It’s A Girl!
This assignment asks us to analyse music journalism in reference to women in rock music. The chapter “It’s A Girl!” within the book “Gender in the Music Industry” highlights the media’s effects of stereotyping and discriminating against female rock musicians;
“In order to make an article appear newsworthy reporters often describe female artists as groundbreaking practitioners in a male field. While the article may refer back to a small number if female centred bands who have previously been visible within this field (often cited are the Go-Gos, Blondie and The Pretenders), the implication is that a current group of female musicians has now emerged to offer a fresh challenge to a masculine discourse.”
Additionally, this chapter is informative through the amount of research Marion Leonard, the author of this book has provided. Within the article, “Rebel Yell”, composed by Liz Evans, female-centred indie bands are declraed as a “generation of female musicians [who have] arrived; women and girls who are not content with taking a back seat to their leather-clad, ego-touting borthers. To prove it, they’re picking up guitars and and drumsticks and raising a particularly female kind of hell.”
Women are recoginsed as being members of the rock culture, although it is through music journalism and press that female musicians are somewhat ignored of their lyricism and musicality. The example of 1995’s edition of Everywoman magazine highlights a feature article titled ” Babes in Boyland” which questionned “are women finally carving a place for themselves in the rock world?” Ten years later, an article in the UK daily paper The Independant stated ” Hold on to your fretb oards-the women’s rock revolution is here. Electric guitar, once the preserve of sweaty lads in leather jackets, are now cluttering up female bedrooms too!”
Kim Deal, a member of the 1990’s rock band The PIxies replies to the media’s negative influence upon women in rock through stating “Since The Pixies I’ve been doing interviews since 1986… This is the question I hate: ‘ What about the resurgence of women in rock now?’ I get asked that about every six months, or not even every six months, about every three months I get asked about the resurgence of women in rock.”
The key point within the article is that it is articles like the ones mentioned within this chapter, which regularly “rediscover” women performers, that work against the normalisation of women working within rock.
Reference:
Leonard, M., It’s A Girl: Gender In the Music Industry; Rock, Discourse and Girl Power, Ashgate Publushing Limitedm England, 1988
-Ellie
