WHY ARE THERE SO MANY FEMALE BANDS NOW?
“I say to the Leader of the Opposition I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. I will not. And the Government will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. Not now, not ever. The Leader of the Opposition says that people who hold sexist views and who are misogynists are not appropriate for high office. Well I hope the Leader of the Opposition has got a piece of paper and he is writing out his resignation. Because if he wants to know what misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn't need a motion in the House of Representatives, he needs a mirror. That's what he needs.”
Not my words, but the words of Julia Gillard, the Australian PM in 2012, indeed words that have become so famous that Barack Obama and his cabinet used to watch the speech from which they were taken to cheer themselves up. And it got me thinking. My perception is that there is a much greater female representation in music in 2024, which is the date of this episode. In 2023 Taylor Swift was Time magazine’s Person Of The Year. Her tours sell out instantly, as do those of Beyonce, Ariana Grande and other female artists. But how much have things really changed in the music industry?
It's time to take a medium-sized dive.
A MEDIUM-SIZED DIVE
I have another podcast called Sombrero Fallout. It’s essentially an alternative radio station where I pick a theme, choose some tracks and blether on in between times. The reason I bring this up here, other than the opportunistic self-publicity, is because each year I do a Best of the Year just gone segment, called the Festive Forthy. Do you want to know how many of the forty songs had a female singer in 2023?
Answer. Twenty nine out of forty.
So, now let’s go back to the NME Writers All-Time Top 100 Albums chosen in 1974. Out of the 100 albums, how many could broadly be described as female.
Answer, 4. And Joni Mitchell appears twice, so really 3. As for black women, well, there’s Aretha Franklin’s Greatest Hits album at #65, who’s doing some heavy lifting, all right and as for female groups, a big fat zero.
But glancing through NME’s end of year albums lists in the early years of the 2020s, without being ultra-scientific about it, it pans out at roughly 50/50 male/female representation.
Which goes to show that I’m more woke than the NME. But it also shows that the whole world has somewhere some time become more accepting of females in music. What exactly happened?
HANG ON, THE WORLD HASN’T CHANGED AT ALL – OR HAS IT?
Actually, it’s complicated.
Because there’s the inconvenient truth of the 2022 annual University of Southern California Annenberg Inclusion Initiative report. And this reveals that yes, the amount of top-selling female artists in the US is increasing, the proportion of female songwriters making any commercial impact is still dismal. While the amount of women represented in Billboard’s year-end Hot 100 chart – which tallies the most commercially successful songs of the year – is at 30%, only 14% of songwritersrepresented on the chart were women. And of the 232 producers represented on the year-end chart, only 8 were women, while one producer was non-binary.
I haven’t drilled down on other major music markets outside the USA. I’m going to go with a hunch that it may not be that different – although if you know otherwise, I’d be delighted to hear from you.
So, there seems to be a significant disparity between front of house and the back end is the first thing to say. So why did those Best Of charts change so much, if the number of women working in the industry is still so low? Let’s start with the cultural shifts in society.
CULTURAL SHIFTS HAVE MADE FEMALE MUSIC MORE ACCEPTABLE
I don’t really think I’m telling you anything you don’t know here. Welcome to the post-MeToo world. And a good thing too. We weren’t talking about diversity, gender pay gaps and the male gaze even ten years ago and now we are. There are macro-cultural trends which have played into female music representation.
In fact, women have always been reasonably well represented in pop and country. In rock, to use a broad term, far less so, and even in indie rock, which you’d think would be more diverse, still not great historically. So, what happened? It’s worth breaking this down into a few taxi stops along the way.
Late 70s punk was about challenging the status quo – and also Status Quo – so women were tentatively encouraged to enter the boys’ club of 1970s popular music. In alternative rock there were the first wave female icons such as Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde, The Slits, Pauline Murray, The Raincoats, The Au Pairs, Debbie Harry and Siouxsie.
In Britain, two other movements are worthy of mention. The C86 scene was notably inclusive, while shoegaze in the late 80s/early 90s also featured many more female-focused groups.
Then in the 90s in the US the Riot Grrrl movement forefronted women resting as it did on concepts from third-wave feminism. The more tuneful end of the Riot Grrl spectrum then segued into the indie-rock world, with its melodic guitar, rooted bass, and spunky lyricism. Sleater-Kinney is the gateway band.
