Where were all the sisters?
Last week was the long-anticipated count-down of Triple J’s most recent Hottest 100 of all time poll, the first since 1998. One of the most interesting things about the poll, aside from the question of why “#hottest100” didn’t appear in Twitter’s trending topics list (over-zealous spam filter is my guess), is the almost total absence of female artists in the 100 songs. Sure, the two Massive Attack songs that made it (“Unfinished Sympathy” #93 and “Teardrop” #22) both had female vocalists, and there were other bands that had female members—The Dandy Warhols, Smashing Pumpkins, New Order, and The White Stripes—but there were no female solo artists or female-fronted bands. This created quite a bit of consternation on the Twitter feed and on the Triple J forums, and I would like to offer my explanation.
First, we must consider the relative absence of any artists from earlier than the 1980s. Only 18% of the 100 songs came from the 1960s and 1970s, and comprised mostly the usual suspects: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, and so on. Similarly, genre music was completely absent: two hop-hop tracks (Beastie Boys, “Sabotage” #48, and Hilltop Hoods, “The Nosebleed Section” #17), and three electronic acts (Daft Punk, “Around the World” #58, and “One More Time” #96; Gotye, “Hearts a Mess” #77; and The Prodigy “Breathe” #70). There was a little bit of metal (Tool, Nine Inch Nails, System of a Down) but these don’t code particularly strongly as being outside the dominant rock myth.
What this means is that we are not going to see artists as central to the history of rock music as Aretha Franklin, Billie Holliday, or even Janis Joplin. This might be problematic, but it’s not a gender skewing: we didn’t get Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, or even Robert Johnson without whom, as I’ve argued before, rock music wouldn’t exist.
But the absence of women from recent, mainstream rock music is troubling. I want to argue that there are two, interconnected reasons: the first has to do the masculinist nature of the “rock myth”, and the second is the increasing commercialisation of what we used to call “alternative music”.
The classic rock persona is inherently coded as masculine and craftsman-like, as opposed to pop or techno, which is feminised (see Den Tandt 142-43). The only female rock persona I can remember from the hyper-masculine 1970s was Suzi Quattro, and all that leather and the low-slung bass couldn’t have been an accident. And this isn’t only a Triple J thing: Rolling Stone‘s 2008 list of Fifty Greatest Artists of all time contained only nine females women, and most of those were R&B or blues, not rock (Aretha, The Supremes, Etta James, Martha Reeves). The underlying discourses, without being deterministic, tend to channel female performers into genres or styles that code as pop or “soft rock” or whatever the terms are now, and these are styles that are generally not played on Triple J. Obvious exceptions would be artists such as Missy Higgins, Sarah Blasko, or Lily Allen, but the question then becomes whether any of those artists are deserving of a place in an “all time” greatest list.
My second point is about the increasing commercialisation of “alternative music”. I’ve talked about this before (and to answer the rhetorical question at the end that post: “Dammit (Growing Up)” #68). Many commentors and tweeters mentioned the dominance of 1990s rock in the countdown (39%) and much of this was from those bands that formed the core programming of Triple J: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Foo Fighters. But in recent years Triple J’s demographic—and therefore its programming—has drifted more to the commercial end. I suspect that recent converts voting in the poll have never heard of bands like The Breeders, Sonic Youth, or Portishead or artists like Tori Amos or PJ Harvey.
All this looks like some sort of massive patriarchal conspiracy to keep the sisters out of the countdown, but I would read it as an unfortunate coincidence of rock discourses. And there is some classic music that got passed over because of this: OK, I’m not missing Kylie, but whatever you think of her, how can a Hottest of All Time not contain a single Madonna song? Or “All is Full of Love” by Bjork? Or “I Touch Myself” by the Divinyls. The Pretenders?
On the other hand, I’ve just rechecked my own voting list, and guess what? No chicks…
Add your own omissions and observations in the comments.
Reference: Den Tandt, Christophe. “From Craft to Corporate Interfacing: Rock Musicianship in the Age of Music Television and Computer-Programmed Music.” Popular Music and Society 27. 2 (2004): 139-60.
Your Comments
John writes:
A couple of statistical analyses of the list: from News Ltd and Stubborn Mule (Thanks Matt).
