There is no professional bar to being a successful female in the music industry
SINÉAD O’Connor, Dolores O’Riordan, Róisín Murphy, Enya… These names ran through my head as I read about the urgent ‘Day of Action’ held recently to address the supposed lack of women in Irish music.
Imelda May, Maykay, Maria McKee, Maria Doyle Kennedy…
Women aren’t as “present” as men when it comes to the professional stage, we were informed, as part of the wellmeaning but misguided Fair Plé drive to highlight the gender imbalance in the industry, particularly in the trad scene.
Mary Coughlan, Mary Black, Sharon Shannon, Cait O’Riordan…
Women rule music, so why aren’t we celebrating this? We rock. Why insist on the pretence that there’s some professional bar to us getting up on stage?
It’s a myth boosted by sighing articles on how men make up twothirds of music festivals or tantrums over them winning at the Grammys.
Respected songwriters such as Laura Marling add to the propaganda, saying: “If you prevent women seeing examples of them achieving, then it prevents them from believing they can achieve it.” What?
It’s as though Debbie Harry, Chrissie Hynde, Cher, Courtney Love, Diana Ross, Kate Bush, Annie Lennox or Madonna (below) never existed, as if we’re blind to today’s worldwide dominance of Beyonce, Rihanna, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift or Pink. As Baz Halpin, the Irish concert creator who has worked with most of these women, states: “There are more female popstars than male, that’s the metrics of it.”
To witness the hand-wringing, you’d be convinced we were banned; victims of some terrible discrimination.
Stating otherwise is blasphemy, a betrayal of the sisterhood. We’re expected to swallow the narrative that “intimidation and exclusion” begins for girls in childhood, leading us to cower in a corner, pining for a plec.
Let’s stop being disingenuous about it and adopting a victimhood complex to get an extra leg-up. Being female in the music business can be a boon.
I’ve been involved in music since I was a teenager and, from the start, it was clear that women were actively sought out. Nature likes a balance, boys want girls in
bands and audiences don’t perversely only want to see men on stage or listen to men’s voices. Far from it.
While there are dozens of women at the top in music, where there is a deficit is in the band scene and on the gigging circuit.
The reason is straightforward – women generally don’t love music to the same borderline neurotic levels men do.
Overall, women are less likely than men are to be identified by music, to live it as a vocation. It’s a simple matter of choice.
They are not as inclined to choose it as a career. It’s difficult enough to survive in the music industry, but to do so means making music your religion.
It demands an enormous amount of interest, energy and personal sacrifice.
It’s why there are fewer women in the front row at rock concerts, why men buy more music magazines and why there were fewer female winners at the Grammys. Out of 84 awards, 11 went to female artists – because only 10pc of the nominees were women.
This is not due to a block in the industry; for example, just 12pc of the top songwriters are female – but nobody cares who writes a pop hit, man, woman or beast.
So when I hear campaigners saying they want to encourage more of us to choose it as a profession, I hope they’re going to mention the five nights a week on the road, travelling all over the country, often not getting back home til 3am.
I hope they’re warning: kiss goodbye to every weekend and all the major holidays. Otherwise the expectation minus the reality will be a crushing disappointment.
Interestingly, the one true obstacle for women in the music business is rarely spoken about: motherhood.
A music career is unsuitable to family life, arguably the most unsociable job there is. When you see all-female bands – such as The Saturdays or Girls Aloud – on a ‘hiatus’, it usually turns out half of them have had babies. That’s biology.
Understandably, mothers don’t want to be away constantly from their own children and it’s their right to prioritise raising the next generation.
MOST successful female artists had their children later in life, when they were established, such as Regine Chassagne from Arcade Fire, Cat Power and Gwen Stefani. Adele and Kate Bush stopped touring after. This goes some way to explaining why there aren’t so many women on music festival line-ups; the other obvious fact being men are more often in bands, adding numbers, while women at festivals are frequently solo artists.
Stevie Nicks says she had to make a conscious decision not to have children, realising: “I’d have ended up stopping music. I didn’t want to be a half-assed rock star and a half-assed mother.”
Patti Smith dropped off the music scene for the entire 1980s while she was raising her son and daughter. She’s happy with that. “It was my most prolific time writing. I became a better person. I learned what it was like to be a citizen.”
What are we trying to do? Force women into career choices they don’t necessarily want, just for the optics? Real feminism means respecting and admiring women for the choices they make.