This is a good point, thanks for making it. I thought of "Folsom Prison Blues" by Johnny Cash as a counterexample since in that song the victim is a man, but t

This is a good point, thanks for making it. I thought of "Folsom Prison Blues" by Johnny Cash as a counterexample since in that song the victim is a man, but then thought of "Cocaine Blues" by Cash which has a female victim. "Cocaine Blues" is mainly about drug use with the man killing his cheating wife treated as a minor detail. I thought Cash wrote the song and so it wouldn't count as a murder ballad if we say murder ballads have to be folk songs, however it turns out Cash just did a famous cover of the song written by T. J. "Red" Arnall and recorded by Arnall probably in 1947 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocaine_Blues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocaine_Blues, which was in turn based on an American folk song "Little Sadie" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Sadie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Sadie. So "Cocaine Blues" is a murder ballad in the classic sense, as well as an example of centering the man as you say.