Posted: 13 07 2009 - 11:22 | Permanent link to this comment
Catriona writes:
I’m quite happy not to see any Madonna in there (never was a fan) and while I agree with you about Kylie, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see “Where the Wild Roses Grow” in there. (Though that is, like the Massive Attack songs, more a matter of a guest vocalist, and, anyway, I’ve had enough exposure to that song for a lifetime.)
But I was absolutely astonished by the absence of some female acts from the 1990s.
P.J. Harvey was one of them: no “Sheela Na Gig”?
No Hole? Not even “Miss World”?
No Garbage—that one really surprises me.
No Bjork at all—or, for that matter, no Sugarcubes? I know they disbanded in 1992, but “Birthday” is still a fabulous song.
And that’s ignoring The Divinyls, The Breeders, Veruca Salt, Rebecca’s Empire, The Cranberries, Kate Bush (not even via Utah Saints?), Baby Animals . . .
I’m not even going to wonder why Elton John made it in and Janis Joplin didn’t . . .
Posted: 13 07 2009 - 11:47 | Permanent link to this comment
dogpossum writes:
Hey, nice to see you jumping onto the Hottest 100 with such alacrity, John.
I would think that the Hottest 100 reflected the voters’ interests: who were they? Possibly white middle class male teenagers? Also, how was the voting conducted? Just online? That might skew the data…
The Hottest 100 also seems to reflect the marketing strategies of mainstream music companies (and I agree – JJJ has moved away from its ‘alternative’ roots… or perhaps this tells us more about the decline of independent music companies than changes in JJJ programing?). Women artists are less visible/numerous than male (and always have been) in the music industry, particularly as instrumentalists other than vocalists.
One niggly point from this Sistah, John, and it’s probably just a typo:
“Rolling Stone‘s 2008 list of Fifty Greatest Artists of all time contained only nine females, “
if you’re talking about women and girls, then: “Rolling Stone‘s 2008 list of Fifty Greatest Artists of all time contained only nine women, “
‘Females’ is… well, it makes me feel like a scientific study.
Speaking of studies, though, I think it’d be worth pursuing the way masculinity is represented in these sorts of studies. I was interested in your point about feminised pop and techno: a discussion about queering up rock has to happen…
And of course, I wasn’t listening to the Hottest 100, but how many not-white artists were in the list? This of course makes me think that questions about ‘genre music’ are especially important. I’m also interested in Bloc Party at this point…
Posted: 13 07 2009 - 12:09 | Permanent link to this comment
Matthew Smith writes:
In the lead-up to the hottest 100, I was struggling to compile a list of songs in my head but I had The Pretenders and Goldfrapp in mind. I think a very different demographic voted in the all time poll as opposed to the yearly polls. The yearly polls often have different genres and female fronted bands. Having said that, when it comes ROCK, it’s about testosterone and anger a lot of the time which are considered male. I agree that as you head more towards the mainstream, you head towards a more conservative world view that sees the world in gender stereotypes, just tune to a more mainstream radio station and you’ll hear the female DJ’s giggling at all the blokes jokes and making humour about how men never do the washing up and women can’t read maps etc… It follows that women should stick to light and fluffy pop and leave it to the men to rock.
Posted: 13 07 2009 - 12:11 | Permanent link to this comment
Kirsty writes:
Hmm. I didn’t either vote or listen to the Hottest 100, although thanks to your tweeting I was fully informed of what songs made the grade.
About the results, part of me wonders whether I might not be representative of the female audience who listened to Triple J in the 90s but then stopped when its chatter grated on my aging ears. I’m speculating, but perhaps more of the male listeners from the mid-90s who got more from Nirvana and Pearl Jam have continued to listen to Triple J or felt invested enough to return to the music of their youth to want to make an impact on the final 100.
There’s something about displays of Cultural Capital going on here too, I think. I wonder if it’s about being seen to know. I hesitate to say that’s a male thing, because I’m not sure that isn’t completely sexist on my part.
Anyway, in addition to songs by Bjork, Tori Amos, PJ Harvey etc. I would put in something by Madonna and also Salt n Pepa, Sinead O’Connor and Neneh Cherry.
