Popular Bands With Both Men AND Women

Cafe Society
1

What have been some bands to acheive some semblance of popularity (I suppose a good benchmark would be one or more Top 40 songs) that had both men and women in their lineups? Let’s exclude women in backup bands to solo musicians (Sherly Crow was once in Prince’s backup band); backup bands backing female solo musicians (such as Cheryl Crow); and bands consisting of a female headliner and a backup band (Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians, for example).

I’ll start:

Paramore
No Doubt
Fleetwood Mac
Blondie*
Abba
Berlin
Evanescence
Sixpence None the Richer
Eurythmics
Swing Out Sister
10,000 Maniacs

*Blondie is the name of the band, not the name of the lead singer, who goes by Debra Harry and not “Blondie.”

2

The White Stripes
Belle & Sebastian…are they popular?

3

Pretenders
Talking Heads
The Partridge Family:)

4

B-52s
Til Tuesday
Timbuk 3

5

That’s potentially a really, really long list. Most bands with female vocalists are otherwise mostly male; all-female groups are generally rarer.

That said, here’s a few popular metal bands with female vocals:

Nightwish
Arch Enemy
Lacuna Coil
Within Temptation
Therion (current lineup)
Theatre of Tragedy
Leaves’ Eyes
Epica
Sirenia
After Forever
Edenbridge
Darkestrah

(OK, maybe not all top-40 bands, but all pretty popular within their genres)

6

So it’s only the nomenclature that differentiates Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians from bands like No Doubt and Paramore? Because those are definitely bands headlined by a female.

7

Oh, and I might as well contribute:

The Carpenters
K’s Choice

(both brother-sister duos)

8

The Mamas and the Papas
The Fifth Dimension
Jefferson Airplane/Starship
Heart
The Velvet Underground (more influential than popular)

9

Just to give you an idea of how rigidly sex-segregated the jazz profession was - and still is - there has been exactly ONE fully unisex professional big band in 80+ years of the genre. The Mills Cavalcade Orchestra of 1935 made one record date and then disappeared, leaving no impression whatever on anybody.

All-female jazz groups, by contrast, did well then and are still not unheard of.

10

The Gathering has a female vocalist and bassist, and male guitarist, drummer, and keys
Rasputina, at least for a while, had two females and one male.

11

Edie Brickell is basically a solo artist who’s backup band has a name.

12

The Pixies. I guess they’re popular.

13

Quarterflash.

14

Len - Marc and Sharon Costanzo are brother and sister.
Aqua - the female vocalist (Lene) is currently married to their keyboardist (Soren), which is a lot of why they broke up, since she was originally involved with the main male vocalist (Rene).

A couple non-American, but quite popular in their home country (Japan):

Maximum the Hormone (3 men - vocals, guitar, bass - 1 woman - drums, some vocals) - the main vocalist and drummer (Ryo and Nao Kawakita) are brother and sister.
the brilliant green (2 men - guitar, bass - 1 woman - vocals) - the vocalist and bassist (Tomoko Kawase and Shunsaku Okuda) are married.

15

Garbage
Veruca Salt
Smashing Pumpkins
Flyleaf
Mindless Self Indulgence
Shiny Toy Guns

Broken Social Scene
Blond Redhead
Skunk Anansie
Sick Puppies
Forget Cassettes

16

The Velvet Underground (If Nico wasn’t an actual member of the band, Mo Tucker certainly was)
The Dandy Warhols
Nashville Pussy
Hole
Ike Turner’s various outfits generally had Ikettes in them; one in particular stands out…
Alison Krauss and Union Station
Peter. Paul and Mary

Don’t inter-band romances kill most co-ed groups?

17

The Men, who had one minor hit with “Church of Logic, Sin & Love” had a female guitarist and a female bassist.

18

This exercise would be more interesting if you excluded bands fronted by a female singer or singer-musician who was the only woman in the band.

19

Yo La Tengo

Rilo Kiley

Silversun Pickups

The Blow

The Knife

The Fugees
These stretch the definition of popular, perhaps, but someone who’s read a Rolling Stone or two should be familiar with most of 'em.

20

White Zombie.