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[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

My unease with the new wave of nu-Amys has been steadily increasing, as anyone who's paid attention to poptimist comment threads recently will have noticed. It was heartening yesterday to discover that I'm not the only one: Kitty Empire's brilliant column in yesterday's Observer says it all.

Key paragraph for me is this:

What a shame, though, that brains and other important body parts - ears, guts, gristle, balls, belly, soul, that kind of thing - have also seemingly vanished from female pop's body politic in the wake of Winehouse's success. Every record label is chasing their own Amy - preferably a white one and one without all that ink and crack. (If you are black, British and - say - called Estelle, you have to take your retro soul-pop stylings to America to be given a proper hearing.) Suitable candidates are being fast-tracked into tidy marketing synergies and given generous press coverage. All these second- and third-generation Amys are, without exception, easier on the ear and a damn sight less trouble than Winehouse herself.

I'd also argue that the problem isn't only that the anaemic, polite reverence of Adele et al do the soul genre a disservice (tbh with Adele it's less reverence and more her total stupidity which is the problem). I've also seen this 'wave' being hyped up as a distinctly female-led one, as though it's a triumph for "women in pop" - women who are autonomous and charismatic, not pliable pop puppets. (This umbrella would include Allen, Nash, Robyn et al I guess. But not Murphy because she isn't lining anyone's pockets.) But comparing these girls to the women who were in the charts even 12 years ago - PJ Harvey, Courtney Love, Tori Amos, Björk, Beth Gibbons - they don't even begin to compare. Those were women who weren’t afraid to be aggressive, to be cathartic, to scare people, to experiment with language and sound. Now all we get is blah blah blah “my boyfriend’s a bastard and I am just like you” everygirl bullshit. You couldn't imagine any of the current crop, except Winehouse, actually scaring anyone.

Comments

"An extremely limited definition of women"

[koganbot]

A blast from the past:

This year, as always, many of my favorite records were made by women. Last year, six of the ten albums and seven of the ten singles I voted for were by women, but I never realized it until Poobah Christgau (who voted for one lady's album and no singles!) worried in his P&J essay that pop females aren't getting enough respect. When Ann Powers passed through Philly last Spring I told her she seemed to have an extremely limited definition of "women" - I asked how come she cites timid noise-skiffle shrinking violets like Barbara Manning and Juliana Hatfield as evidence that "women haven't vanished from the pop scene," but none of the recent women-fighting-phallocentric-rock roundups praise Mariah Carey or Lorrie Morgan or Corina or Amy Grant (none of whom play guitar much, two of whom wear new wave haircuts anyway, and all of whom move plenty of product). If you're just another teacher's pet kissing Babes in Toyland's butts because they "state their women's rights stance firmly and clearly," exactly what "paradigms" are you smashing? (Seems to me that the only clear thing about Babes in Toyland is that they try too hard to be hard like any dumb boy band. You want feminist firmness and clarity, try Judy Torres selling her baptized soul to the devil to escape domestic abuse in "My Soul.")...

I will now hereby demonstrate to Eveylyn McDonnell that I am as humble as any rock critic without a penis: "ALL THESE COMMENTS ARE ONLY MY OPINION. PLEASE DON'T THINK I'M TRYING TO PASS MYSELF OFF AS A MUSIC EXPERT." Did I pass the audition?
--Chuck "I'll Write For Food" Eddy Pazz & Jop 1992

In any event, for me the issue isn't so much whether Adele et al. are imitative or not, but that they get to represent a triumph for "women in pop" because they belong to a class that is acceptable to journalists. (Am I right about journalists here, do you think? Are they claiming that Adele et al. are representing a triumph for women in pop? And are they as class-blinkered as I'm saying?)(And what do I mean by "class"? Remember, in July I asked you all to help me figure out what I mean by class?)

Re: "An extremely limited definition of women"

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

My feeling is that the "women in pop" element in the hype is being very overstated by Lex. But I'm willing to have my mind changed by examples!

Sadface :(

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

The first result in google for 'women in pop music 2008' is a blog post entitled "What is it about ugly women and pop music right now?"

Re: Sadface :(

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Extreme sadface. :( Goddamn.

Re: "An extremely limited definition of women"

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I think you rather hit the nail on the head there. They (Amy-spinoffs) are women with some sort of... acceptability rating since they write their own songs and if anyone listens that's a bonus etc. and posture all the right indie-boy noodling, even down to the 'other popstars are fake lolololomg' bitchiness of Knash and Lallen which makes journalists (nb: not all journalists, obv. but that "evil conglommerate" notion of Bad Journalists or well, the NME) spunk all over themselves to congratulate because unlike Girls Aloud, who've said similar things and been six times as edgy and actually do write most of their own lyrics to a certain capacity, there's a kind of... "ever so 'umble" pandering to something there.

Winehouse herself is an interesting equation. I still never quite know where I stand with her.

Re: "An extremely limited definition of women"

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yes this is what I was trying to get at by equating them. Again it's not so much what they are as how they're perceived (cf my answer to girlboymusic - my target here is less Adele and Duffy than the people hyping them). They're all artistic, creative types who write their own songs, mostly play instruments, mostly draw on their emotional and personal lives for inspiration, are mostly very female-coded. Which is why comparing the current crop to the Spice Girls or Lauryn Hill doesn't make so much sense.

Re: "An extremely limited definition of women"

[datura800.livejournal.com]

I don't get how any of those things wouldn't apply to Lauren Hill, though. IMO they have more in common with her (and even then I DON'T THINK IT'S A LOT) than with any of the females you listed to make your point. I think they have as much in common with Madonna as they do with Courtney Love. In any event someone else has already posted more apt contemporary comparisons.

Re: "An extremely limited definition of women"

[koganbot]

But for my purposes Spice Girls and Lauryn Hill (esp. Spice Girls) are relevant, in that Spice Girls, who made a big big big selling point of "Girl Power," represented (along with TLC) a sea change in who was selling to girls 15 and under, which is that now girls were buying girls as well as buying boys, and after Backstreet Boys and *NSync, girls were buying girls far more than they were buying boys (Jonas Bros. and Jesse McCartney and Corbin Bleu not coming close in sales to Hannah Montana et al. and Aly & A.J., as far as I can tell), which meant that the Alanis-Tori-Courtney for young girls became possible (Avril and Ashlee most prominently, though "Alanis-Tori-Courtney" is only somewhat accurate as to what they were doing). And my point is that only a certain class of women in pop seem to count as "women in pop."

So you're saying that even among standard "women in pop" as seen by journalists the Lily-Gnash-Amy-Adele-Duffy crowd don't measure up in aggression (or talent) to an earlier era of "women in pop," and I'm saying that only a particular class of women in pop get to count then or now as "women in pop" anyway (though Lauryn Hill probably would get to count, actually). In which case it might be instructive to compare the new crop to Rihanna etc.: i.e., to the other women on the British charts such as Leona, Girls Aloud, Hilson & Scherzinger, Blige, Keys, Robyn, Cracknell, Kylie, Goldfrapp, Kelly R., Britney, Amy M., Cascada, Alison Krauss, and maybe even bassline chicks like Jody A., and maybe even even even Dionne and Celine and Whitney.

Re: "An extremely limited definition of women"

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

Hilson & Scherzinger

I bet the reaction to them would be totally different if they went by this name.