The Female-Fronted "Genre"
Hi! Welcome to our first proper Girls To The Front newsletter - thanks so much for subscribing. Today we’re diving into inclusion in music and how we can go about getting it right.
“Rock ‘n’ roll is sexual and that’s why people have a problem with girls playing rock ‘n’ roll, because basically you’re saying, ‘okay, girls have to talk about sex’ and people are uncomfortable with that.”
I stumbled upon this quote on TikTok. An interview with Joan Jett for a documentary called Punk appeared on my feed, where she spoke about the relationship between sex and rock music. “Once you put on that guitar… Yeah, I really feel it. My crotch is up against the wood,” she continued. “Pussy to the wood!”
What she said here really stuck with me, because she’s so right. Think back to some of the first rock songs you heard growing up; I recall one’s such as Pour Some Sugar On Me and Whole Lotta Love. Even when songs don’t have obvious sexual lyrics, there’s often a sexual energy carried throughout rock music, and it makes people act bizarre.
With it originating as a male dominated genre, it became a place for men to be outrageous, unhinged, domineering and rebellious. Everyone and their nan has probably heard of the phrase ‘sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll’, and when women started picking up guitars and playing rock, people were perplexed.
And still to this day, people don’t seem to know how to respond to women expressing themselves in rock, particularly when the music they create is empowering and strong. It tends to go one of two ways: People think rock isn’t for women, or that they shouldn't belong there. They’re seen as ‘posers’ and people believe that their passion is merely something done for ‘male attention’. Or, they may be happy for women to be there, but they don’t know how to respond to it so they just end up saying and doing creepy sh*t.
And where there aren’t outright perverted comments, rape threats or people shouting “Great tits!” whilst a woman is performing (which happened to the lovely Debbie of Heriot just a couple of weeks ago), there’s still a weird culture of pigeonholing and pedestals. As more and more women became prominent in our scene, the term “female-fronted” appeared, and essentially became its own genre. This allowed people to group women together, when their music sounded nothing alike. If everyone reading this newsletter had to have one shot for every time a band with a female member had ever got compared to Paramore, we’d all be very drunk right now. Even Hayley Williams herself spoke of playing Warped Tour and being placed one a “women only” stage.
It’s a tricky, fine line between celebrating inclusion and making it weird. The people behind that idea might have thought they were doing something good (and we shouldn’t shame people for trying) but it continues to separate us as “other”, perpetuating the idea that we don’t really belong here, or we’re something to marvel at like circus freaks because there’s boobs involved. And the same happens with queer people and people of colour too.
It seems with cancel culture rising alongside inclusion, people are afraid of getting it right. But the key is in listening to those people themselves. As a woman, I know I wouldn’t like being placed on a women’s only stage at a festival where men are performing too. But I would like the organisers of that festival to make sure their line up is diverse.
“Is that not just box-ticking, Rachel?” – Nope! Because the reality is marginalised and oppressed people aren’t going to get the same support and representation as they grow as artists, but that doesn’t mean they’re not as good as some of the biggest bands out there. If you want to showcase great artists and be inclusive, you do have to do some digging.
A lot of young girls are put off from taking up an instrument such as guitar because of the weirdness that follows. Girls are scrutinised and critiqued from the get-go when they get into alternative music, and the internet seems to have made it worse. It’s almost as if people cannot wait to give their opinions and critiques, the same as it is for women interested in video games or sport. All of this oddness means women may not get into learning an instrument until later in their lives or be less likely to share it online or before an audience, giving them a much smaller platform to get noticed.
A lot of what’s been spoken about here may ring true for you or you may be an ally who wants things to change. The way we go about fixing this weirdness is to let women play the same stages and be covered in the same magazines. Let us feel empowered and celebrate our sexuality the same way men do by allowing us to do it on our terms. Bring attention to the issues we face, the activism we’d like to speak on – but know that’s not all we’re here for.
At the end of the day, it all boils down to the music and that should be the main focus.
Would you like to have your say on inclusion and empowerment? Do you have a story you’d like me to share here? Is there an interesting topic you’d like me to write about? Get in touch!
Thanks as always for reading, I’ll be back again next week. For now I’ll leave you with my song of the week and for this one we’re going with some Spiritbox – if you haven’t seen 9-year-old Harper perform this track on America’s Got Talent, you're missing out.
Stay unapologetically loud,
Rachel