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]

I think Lily A and Amy W are probably the only lasses to emerge in the last few years that would actually inspire anyone to go out and become a musician or a songwriter.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The thing is, the industry (& public!) demand for "more Lilys" is clear, or else we wouldn't have Kate Nash at #2.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Yep. The demand outweighs the supply, which causes the quality to go down...

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

There is Laura Marling and Rosie Oddie, the former being much better than the latter, but rather lacking in stage presence so far (she is only little). Candie Payne is an interesting new one as well.