Where have all the flowers gone?

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I was curious to see just how many homegrown female musicians are currently in the UK charts. Below are some figures taken from Everyhit for new entries in June 2007:

- 48 new entries

- 28 from UK artists (58%)

- 9 from acts featuring at least one female (18%)

- 2 from acts featuring at least one UK female (4%)

These two acts were:

The Zimmers - My Generation
Reverend & The Makers - Heavyweight Champion Of The World

Well, quite. The new entries for April-May 2007 give a somewhat less bleak picture:

- 49 new entries

- 30 from UK artists (61%)

- 15 from acts featuring at least one female (31%)

- 6 from acts featuring at least one UK female (12%)

Those 7 acts were:

Melanie C - I Want Candy
Faithless ft Cass Fox - Music Matters
Natasha Bedingfield - I Wanna Have Your Babies
Groove Armada ft Stush - Get Down
Shirley Bassey - The Living Tree
Amy Winehouse - Back To Black
(also, Ash would have been included here if Charlotte hadn't already left)

Winehouse, TashBed and Stush make things look promising; Melanie and Shirley make things look desperate.

The percentage of British acts in the charts is very encouraging for our music scene as a whole, but my inner Elastica-fan is sobbing at the fact that that 53% of the UK entries from the last three months are guitar bands and only ONE of those features a lass. Singing*. And it's a rubbish song. Perhaps the girls are better off out of it.

*I'm not dissing singers by any means, but where are all the girls who bought guitars by the fretful a few years back?

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

It is EXTREMELY boyrock compared to Britpop or punk or even grunge (if you count riot-grrl as 'grunge', which no-one apart from me does but whatevs). Girls are now confined to stroppy chanteuses (Allen, Winelodge, Nash), rent-a-vocalists for male dance producers (Stush, Luciana, Cass Fox) or delicate [read WET] acoustical flowers (KT Tunstall, Sandi Thom). Bah and pah. And I will totally go out there and do something about it myself. I'm just a bit busy at the moment.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

a lady! in Reverend & The Makers? coo

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

She is called Laura.

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I've warned you before about bracketing KT with s**t like Sandi Thom. Consider this a final warning.

It's interesting though that the UK female solo artists are much more successful across the pond than male solo artists or groups. KT, Amy Wino, Lily all having a lot of success Stateside, whilst I doubt if you'll find more than a handful of Americans who have a clue who The View or The Fratellis are.

Also, how did Kate Nash not appear in your chart rundown? She's just gone straight in at #2 this week.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

This week is offishaly* JULY!

*& actually

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

plus also, only six people like Nash

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I am grouping them together in the style of their music, not making any point about whether they are good or bad. I'm just trying to make a point, dude.

The US success aspect is an interesting one...

[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

Magic Numbers (who scraped into the top 40) have UK girls. Can't really think of many more of the recent crop of UK guitar bands with any success who have though.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

The Zutons have their saxophonist.

I'm sure there are more we could think of, but the fact that we're having to struggle to come up with more than a handful says it all.

[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

It does indeed. Guillemots have a woman too, but I've just checked and she's Canadian. Rubbish.

[mcarratala.livejournal.com]

Before riot grrl broke, grunge had a female component in (ironic NY hipster chortle) 'foxcore', which, as my memory has it, consisted of Hole (the pre-Fleetwood Mac-idolising version), Babes In Toyland and L7. As a scene it had all the sisterly solidarity of the mostly female house I was living in at the time: they (the bands) spent much of their time furiously claiming that the other bands had nicked their fashion ideas (I think L7 were not guilty on that front). I believe somewhere I still have not one but two Babes In Toyland albums, one on vomit green vinyl: horrible heavy metal with nothing going for them.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

'Kinderwhore' (ugh) was another name applied this lot.

I own:
1x Babes in Toyland LP
1x Babes in Toyland Peel Sessions mini-LP
1x L7 7" EP
0x Hole (of any version)

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

I count riot grrl as being very strongly grunge, not least cos there was a huge interchange of people and ideas!

Couldn't agree more about lack of girls in current 'indie', esp wiv guitars, esp the pointy ones - remember ladies, Courtney told us they're the best cos you can rub yourself up against them!

Is it just me or have Ash been being extremely off about Charlotte as well?