Britney Spears? A female ROCK icon?
I found an online article which shows the significant women of rock music, ranging from the 1950’s up until the modern day female rock musician. Along this timeline, I came across familiar names and bands including Janis Joplin, Patti Smith, Deborah Harry and Joan Jet. As the rock culture entered into the new millenium i noticed something quite bizarre. Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson headline 2000’s most reknowned rock female musicians.
Sure, Britney may show some of the negative signs of being a “rock” artist (according to the media); drug abuse, depression, DUI etc, but is she a rock musician?
Has the rock culture become subjected to mainstream music & therefore allowing room for “pop” icons to fall into the rock characterisation?
-Ellie
Pop Feminist said,
May 28, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Absolutely! Rock and pop are totally sociological categories, not musicological. Here’s a link to a brief post I wrote on the topic if you’d care to read it:
http://popfeminist.blogspot.com/2008/05/queen-of-rock-n-roll.html
I consider the division between rock and pop to be a gendered one, and by bringing in such pop figures as Simpson and Spears (while perhaps not great artistic representatives of women in music), kind of castrates the circle-jerk, no?
Thanks for writing about this. I love your blog!