Female Radiohead

look at this thread

jesus

Nice counter argument there rkrkrk

yeah, it's very likely that those are the reasons, backstreets. the gender struggle is far from over. Did you know that the british government educates girls in lower health care jobs, (in the 90s) to preserve the class and "other gender" statuses? Well, the did.
So that's probably a reason. Read an article just yesterday about the DJ:ing scene here in gothenburg and how male oriented it is. In the article there was a female dj- duo though. So let's wait another 50 years or so before we get funny and creative girls. Sigh, I wish I was born later when ladies aren't afraid of farting in public when gentlemen are around.

Well, Bjork for example is one of the few modern artists considered a "genius". On each of her records she always pushes the music to new limits and the recognition she has in the music industry is second to no one. There's no artist at the moment more respected than her. Even Thom Yorke learns from Bjork.

Joni Mitchell in the 70s was THE artist and her music was innovative, creative, unique and challenging. In terms of songwriting, she pushed the envelope more than any other artist (male or female, there's no difference) of her time. If the press wasn't so Dylan-centric, she would be considered the greatest recording artist of our century.

And in the 80s we had Kate Bush who made this amazing style of music that no one heard before and no one has ever been able to match.

Not to mention PJ Harvey, Tori Amos, Laura Nyro, Patti Smith etc, all artists who achieved the excellence. Maybe not quite as innovative as the 3 mentioned above, but they are (or were) considered as masters in their field.

I think that, being our culture a bit misogynist by default and history, women always had to do things twice as good as men to get half the credits and half the recognition. The three decade-defining artists of the last 30 years have been all female though. Unfortunately the 70s and their revolutions are gone, and for women it's even harder to get some kind of recognition, or motivation, in a society that is more male-centric than ever.

andy are you implying that there are not woman in music who are awesome? also jp destroyed the "argument" so whatever

or maybe he just meant music as in rock music so yeah, shit's pretty misogynist no doubt

Obviously not, I just thought backstreets deserved a better reply.

im in two minds about this thread

on the one hand its nice that for a change someone has put a bit of thought into a post and tried to get us talking.

but on the other hand his original point is so far away from the truth it is unbelievable and must go down as one of the worst threads of all time.

shenandoah has summed it up pretty nicely but going back even further from the artists he mentions you have the likes of aretha franklin, billie holiday, dusty springfield etc all smashing it up and being highly influential.

then youve got in terms of the one instrument someone like mo tucker who has had shitloads try and mimick her style.

joanna newsom more recently will be held in very high esteem for future generations i feel and then theres the two kims - deal and gordon who are probably two of the best musicians of the 90s.

so everyone is agreeing then that backstreets theory was right. good.

etc. etc.

Yeah but considering 50% of the population is female it's a bit strange that there have not been more great female artists. If everybody on here was to list their top 100 artists of all time I doubt many would have even 10% female artists.

Sure everybody can list a bunch of female artists that are/were good but BackStreets post is still an interesting one that deserves conversation rather than people listing every good female artist of all time as if that is going to give any answers to the thread.

Yeah it's because the female artists who could 'change' music history are often degraded to 'sexy' and provocative by men (Debbie Harry, Cat Power, Joanna Newsom too from that one thread a while back) so their music isn't taken as seriously as it should. And the women who could lift them up end up ignoring them because of this fact, or cause they're too busy finding their own 'sexy' men to listen to.
Hope I'm wrong though.

yup. for every artist mentioned on here, you could easily name 7-8 iconic male artists/bands of similar or higher stature

why is being sexy or provocative a bad thing though?

Well it's not a bad thing, but when the artists are only being mentioned for that then that's wrong.

edit: I said they get 'degraded' as just sexy or provocative and that's what's wrong; although you could argue that the whole being sexy thing is also sexist and demeaning in itself.

I honestly don't think I've read a single article that mentions Debbie Harry that doesn't end up having to state her importance as a sex symbol. Again, I hope I'm wrong but that's the explanation that comes to mind.

to say that it's a 50/50 thing is too simplistic imo. the industry is still ridiculously male dominated for a variety of reasons, both institutional and sociological (being in a band, performing music like that is a pretty male activity if you think about it in biological terms, like bird song). i don't think you can say well the population is 50% female and rights-wise things are relatively equal nowadays so why aren't there as many genre-smashing female artists.

if you look at what percentage of female acts would be considered revolutionary measured against the total amount of female acts, i reckon the proportion would be about the same as there are revolutionary male acts compared to the total male acts.