Posted: 13 07 2009 - 12:13 | Permanent link to this comment
Ben writes:
I know I’m possibly quoting you out of context here, and I think your analysis is largely correct, but I don’t think you can really characterise this as an “unfortunate coincidence”, any more than Said would say that Orientalist discourse is an “unfortunate coincidence”. Apples and oranges, I know, but masculinism isn’t some neutral artifact of culture, and its cultural history should not be simply used as an alibi for these kinds of events. I know it would be impossible to somehow erase masculinism from rock music (!!), but I think what we’re dealing with here is a kind of vicious short circuit of authenticity, in which the uncritical celebration of a certain kind of “credibility” leads to a massive kind of exclusion of everything outside it.
One doesn’t have to think there’s a conspiracy to be extremely disturbed by these outcomes. My formative musical touchstones are all boys with guitars, and I’m not surprised by the masculinism. However, I don’t think I should merely shrug when a national audience’s list of their favourite songs includes not a single act that’s permanently fronted by a woman.
And of course, I do take every opportunity to pile onto Tripe J over the more obviously boysy trad-rawk suspects, because realistically or not, one should expect more from its mission of being a vaguely progressive youth broadcaster. To reiterate an earlier comment I made here, I really do think that the old “Enemy of Average” campaign, in which a stereotypically vacuous female pop star was repeatedly hit in the face by a Tripe J microphone, was absolutely symptomatic of this pointed and intense culture of masculinist credibility, and that in many ways this exceeds the boysiness of trad-rawk radio stations and magazines.
In my time working at Juice, my proudest moment was when we ran with the headline “Kylie is God”, and subsequently received outrage and unhinged threats in the mail. Sure, that five star review of Impossible Princess was somewhat hyperbolic in retrospect, but for many of us working in that space (which was one that overlapped significantly with the audience and culture of Tripe J) this kind of thing represented the utopian possibility of realising the genre-crossing sensibilities of magazines like The Face, with its vague linkings of entertainment’s affects to the polymorphous potentialities of pop-cultural politics, in an Australian landscape in which alterna-rock had become a hardened market segment. I love indie boys and their guitars. Always will. But these kinds of results, these workings of this discursive configuration, really signal the impoverishment of the possibilities of culture.
Posted: 13 07 2009 - 12:27 | Permanent link to this comment
John writes:
Catriona: I forgot about Kate Bush: how did “Wuthering Heights”, at the very least, not make it?
Dogpossum: yes, sorry, typo (I think I had “female artists” originally, then changed it because of the repetition). I admit, I haven’t thought about race or ethnicity much: certainly it’s a very “white” list other than Hendrix, Jackson, etc. Bloc Party (“Banquet” #42) are a really interesting example because they are absolutely—generically and stylistically—a UK band, despite Kele’s background. (Actually, according to Wikipedia, he was born in London: how far do you push the Nigerian thing?)
Kirsty: in my household comments were made to the effect that the voters were mostly men who were teenagers in the ’90s who were nostalgically reliving their youths.
Posted: 13 07 2009 - 12:31 | Permanent link to this comment
Catriona writes:
John, I forgot about Kate Bush until this morning, as well, to my shame.
Matt, I’d wonder a little if “when it comes ROCK, it’s about testosterone and anger a lot of the time which are considered male” couldn’t be seen as a “chicken or the egg” argument. I don’t have it in me at the moment to explain what I mean by that more distinctly, but that’s what sprang to mind when I read that.
What also struck me was that the DJs were talking constantly about the “timeless” quality of the songs, about “nostalgia,” about visceral reactions to the music. As the broadcast went on—and got closer to the top 20—they were placing more emphasis on these ideas and explicitly saying that this isn’t a question of the “best” songs, but of the “favourite” songs.
The voters had already interpreted (or mediated) what the radio station meant by “hottest 100 of all time” when they voted, and then the radio station reflected their version of that interpretation back at us.
It intrigued me—especially in conjunction with the interaction between social-networking sites and the countdown (which must be the first time that’s happened for one of these “all-time” countdowns).
The new level of listener interactivity that the social-networking sites enabled almost seemed to destablise the countdown, to turn it into a public dialogue where, previously, the dialogue would have been either entirely private (shouting at your radio) or extremely limited (the radio station can only manage so many phone calls at a time).
