22nd
blog comments powered by Disqus
On and On: The Muffs (1995)
I cannot begin to estimate the amount of hours of my life I’ve spent flipping through records. Record stores, record shows, thrift shops, garage sales, flea markets – I’ve been there. Well, last Sunday I was flipping through records at an antique fair and overheard the following conversation between two dad-looking men:
Dad One: I mean, could you imagine if she was even just slightly into this? How cool would that be? To have her here, looking through records with me?
Dad Two: Yeah, I’ll come home all excited to show my wife what I bought and she’ll be all dismissive.
It was a little sad, hearing two men wish that they could share their happiness with the women they love, but then I can’t really blame the ladies. For all of the hours I’ve spent looking through records, I can tell you – these spaces are almost exclusively occupied with the Y-chromosome carrying members of society. And usually, they’re the really creepy, obsessive types, apt to lasciviously leer at girls. Records are somehow a guy thing, an alternative to sports and cars (and girls?) for pasty, unathletic boys. But wait, isn’t music universal? For boys and girls?
Well, let’s look at this week’s music charts for Last.fm, charting the listening habits of over 30 million worldwide users:
1. Radiohead, 2. Coldplay, 3. The Beatles, 4. The Killers, 5. Muse, 6. Metallica, 7. Red Hot Chili Peppers, 8. Kings of Leon, 9. Nirvana, 10. Linkin Park
Okay, there’s the top ten. Not a woman to be seen nor heard. Let’s keep going.
11. Pink Floyd, 12. U2, 13. MGMT, 14. Lady GaGa
Ah, a woman! But perhaps Lady GaGa, whom I’ve seen in outfits that would prevent her from entering a 7-11, is not the exemplary female artist that I’m looking for. Let’s keep going.
15. Oasis, 16. Foo Fighters, 17. Death Cab For Cutie, 18. System of a Down, 19. Franz Ferdinand, 20. Depeche Mode, 21. Green Day, 22. Queen, 23. Led Zeppelin, 24. Kanye West, 25. Bob Dylan, 26. Daft Punk, 27. Placebo, 28. Arctic Monkeys, 29. Bloc Party, 30. Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Okay! Now we’ve got two women in the top 30 artists – Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Karen Orzolek and Lady Gaga. If you were to put all of these bands in a room, these two women would (unfortunately) be in the company of 103 men. In fact, I counted approximately 102 individual women musicians in all of Last.fm’s top 400 bands/artists. Again, to put this into perspective, let’s transcend time and space and put all of these musicians into a room. Those 102 women would be in the company of approximately 997 men. In other words, women make up about 9.3% of Last.fm’s top 400 artists. (And how many of these women have felt the need to exploit their sexuality in order to be heard? (see: Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Fergie))
Why is music such a boy’s club?
My own taste in music is not exempt from criticism. I might listen to more female artists than your average male, but still, I admit, my favorite artists are largely male. The artists I post on this blog are predominately male. Women are such an anomaly in music that they are often treated like a novelty (see: The Donnas, The Go Gos, The Bangles). Or worse, they’re put into the dreaded “female singer-songwriter genre,” as if music written and sung by a woman constitutes it being different from “regular music.”
It comes down to this. We’re raising our boys and girls wrong. Half the population are women. Consequently, half of everything – politicians, bosses, movie directors, Nobel Prize winners, business entrepreneurs, pilots, even prison inmates – should be women. The sexes need to meet in the middle. Boys, you need to stop being so tough and macho. (It’s okay to show your feelings! Be compassionate fathers! Quit objectifying women!) Girls, you need to stop being so mousy. Speak up! Be strong! Take control! And you can start with music because it’s easy. Pick up a guitar and turn it up. Buy a set of drums and let ‘em have it. Rock and roll is the language of rebellion – and it looks as if there’s still plenty for you to rebel against.
