Listening to Female Artists

What’s sexism and what’s just inherent music taste?

Skewed Gender Ratios

Until around eighth grade, I loved pop and/or female-associated music. Hearing “Poker Face” for the first time in fifth grade sparked something in me, like I couldn’t have imagined music could sound like that. (It came out when I was in fourth grade, but I was always behind the curve).

As I grew older, however, songs being of the pop genre, or just too “feminine,” almost always meant I scorned them. Too childish, evocative of the Disney Channel stars I listened to in elementary school. Or just not “serious” enough.

I began to echo a lot of my dad’s tastes in classic rock, alongside (mostly male) indie rock/alternative artists and a couple standout “acceptable” female artists — Florence + the Machine and Kate Bush. They are both crazy talented singers and songwriters, but part of what allowed me to recognize this talent and take them seriously was how they were generally respected by men and women alike and didn’t overtly portray themselves as sexual. They were, in my eyes, the musical equivalent of “not like other girls.”

So unsurprisingly, my Spotify Top 100 Songs of 2016, the year I graduated high school, was pretty skewed in favor of men. Counting mixed-gender bands/collaborations as 0.5, only 7.5% of my songs were by female artists (mostly thanks to Florence + the Machine).

My listening habits in high school may have been more directly rooted in sexism, but even when I became aware of my male-oriented listening and more appreciative of pop music as well as female and non-binary artists in college, I still usually gravitated towards male artists, because they were usually the ones being recommended, uplifted, and talked about. It took effort and time to seek out a wide array of female artists, as well as determination to not care what others, particularly men, thought.

Accordingly, 80.5% of my top 100 songs were from female artists in 2020. A lot of that was just playing catch-up to what those with similar music tastes but less internalized sexism had been listening to a while ago — Lorde, Lana del Rey, Britney Spears, Grimes.

On one hand, it was kind of a blessing. There was a whole world out there of music I love that was almost entirely untouched. Still, I feel like I missed something from being so close-minded for years.

I’m not asking anyone to count out their own stats or create a quota for female singers. Some songs do evoke more masculine or feminine associations, and it makes sense your gender identity would align at least somewhat with music that feels relatable and affirming.

And with so much under the male gaze, it can be refreshing to have content that seems specifically geared towards women. A friend told me one of the reasons Mamma Mia 2 was her favorite movie was that it felt created for a female audience, unapologetic in its being a “chick flick” and not trying to appeal to men.

Still, even if music is “for men,” that’s not an automatic barrier for me and many other women. I love Van Halen and Jimi Hendrix, artists that largely skew towards male listeners. I’ll sometimes even listen to music that lyrically is a little hostile or misogynistic to women. Because women are expected to, and do, engage with content centering male experiences, whereas it’s presumed by men and women that boys don’t want to hear about female experiences, which is a self-fulfilling prophecy of boys and men generally not seeking them out.

I don’t want to overgeneralize, however. I reached out to my male best friend Gino with a few questions; he used to listen to far more male than female artists, but in the past couple years, I’ve noticed him listening to several female pop singers. Part of why I wanted his input stemmed from my assumption that as a guy, he probably faced more shaming as well as challenges to his masculinity when listening to some of the artists he likes, such as LOONA or Charli XCX.

However, to my pleasant surprise, he didn’t feel like he or the artists had been shamed by anyone. That’s not to argue that other men don’t face such reactions, and I can think of at least a couple TV shows off the top of my head where men are shamed for liking “girly” singers, but hearing that more men are embracing, or at least accepting, such music made me cautiously optimistic.

Uneven Playing Field

However, despite some changing attitudes, artists who appeal to female audiences are less likely to be taken seriously than other musicians, affecting how they are perceived and who listens to them. “Even though [Harry] Styles’ solo debut was clearly more indebted to David Bowie and Queen than Michael Jackson and ABBA, he was still very much ‘Harry Styles of One Direction’” and is continually ignored by mainstream rock radio.

Part of this can be attributed to Styles’ marketing team, which isn’t promoting his songs to rock or alternative radio. But it’s worth wondering: if he weren’t associated with a boy band beloved by teenage girls, maybe if he were less effeminate, wouldn’t Columbia Records see a male singer with “classic rock influences, [a] full-band setup, and predominantly guitar- and piano-driven songs” as a natural for rock radio? Particularly in an era where mainstream rock encompasses more subgenres than it used to.

