Is the music folk or rock?

There's controversy over how academy decides

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Is Bob Dylan a folk singer or a rock musician? Are the Rolling Stones rock stars or pop stars? Every year, the Grammy Awards nominations provoke questions like these.

Take the Rolling Stones. Their latest album "Bridges to Babylon" is up for a Grammy for best rock album. Yet a single from that same album, "Anybody Seen My Baby," was nominated for best pop vocal performance by a group.

Such odd arrangements have fueled Grammy critics' charges that music categorization is completely arbitrary. But the officials behind the awards defend their choices.

"It requires the wisdom of Solomon to try to find a niche for some of these recordings," NARAS President and CEO Michael Greene said.

In fact, NARAS, or the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, recently created committees of industry experts in an attempt to put songs in their proper place. Those experts review music, then decide on nomination categories for albums, singles and sound tracks.

Using this process, committee members decided the Stones' submissions should be both rock and pop.

The Rolling Stones

"If you listen to that album front to back, it's a rock album, it just is," Greene said. "The single is a pop single. It's lyrical. It's just the whole interpretation of it, the committee felt was directed to the pop radio market."

Using the same rationale, Bob Dylan's album was nominated in the contemporary folk category and for album of the year, while a track from the album is in the running for best male rock vocal performance.

"The track, 'Cold Irons Bound,' was entered by the record company in 'rock,'" Greene said. "So we didn't change anything there. The committee listened to it and said, yeah, that's a rock track."

But committee or no committee, studios still take advantage of category flexibility, according to Billboard's Melinda Newman.

"If they could nominate (Dylan) for Best Female Country Singer, they would," she said. "That they can't get away with."

Taking a vote

In another decision, Fleetwood Mac -- long considered a rock group by many -- saw its latest album "The Dance" listed under pop after the NARAS group listened to it.

"If you're a rock band, then go make a rock album," Greene said. "Don't come in here with a pop album and just because you were a rock band 10 or 15 years ago expect anybody to view you in the same way."

McLachlan

Uncertainty over where to place female singer-songwriters like Fiona Apple, Shawn Colvin and Jewel came to a head over Sarah McLachlan's song "Building a Mystery."

"There was a vote taken and it ended up in pop, and some people to this day will contend that it really is a more rock performance. But at some moment in time, the hands have to go up and you have to make that kind of a decision," Greene explained.

All in all, however, NARAS is trying to be more careful in the wake of the Milli Vanilli fiasco of 1989. As you may recall, those "best new artists" had to give their award back when it was discovered that they didn't do their own singing.