I love listening to women sing. Probably 50% of the music I listen to is female singers/musicians. A few people in my real life have noticed this and questioned why I have so many women artists in my playlist.
Am I an outlier?
You might well be, though I suspect that part of it is that a lot of genres of popular music have been dominated by male artists, particularly if one is looking at music from decades past.
I know that my three favorite bands (ELO, Queen, Yes) were/are all-guys (though ELO’s touring band, in recent years, had several women in it). I have a number of female singers and artists who are in my next tier of favorites, including Carole King, Carly Simon, Kristin Chenoweth, and Toby Lightman (also ABBA, with their two female singers), and I have a lot of their music, but female musicians might account for 10% of the songs in my iTunes library.
I should add that I have pretty eclectic tastes and my enjoyment of female artists extends to all the genres I like (metal, blues, swing, country…etc.). I really enjoy covers of songs originally done by male artists covered by female artists.
Some female artists, but far less than 50%.
I haven’t specifically checked, but I think my playlist has way more bands than solo artists. And, for whatever reason, females seem to be far less common as band members. Why is that?
When I was listening a lot to recorded music, it was mostly jazz-influenced “pop” vocals, as well as out-and-out jazz vocals, and that’s one genre where (at the time anyway) women had more output than men. Or anyway were more visible. So yes, my playlist is very heavy on women vocalists.
Heavy in my Rotation
The Fastbacks
X
Heart
Joan Jett
Joydrop
That’s pretty much it.
I tend to listen to instrumentals, so it’s not easy to tell, unless it’s a well-known soloist like Kennedy, Harnoy or Ma.
This 2017 article in Billboard notes that the music industry, as a whole, is dominated by men – not just musicians, but also producers and songwriters (and, I’d wager, record company executives). The key numbers, from the article:
And, you’re right, as I look at the artists I have on my playlists – females tend to be billed/promoted as solo acts, and primarily as vocalists, while acts that are promoted as bands are largely, if not exclusively, male.
And, certainly, some female music artists are skilled instrumentalists as well as vocalists – Karen Carpenter was a very good drummer, and Dolly Parton was (and may well still be) an excellent guitarist, but they often haven’t been promoted as such.
Hard to say what counts as “female artists.” The Velvet Underground and Nico had three men and two women in it. Is the entity two fifths of a female artist? A lot of the Lilith Faire tour was mostly male bands with a female headliner, like 10,000 Maniacs. One of my favorite musicians, Darcy Nair (she was kind of local) is the queen of the Maryland Renaissance Festival. She has had two solo albums, three groups where she was the only female member (Oxymoron?), and an all-female group that sings filthy tavern wench songs. Carol Kaye, a guitarist and bassist for The Wrecking Crew, did studio gigs for a freakishly high percentage of big hits from the late 50s-early 70s. I’m not sure how to calculate this.
It’s definitely mostly male artists, but like kenobi_65 said, that’s just because there are more men in music. There are plenty of indie bands with female front-men (front-women?) that I listen to: Beach Bunny, No Vacation, Kero Kero Bonito, etc.
Add me to the list of those who not only appreciate Female Artists (not just in Music) but who try not to draw artificial borders around people based on Gender or Persuasion. For the topic at hand, however, I can list these Female Music Artists to my Favorites:
Ella Fitzgerald
Barbra Streisand
Rosemary Clooney
Astrud Gilberto
Peggy Lee
Joan Baez
Diana Krall
…and probably another ten easily if I set my mind to the task!
Of course, to be fair, I prefer instrumentals to vocals! So building a list of Favorite Singers requires more focus than I normally use when it comes to Music I like!
My former boss, many years back, told me he didn’t like women singers. I thought that was just the strangest thing to say. I used to listen to more women singers, but they’ve kind of fallen off my daily playlist, probably due to being overplayed.
I think the biggest problem is that I am heavily biased towards classic rock, and it’s a little hard to get more than 4 or 5 names down a list of classic rock female vocalists without running into one-hit wonders. You’ve got Ann Wilson, Joan Jett, Pat Benetar, Stevie Nicks… . .if I go back to the 60’s/early 70’s, there’s Janis, Grace Slick. . .and now I’m starting to think of people like Patti Smith, and I only ever listen to her, “Because the Night.”
I guess Debbie Harry fits, I listen to some of her songs, though Blondie’s more new wave. I never cared for Chrissie Hynde. . .
I think in my case it’s more about my somewhat narrow musical taste and a general paucity of female artists in that area.
Most of my collection is orchestral, and most orchestras have a decent proportion of both genders. Not that one can really tell the difference with instrumentals.
But of vocal music, probably the majority is either mixed bands (with multiple male and female singers), or female artists (who may have backing bands who are probably mostly male, but they’re marketed as solo acts).
And no, that’s not a coincidence, as I’m another one who’s fond of female voices.
Most of my favorite artists are female artists. It would take me forever to list the ones I listen to frequently, but I’ll lead off with saying that when I first joined Pandora, Kelly Clarkson and Shania Twain were the firsts artists I typed in.
From my walking playlist, I estimate approximately 35% of them are women. For the purpose of this survey, I’m putting bands that are mostly men, including Blondie, In this Moment, and Kontrust, but who have a female lead singers into the female artist box.
My husband says that also (exception made for Janis Joplin). He’s a weird dude.
I don’t know if I’m a “music lover” but I do listen to music regularly while commuting and used to attend a couple shows a year in pre-Covid times but I’m not the sort to go to 50 shows a year or own 25TB of music storage. Anyway, my music is probably 60/40 in favor of female artists (solo or female fronted bands).
Back in high school and my first year of college, it was exclusively men (mostly classic rock). Then I hit the boom of female alternative artists in the 90s and my collection started rapidly shifting. Even now, a good part of that 40% male music is probably legacy stuff and my new music probably skews more like 70/30 in favor of female artists.
I recently discovered The Breeders. Love them! I’ve been listening to their first two albums almost nonstop over the past month, and have learned the bass lines to a few songs. Just great stuff. I wish I had discovered them earlier.
I’ve also been a huge Joni Mitchell fan for most of my life. I have all of her early albums. Absolutely brilliant songwriting.
My collection is mostly male singers but I suspect my ratio of female to male fronted bands is still higher than the average as I do like a female singer. Currently listening to Noisettes whose female singer is utterly amazing.
But with orchestral music, the focus is generally on the composer, and how many of them are women?