And female pop singers are reduced to their sexuality more than their male counterparts. Taylor Swift is somehow still a punchline for having had several monogamous relationships with consenting adults. Contrastingly, most male singers have had their images largely untouched by acts of sexual assault and abuse, beyond the most egregious examples like R. Kelly and Michael Jackson. I love David Bowie, but not the culture that shrugged off or even embraced him, and so many other beloved male stars, committing statutory rape.

“You see, if I was a guy, and I was sitting here with a cigarette in my hand, grabbing my crotch and talking about how I make music ’cause I love fast cars and fucking girls, you’d call me a rock star. But when I do it in my music and in my videos, because I’m a female, because I make pop music, you’re judgmental, and you say that it is distracting. I’m just a rock star.” — Lady Gaga, 2009 interview

Teenage Girls’ Cultural Capital

Music loved by girls and women shouldn’t be pilloried for a simple reason — people deserve to enjoy what they like, if it’s not hurting anyone. But it’s also wrong to assume that their music is irredeemably removed from critical acclaim. Cultural standards are always changing, transforming perception over what is quality and what is just a trend.

But a constant is that teenage girls are one of the most powerful groups of trendsetters, and not just in music. Teenage girls often dictate what brands are successful, even gender-neutral ones like Nike, and are invested in celebrities originally derided for being silly and unserious before gaining mainstream, male approval (e.g. Harry Styles, Robert Pattinson).

Journalist Paul Johnson dismissed Beatles fangirls, expressing that “those who flock round the Beatles, who scream themselves into hysteria, whose vacant faces flicker over the TV screen, are the least fortunate of their generation, the dull, the idle, the failures.” He wasn’t the only one to think of the Beatles as just a boy band during that time. Now, however, their beloved status by older men in particular has lent them much more respectability. Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra were also artists initially not taken as seriously when they were associated with a younger and excitable female audience.

Intersectionality

I’m not trying to uphold myself as the ideal “woke” music standard, especially because about 70% of my top songs last year were from white artists. And gravitating towards Grimes, who is partnered with billionaire Elon Musk, is in no way more subversive than listening to an emerging indigenous male artist, for instance. But no one else combines ethereal with catchy like Grimes does; she’s like a Kate Bush I can bop my head to.

But more importantly, the act of trying to impose strict race, class, and gender quotas in listening habits would get frustrating in its limitations and largely meaningless in its impact. I definitely am not advising delineating a certain percentage of female, or non-white, artists in your playlists as “good” or “bad.” However, it may be worth taking an honest look and evaluating whether there are biases keeping you from engaging with female and non-white artists, or any genres that they are associated with.

Obviously though, don’t listen to music that makes you feel uncomfortable. And different identities will define discomfort differently. As a cis person, I wouldn’t have initially thought of gender dysphoria playing a role in steering transmasculine people towards male-associated music.

But recently, my transmasculine sibling Jenna told me about how they watched a TikTok in which a transmasculine individual explained how listening to MARINA gave them dysphoria. Her female-oriented pop songs evoked feelings of partaking in femininity for the TikTok creator.

“Hearing that made me think — is that a partial reason why I don’t listen to many female artists as a transmasculine individual? What does it mean now that I’m listening to more female artists? Am I becoming more comfortable in expressing femininity as I pursue my transition? Whatever the answer is, I’m glad I’m getting to a point where I can celebrate female artists more.” — Jenna

I felt a little guilty hearing my sibling say that; I had continually prodded them to listen to more women. While Jenna seems to hold no resentment and credits me with the recommendations of many of the female artists they’ve been listening to and enjoying, I shouldn’t have been so prescriptive when listening habits are often reflective of identity, sometimes one I don’t wholly understand.

Moving Forward

Although we like to imagine gender equality on a consistent upward trend, a 2018 BBC study indicated the opposite for chart-toppers. “Ninety-one men or all-male groups were credited on the Official Chart Company’s top 100 most popular songs of 2018 — compared with 30 female acts.” In comparison, in 2008, 59 of the top 100 songs were credited to male acts and 35 were credited to female acts, reflecting a rise in collaborations, often male-centered.

It’s disappointing to see that overwhelmingly, women’s voices, quite literally, were not as valued unless accompanied by a man’s.

But listening to more women also shouldn’t be seen as some act of charity or activism. Women are roughly 50% of the population and create music of immense quality. No one should feel like what they listen to has to be split totally evenly among gender lines, but I know from experience that unequivocally and immediately dismissing female musicians is a loss to the person overlooking them more than anyone else.