(If any of that makes sense.)
Wide-ranging talk about the lack of female vocalists is only one part of that dialogue, though I admit it’s the part that interests me the most.
And if anyone can tell me how to do paragraph breaks in this blog engine, I’ll be grateful forever.
Posted: 13 07 2009 - 12:36 | Permanent link to this comment
Alex Rohan writes:
I think something that’s been forgotten is that people were not asked to vote for their top 100, they were asked to submit ten songs and name one as the best.
If I’d been asked to submit a top 100 (impossible I know, but stay with me here) there would definitely have been entries from Sarah Blasko, Kate Bush, PJ Harvey and possibly Garbage, just off the top of my head. But I couldn’t list any of them in my top 10.
So the Hottest 100 is not necessarily the best 100 songs, but an aggregation of everyone’s top 10, which when you think about it is quite a different thing altogether.
Posted: 13 07 2009 - 12:42 | Permanent link to this comment
obsidiantears83 writes:
I was shocked… at first I thought it just meant acts like Bjork etc had placed higher… i was mortified when i realised there was no female artists or female fronted bands placing.. But I knew I had only voted for Winter by Tori Amos in my top 10, so I couldnt complain too vocally. I went back through my own list and realised only about quarter of my top 100 included women.
All I Want – Sarah Blaskco
Building A Mystery – Sarah MacLachlan
Candy – Iggy Pop & Kate Pierson
Coat of Many Colours – Dolly Parton
Cruicfy – Tori Amos
Daniel – Bat For Lashes
Devil Gate Drive – Suzi Quatro
Icarus – Ani DiFranco
Jóga – Björk
Knuckle Down – Ani DiFranco
Little Earthquakes – Tori Amos
Love Shack – The B-52s
Manhole – Ani DiFranco
Maps – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Pagan Poetry – Björk
Precious things – Tori Amos
Rock lobster – The B-52s
Seven Nation Army – The White Stripes
Silence – Delerium ft Sarah McLachlan
Silent all These years – Tori Amos
Slide – Ani DiFranco
Today – Smashing Pumpkins
Untouchable Face – Ani DiFranco
Winter – Tori Amos (My #2)
Wuthering Heights – Kate Bush
Zero – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Zombie – The Cranberries
Posted: 13 07 2009 - 13:03 | Permanent link to this comment
Nick Caldwell writes:
A testament to the selectivity of nostalgia, surely! The 90s were a pretty good decade for female-vocal-led rawk.
Posted: 13 07 2009 - 13:56 | Permanent link to this comment
Stubborn Mule writes:
Interesting points. As someone who is older than Triple J’s current demographic, I was very sorry not to see Cannonball in there by The Breeders. That is an undeniable all-time classic!
John: thanks for the link to the Stubborn Mule!
Posted: 13 07 2009 - 14:01 | Permanent link to this comment
Catriona writes:
Nick, that’s exactly what I was thinking. Yes, there was a distinct element of 1990s’ nostalgia. I mean, one of the interviews before they played “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was Daniel Johns talking about what a kick in the face Nirvana was when he was growing up in the age of Warrant.
(Not to mention the rather stranger interview with Wil Anderson about Rage Against The Machine, which ran along the same sort of lines.)
And, yes, that’s fair enough: I’m a bit older than Johns, but I was a teenager in the age of Warrant, as well, and Nirvana is always going to remind me of what a shock to the system the explosion of grunge was.
But “nostalgia” isn’t really enough of an explanation on its own, because it seems to be a selective nostalgia. So many of the female-fronted acts we’re listing here were also huge—particularly on Triple J and Rage—in the 1990s, and they’re just not showing.
(Frankly, it’s not even just the absence of female-fronted groups. I was fairly astonished that there was only one Cure song in the entire countdown.)
Posted: 13 07 2009 - 15:21 | Permanent link to this comment
Nick Caldwell writes:
Good post on Hoyden here. Via LP, which has linked to us.
