Whether or not you happen to enjoy the music genre of rock (which almost any sane person does), you must by now have come to the realization that the overwhelming majority of the band members are male. In fact nearly all the major bands are all male. The female presence in Rock music is surprisingly lacking.
The gender mixed rock groups came around during the British invasion of the mid 1960’s with Jefferson Airplane, but who did not become widely recognized until the late sixties. The first all female rock band was Joan Jett’s The Runaways in 1975. As for the Runaways, interestingly they are a rather hard rock band. This may have been done to give the new raw edge of an “all girl” band in the music scene. If they are breaking into a formerly male only field, they may as well make a name for themselves. It wasn’t until the 19980’s that all female bands we able to reach the Billboard charts such as The Go-Go’s and The Bangles. At this time female bands were becoming less of a novelty and being taken more seriously as they should have been.
In the modern day there is only one all girl band that I can think of, The Donnas. There are quite a few that are of mixed gender, and just to name a few; Evanescence, No Doubt, and The White Stripes. The presence of women in rock music has been expanding, but is far below anything more than a handful. While just four named here doesn’t cover all of them, just think of all of the all male bands that are out there. Do Red Hot Chili Peppers, Foo Fighters, Led Zeppelin, Queen, The Rolling Stones, or The Beatles come to mind? It appears that the all male bands are really the ones that attain lasting success. Mixed gender groups like Blondie can also have long lasting implications, but the female bands just kind of fall by the wayside for the most part.
Could it be that rock music is not “feminine” enough to be an accepted practice for Western women to take part in the industry? Pop music and country music have quite a proliferation of female artists, and if you remember what I said Joan Jett’s The Runaways were a hard rock band, possibly it is so because the girls needed to be just like the boys or more so to fit in. I believe that this trend of rock music not being feminine is changing. If we look a The Donnas we can see that they do not have a forced image of who they are, they are women who enjoy creating and playing rock music. If anything The Donnas use their femininity as a marketing tool for themselves.
Even today I think most people feel that all girl bands are a novelty, and not taken too seriously. With the changing nature of the industry, hopefully more of these all girl bands will make it to the main stream media, as well as the continuing expansion of mixed gender bands.
2 comments:
I agree with this post, and that there are only a few rock bands who have lead female singers. You mentioned Evanescence and No Doubt, and the only other ones I know of are Lacuna Coil, Flyleaf, and Paramore. What I noticed was that each other these groups have 3-4 guys and only 1 girl who is always the lead singer. They also tend to be very gorgeous and the "gothic" type. I feel that female singers in rock bands is starting to become more widespread, however there are not too many female guitarists/drummers I can think of besides White Stripes. I know that these female lead singers are getting more popular because of both their looks and their singing, because many people I know are always talking about how good Paramore and Lacuna Coil songs are. Hopefully this trend continues so that the rock genre will start to have more diversity in it.
The 90’s was a great time for female rock musicians. In fact, that was the start of a movement called the Riot Grrrls (which I spoke about a little in class tonight). Bands like Bikini Kill, Free Kitten, L7 and Sleater-Kinney etc. were all female or female fronted bands who came to the forefront of rock during that period. While they may not have achieved the mainstream success of The Donnas, they were critically acclaimed. Also, the most interesting thing about the Riot Grrls is how they helped to launch what is called the 3rd wave of feminism – the post women’s liberation feminism focused more on the individual’s needs rather than that of the collective. If you are interested in this kind of thing, I can recommend the book Riot Grrrl: Revolution Girl Style Now!
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