When my friends and I are bored at parties we play what we call the name game. The game has simple rules, we all sit in a circle and someone will start by naming a celebrity, such as Brad Pitt, then the next person in the circle takes that name and uses the first letter of the last name to name another celebrity, such as Peter Fonda. The object of the game is to come up with a name within five seconds or you get kicked out of the circle.
The most recent time we played this game we tried to only use names of female singers. Usually, we never have problems keeping the game going, but for some reason this topic threw a lot of people off. We then got into a discussion about female singers in the music business, or rather the lack there of. We discussed how we though the reason there weren’t many female singers are because music has, for the most part, been pioneered by men.
Writers like Sylvia Plath are all too familiar with fighting to be recognized within a predominantly male occupation. Looking at female authors, especially poets, their work reflects a search for identity. Plath, among other female writers such as Anne Sexton, helped advance the genre known as confessional poetry, a genre that was initiated by men. With this genre, the author discloses personal, intimate, and sometimes unflattering information about themselves. I think the real question here is: Did women advance this genre because they are more comfortable addressing the emotional and being open and honest? What do you think?
Female singers have always been around in the form of girl groups or pop singers, but rarely to they set foot onto the “rock” genre. Bands like the Pixies or the Velvet Underground embody how female vocalists can add a lot to the overall sound of a band. Does the music change if it is written and sung by a woman? Does it make the music less credible to have a female lead singer? Is our decision based on their talent, or their stage presence, or their overall look? Are female singers more scrutinized than their male counterparts?
It seems like women in music are being pigeon held. We all remember in middle school and high school the “new” sensation of female singers and girl groups, but their music was written for them, it was generalized, women then were supposed to fit into a certain image set forth by Britney Spears. Even today, with Hilary Duff and Miley Cirus, we see women’s potential in music only being used to sell an image, not a sound. Is this because women don’t have the same interest in writing music and lyrics as men?
In the past few decades women singers are finally making their presence known. Bands like Garbage, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and I hate to say it, but No Doubt have finally shown that a woman can lead a band and create an image that doesn’t reek of sex. Most recently female lead bands such as Rilo Kiley or Neko Case, Denali or Pretty Girls Make Graves have shown that women can write music and play instruments.
In the end we finally decided our top ten favorite female lead singers, in no particular order:
1. Neko Case
2. Bjork
3. Dolly Parton
4. Debbie Harry
5. Aretha Franklin
6. Etta James
7. Leslie Feist
8. Loretta Lyn
9. Lauryn Hill
10. Fiona Apple
So what do you guys think? Why aren’t there more female lead singers, especially in bands? Do women have a place in modern music?
3 comments:
I found your post very interesting and it really got me thinking about the issue. After putting much thought into the topic I think women do have their own unique place in modern music. I do think it's interesting that they take on more emotional songs and give their audience assurance that it is ok in fact to be open about your feelings and emotions to others. While mentioning the fact that music is "men pioneered" I also see women in today's music addressing how to get over break-ups, getting over men, showing that all they need is their girlfriends, and etc. A couple of songs that show great examples of these would be Willa Ford's "A Toast to Men", or Pink's "You and Your Hand." These songs show how powerful women can be and shows their independence. I think it's a good thing that women in today's modern music are starting to get away from "oh my gosh, my heart is broken, I can't live without him" lyrics to strong lyrics like "Screw him, I'm hot and I can make it just fine by myself." So personally, I don't see the music world dominated by men. I see women showing more than just their emotional side by allowing other women to gain confidence and independence for themselves. A question that I got from reading this post is, does there appear to be a sort of competition in the music scene between masculinity and femininity in various lyrics that we hear? What does this do to us as the audience? How much do we use these competitive lyrics in our own personal relationships?
Lilith Fair?...I am equally surprised by this topic, but not for the reasons of lack of female musicians in your groups discussion, but lack of recognition of many well-known female signers. Was this group made up of all women playing this game? While I admit that men have be given more attention in the early days of rock and roll, but quickly following you have bands in the 60s like the Mamas and Papas, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and Jefferson Airplane to name a few. Also throughout the 70s and 80s there were strong female singers. Has the current generation here already forgotten Madonna and Cyndi Lauper...I thought the '80s were cool again, so I am really surprised neither one of these two made your list. Sinead O'Connor, Tori Amos, and Sarah MacLachlan have had impacts in the music industry in a variety of ways. Social awareness and religious commentary have all been brought to the forefront by female singers...rockers or not. I guess it comes down to what you are more sensitive to. Or, it can be a simple statistical fact. There are more women then men by population. There are more heterosexual women then gay women, so statically speaking there will probably always be a perception that there are more male singers recognized in the music industry simply because of the shear numbers of the female fans. With that final thought in mind, I don't see it really being a conundrum so much now as the article states. There are just a lot of women that focus more on male singers then female singers because of attraction apparently outweighs musical content, which is kind of scary.
The point I was trying to make wasn’t about female singers, it was about female singer-songwriters. And while Lilith Fair is a good point to bring up I feel like only a handful of people in America really appreciated those shows. That being said, probably 98% of the people who went to Lilith Fair were women, so what does that say about how men view women in music? I think all in all it’s safe to say that Lilith Fair was respected by women, but mocked by many men. On the other hand women can attend highly masculine concerts, for instance my girl friends and I have gone to many a hard core shows in our day because our guy friends were in the bands, so we thought we were supporting them. So why can’t male musicians support female musicians?
Another point I’d like to make is that the bands you mention in the earlier parts of the 60s and 70s did include women, but were not exclusively women. I will admit that it is rather difficult to siphon the list of great female singer-songwriters because I have for the most part forgotten about the many great girl groups of the 1950s and early 60s. Many great female singer-songwriters are attached to male dominated bands, Debbie Harry had Blondie, Lauryn Hill had the Fugees, Karen Carpenter had her brother, etc. Do women have to be attached to some male counterpart to succeed? There are of course great solo acts, Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson, Madonna, Beyonce, but there seems to be something more to their popularity, shall I call it sex appeal, or a little something mysterious? To me it just seems like women have to try harder and expose themselves further in order to be accepted.
I really don’t like the reference in the previous post that “Social awareness and religious commentary have all been brought to the forefront by female singers...rockers or not. I guess it comes down to what you are more sensitive.” I mean yeah, Tori Amos is a fighter and will always keep fighting, but is that how we’re measuring a musician’s greatness? Because there are plenty of male singers whose music has no social, political, and especially religious commentary. My question then is, are women expected to go above and beyond what male musicians accomplish because women have more to prove?
What is great about the previous entry though are its final comments. Why are their groupies? Why are women obsessed with the idea of the rock star? Is it purely stereotypical to say that women like the bad boys or is there truth to that statement?
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