Posted: 13 07 2009 - 15:35 | Permanent link to this comment
Matthew Smith writes:
Catriona, maybe the Hoyden article just linked explains your chicken and egg idea? There are plenty of women rocking out and have been for decades yet the repeated attention to male rockers reinforces the idea that only men can rock. Female rockers are seen as an anomaly, they can’t really rock because we are convinced that rock is about anger and testosterone that surely only men can possess. It takes a certain amount of exposure to female rockers to challenge this idea and perhaps the poll result shows that the voting audience (whoever they are) have had less exposure to women guitar slingers.
What I was getting at before is that the hottest 100 attracted a greater number of mainstream music consumers who are not the station’s usual audience. These voters are used to consuming music on a more gender divided basis.
Posted: 13 07 2009 - 16:07 | Permanent link to this comment
Lisa writes:
Ok, at the risk of getting somewhat sidetracked here, I’ll put in my two cents worth. If we want more women in lists like this, which as John pointed out is mostly rock music, then we need to get more women and girls into playing rock music and taking them seriously. And that means getting more girls to pick up ‘rock’ instruments while they are still in their school years. Ever noticed how the drummers in school bands are always boys? Yes, girls get to do some percussion, triangle or zylophone perhaps, but the boys get the drum kit. Instead of sticking only to nice, “appropriate” instruments for girls (like piano, flute, violin, etc.), lets get them to also pick up drumsticks and guitars. Wouldn’t hurt for boys to pick up some of the ‘girly’ instruments either. Only talking about rock music here, but if we want to see more women in the rock lists, then we’ve got to give more girls a fair go early on; start changing the culture among those who are not yet totally enculturated. Challenge the myth!
Posted: 13 07 2009 - 16:11 | Permanent link to this comment
Kirsty writes:
Okay, well clearly the voters presented us with a Hottest Male-Performed Songs 100 (since male is the default, or the norm position). Let’s balance that out and have a Hottest Female-Performed Songs 100. Who’s with me?
Posted: 13 07 2009 - 17:00 | Permanent link to this comment
Catriona writes:
Matt, I think you’re right. Larvatus Prodeo’s piece made much the same point, and suggested that these sorts of lists are self-replicating: the mainstream stations (as you say) tend to reinforce the idea that rock is inherently masculine by playing male-centred rock bands on heavy rotation, so when these lists come along, listeners vote for the songs that they hear most often (whether new or “classic”). Then the stations get the idea that male-centred rock is what listeners want to hear, and the cycle continues.
I suspect part of what is making us all a little cranky about this is that it was the “Hottest 100 Of All Time.” There’s something in the absence of female-fronted bands that is whispering, “Women can’t write or perform classic rock songs!” We know that’s rubbish, but I think that’s part of why this debate has sprung up.
Had it been the annual Hottest 100, it might not have stood out as much.
Posted: 13 07 2009 - 17:11 | Permanent link to this comment
John writes:
Kirsty, there was a group putting together such a list during the proceedings on Sunday. I’d post the link, but I can no longer find it. They were starting to run out of ideas at 40, and the presence of Gwen Steffani and Kylie on the list didn’t do their arguments any favours
Posted: 13 07 2009 - 17:17 | Permanent link to this comment
dogpossum writes:
JJJ and Rage have always felt a bit 90s-nostalgia to me. But perhaps that’s because the 90s were about the last time I listened to mainstream music…
I was wondering where Blondie, Siouxie and the Banshees and other punker chicks were at in the hottest 100?
To be honest, I wouldn’t really expect JJJ’s list of ‘hottest 100’ songs to come up with anything particularly inclusive or properly representative of rock (let alone the broader music world). It’s a list made by listeners of one particular radio station in one particular historical moment, so audience demographics, radio playlists and radio/record company relationships are going to be the guiding factors.
I’d be more interested in 4ZZZ’s list – localised indy music? Or in comparing hottest 100 lists from different radio stations and then different media sources generally.
I did write more, but decided it was more useful to use my own blog, rather than cluttering up comments with (even more) blabbering about jazz…
Posted: 14 07 2009 - 12:29 | Permanent link to this comment
WildlyParenthetical writes:
Um… http://hottest100women.blogspot.com/
I have to say, the #1 position was almost painfully appropriate.
Posted: 19 08 2009 - 22:59 | Permanent link to this comment