Next though let’s put a particular social media platform under the microscope.
THE MYSPACE PHENOMENON
Fast forward a decade or more, but brake before we get to the Facebook hegemony. Remember MySpace?
It was actually more than pre-Facebook and more like a forerunner to Soundcloud. What it transformed was music distribution. Not only did artists have the tools to upload their own music, but they could do so on a platform with a built-in social sharing element.
Millionaires, Lily Allen, Kate Nash, Lana Del Rey, Marina and the Diamonds—all these artists got their start on MySpace. Some of them also saw their primary career successes on the platform. By enabling all of these female artists to distribute their music on a wider scale, their audiences found them in a cult following like never before. Suddenly, “alternative” meant something totally different. And these developments in technology coincided with women starting to dominate the more purely rock side of the alternative world, too with bands like Metric and Paramore.
Significantly all this happened without the filter of the old world male-dominated production side, thus giving license for female artists to step up and express themselves without, dare I say it, the custodial eye of the patriarchy.
So, respect to Myspace, punchline for a hundred stand up comedians’ gags. We thank you for your service. Next let’s move from technology to the wider economy.
THE ECONOMY
In the 1960s people woke up to the fact that a new teenage demographic had, for the first time, money in their pocket from part-time jobs and from the affluence that was the consequence of the post-war boom. So, they created a world in which these young people could be parted from their money and it became the Swinging Sixties. The Rest Is History podcast has two or three very good episodes on this phenomenon, if you’re interested.
Similarly, over the last few years, record labels and promoters are once again placing a higher emphasis on signing female artists because, just as in the ‘60s, young girls and women are seen as representing a huge economic opportunity. And they’ve been targeted because they wrap their identities around the lives, attitudes and behaviours of these women.
Talking of which, let’s next take a closer look at the identity cohorts which have created a world in which the female artists has risen to prominence.
SOCIALLY MANAGED TRIBES
Amongst fans of female artists we now have the Beyhive, Swifties, the Daydreamers, the Bell-ieve, the Bardie Gang, the Jepsies, the Fighters, the Tribe, the Love, the Katycats, the Little Monsters, the Livies and the Pharbz. The list goes on and is ever expanding. This demographic has indeed proved to be extremely loyal and willing to buy loads of merch and tickets. Even better for record companies they’re organic and self-managing, so the companies don’t have to spend money on them.
This also explains why the old hard-wired world of back-end production remains fiercely patriarchal. There’s no equivalent of a Beyhive in the world of production. At least not yet.
CULT FEMALE BANDS ARE NOW MORE VISIBLE AND MORE RELATABLE
I was watching a football podcast the other day in which a young woman was explaining that when she was growing up she wanted be Juusi Jaaskelainen, a fairly obscure Finnish goalkeeper who played for Bolton Wanderers. Just to flip that it on its head a moment, just imagine a young lad having for his role model a Finnish female goalkeeper.
Similarly young women growing up now are surrounded by aspirational females in music, so the trend becomes self perpetuating. It’s not weird or niche any longer.
One cannot underestimate how important it is for young people to have strong visible role models. Here’s kim Gordon on the obscure British indie group, The Raincoats.
As a teenager I was most inspired by the timbre of the music, the simultaneously complex, cacophonous, but also very catchy combination of melodies, punctuated by a violin no less! Maybe there was room for me as a classically trained trumpeter in a punk band after all!
In my 20s, it was the sense of joy and freedom in the music which really spoke to me. There was no need to follow traditional song structures or strict tempos. There was a sense of emotion that dictated where the music needed to go.
In my 30s The Raincoats helped shaped my view of feminism, not just through their powerfully topical lyrics, but also by questioning and annihilating the masculine assumptions of rock and roll and punk music. They showed me that vulnerability and fragility could be a strength.
An inspiring note on which to draw to a close.
SUMMARY
So, there you have it. 5 instant expert opinions for you on why there are more female bands these days. To sum up:-
1. There may be more female bands about, but behind the scenes in the music industry, things may not have changed that much.
2. Cultural shifts have certainly made female music more acceptable.
3. MySpace was a critical catalyst in the empowerment of female musicians.
4. Record labels have identified teenage girls again, as they did nin the 60s, and found new ways to part them from their cash.
5. Social tribes have greatly helped in the rise of female-centric music.
6. More female bands create a virtuous circle for emerging female musicians to emulate and connect with.