IT'S LADIES NIGHT @ THE GRAMMY AWARDS 2010!

Get ready for some hot girl-on-girl-on-girl action at tonight's Grammy Awards.
Of the stars with a shot at sweeping the three top categories on the show — which airs between 8 and 11:30 p.m. on CBS — all boast double X chromosomes.

Vying for Album, Song and Record of the Year honors are fierce R&B diva Beyoncé, faux-country teen star Taylor Swift and dance-floor freak show Lady Gaga.

There's even a key fourth woman up in two of the top three slots (Album and Record): Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas.

The fact that gender played such a big part in choosing the top candidates speaks to more than just the particular work these women released in the last year.

It proves that estrogen fuels much of what's left of the music industry itself. More, it underscores the red-alert level of anxiety experienced by the entire business.

As illegal downloading continues to erode CD sales (while, ironically, escalating actual music consumption), the industry has had to choose more carefully who to back with its bucks. At the same time, the infinite choices provided by the Internet have undermined the industry's attempts to sustain mass-market stars, to the benefit of smaller indie labels. Which means the major companies have to think even harder about who has the goods to endure as the last true panmedia stars.

The thinking goes something like this: Female artists — with their endless hair, makeup and clothing adornments, not to mention the assertive characters they need to survive in a male-dominated world — make more fetching, changeable and interesting icons than most of their male counterparts. (Adam Lambert to the contrary.)

Acts like the Dave Matthews Band, Green Day and U2 may impress no end in the realm of music. But they lack the tricked-out glamour and sizzle that stars like Beyoncé and Gaga can use to get on fashion and lifestyle magazine covers, as well as to land on the most coveted seat on the planet: across from Oprah.

As the general media lose interest in actual music while gaining interest in what's garish, record companies need singers with big enough backstories and attitudes to snag the most eyes and ears.

That explains why the lone males we see in the top Grammy categories this time are the rather frumpy Matthews & Co. (up for Album of the Year) and, for some token man candy, Kings of Leon (up for Song and Record).

But if this year's big categories saved at least a seat for males, it's telling that they haven't made equal room for a group voters normally make sure to include: arty ringers.

For years, the Grammys have staged an elaborate game of bait-and-switch with the nominees. Each December, they make a grand gesture of showering the most nominations on someone who just hit the chart jackpot — like Lil Wayne last year or Mariah Carey during her "Emancipation of Mimi" comeback reign.

Then, on awards night, artier types sneak in from behind to seize the most valued honors.

The past decade or so has seen this pattern time and time again, as the starriest awards have gone to lower-selling, but more credible, performers like Herbie Hancock (for his tribute to Joni Mitchell), Dylan (for "Time Out of Mind"), Steely Dan (for "Two Against Nature") and Shawn Colvin (for "A Few Small Repairs").

Even last year, the most honored work turned out to be a hushed and strange collaboration between Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, rather than anything by the fan-friendly Lil Wayne.

This year, for the first time, there's no chance of such a move taking place. True, Maxwell — up for Song of the Year — and Kings of Leon rate as both smarter and somewhat less commercial than the other contenders.

But they're hardly in the ultra-quirky company of Hancock's jazz CD or the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" ode to Americana, which snagged the top prizes in another recent year.

This escalating obsession with commerciality again highlights the industry's sweaty brow — its need to rally around the few genuine megastars it has left.

Of course, the question then becomes, who among the three stars still standing — Beyoncé, Gaga or Swift — has the goods to pull off the ultimate win?

I think Swift — and for a classic Grammy reason.

While glamour and media appeal may have shaped all this year's top nominees, the most song-oriented singer will take the day.

The Grammys have always favored songcraft over image — a mind-set that greatly disfavors Gaga. After all, without image, she'd be just another disco dolly playing dance clubs at 4 a.m. in front of gay men zonked out of their minds on Ecstasy.

Beyoncé's album "I Am ... Sasha Fierce" may be the most varied, musical and pop CD of her career. But it's still a high-gloss project full of distracting flash.

By that measure, Swift looks like an unwashed hippie waif. Not that her album lacks its own kind of slick packaging and smart marketing. But the "official story" on Swift has done a yeoman's job of painting her as a pure and naive 20-year-old who conceived her songs in her lonely bedroom as deep responses to rejection.

Right.

While that whitewashed version will probably snow the Grammy voters, in reality Swift has been groomed for the stage practically since birth. More, her cherished tales of cute boys snubbing her seem downright laughable given her tousle-haired beauty.

The marveling over Swift as an alleged prodigy, based on her having recorded her first self-penned songs when she was just 17, isn't justified, either. The reason she hit it so big wasn't because she wrote and sang like someone more mature than her age, but because she sounded exactly like someone her age. That's what made so many kids relate to her in the first place.

Not that there's anything wrong with that — at least not when we're talking about an openly goofy, teenybop star like Miley Cyrus. But nobody's dim enough to nominate Cyrus for a mantel full of Grammys.

Then again, if things keep going south for the barely breathing music industry, maybe next year someone will.