may well spell more trouble on the horizon.
A new question arises: Will the BRITs return to gendered roots to alleviate the scandal, or will they promote a more diverse range of nominees next year instead?
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