We had a scream: From Byron and The Beatles to BCR and BTS, why girl fans have led the world
Writer hails the passion of youngsters for their musical idols as the most influential – but untold – story of pop
Not so much for rock, but pop is a game run by girls
They’ve been around since the first teenage girls swooned at Elvis and his gyrating pelvis.
From devoted followers of The King to the Bay City Rollers’ dedicated Tartan Horde, or Beyonce’s obsessive BeyHive, female fans have been an integral part of pop music.
Last week, superstar Adele went to a Spice Girls concert at Wembley – the group she adored as a 10-year-old. “Last time I saw the Spice Girls at Wembley was 21 years ago!” the 31-year-old wrote in an Instagram post.
“Tonight with my nearest and dearest I cried, laughed, screamed, danced, reminisced and fell back in love with my 10-year-old self.”
Female fans are known for fainting, screaming and lurking outside hotels for hours on end, but their devoted support doesn’t often get the respect it deserves, according to author and music journalist Hannah Ewens.
She has written about the culture of female fans and is author of a forthcoming book on the subject.
According to Hannah, the underappreciated fan-girl culture has shaped pop music as we know it.
The roots, according to Hannah, stretch even further back over 100 years before pop music – all the way to romantic poet Lord Byron, who scandalised 19th-Century.
“From popular music’s earliest roots in Frank Sinatra, more or less the first modern pop star, or Elvis, or The Beatles throughout the decades to the largest artists of today, tween and teen girls and young women have made up a huge proportion of fanbases,” explained Hannah.
“Girls are so often the demographic who latch on to an artist first, and then the rest follow, while girls hold on to them tightly throughout their careers. I think of them
as the tastemakers. The music industry knows if you galvanise a young female fanbase, you’ve got a career more or less for life.
“When those fans grow up with the artists they’ll come out for reunion tours and all sorts.
“This is very much true for pop, not quite so much for rock – to a lesser extent at least. But pop is a game run by girls.”
These days, Korean boyband Bangtan Sonyeondan – known as BTS to their adoring followers – draw millions of fans from around the world.
They’re just the latest in a long line of artists who have captured female superfans’ imaginations.
However, this dedication doesn’t tend to win them much respect among adult male fans.
“There are all sorts of taste politics acting around fandom,” Hannah added.
“Who is more important
socially and what do we think of as appropriate ways to show our appreciation, for starters.
“To collect records, to go to a select number of gigs and certainly not to discuss the private lives of musicians – these things are considered appropriate.
“To fall deeply in love with an artist, to follow every aspect of their lives and work, to create fan-fiction about them, to cry over their records – these things are considered not appropriate.
“This is what fangirls prefer to do, and what they have the money and time to be able to do.
“Adult male fans are seen as the ‘default’ in music fandom, still.
“We still think in music that men have the voices to tell the stories of music.
“Go to the music section in a bookshop next time you’re in one, and bar the women in music memoirs, see how you might struggle to find a book by a woman.”