Poll: Hot Ladies

[sqbr]

There's been much discussion about the absurd gender bias in the hottest 100, which I've been somewhat avoiding until I got around to listening to the recording I made (Though thanks to the east coast time difference I still have to listen to 100-80 and 50-30 ish, luckily the website has streaming for the next few days)

Anyway: 2 out of 100 with female vocalists, and (I think?) 4 with women in the band is pretty pathetic. I looked into my iTunes library and out of my 230 five star songs, 58 have female vocalists(*).

I was inspired to make a poll of other people's favourite songs with female vocalists(*). I've always wanted to try out Google forms :) It's a bit dodgy, but on the plus side the only effort I have to go to collate the results is pressing "Sort column" :D Is there any better (and equally low-effort) way to make this sort of poll?

I'm not really interested in discussing the whys and wherefores because I really don't know (or care, to be honest) that much about the music industry. Go check out Was the Hottest 100 Of All Time sexist? asks Triple J’s Hack or any of the other posts on the subject. Also purrdence has another aleternative poll.

(*)I don't know about you, but I don't pay enough attention to who's in a band to know which ones have women in them unless I can hear them singing.

Comments

[naraht]

I seem to have managed to mess up your poll twice. First by accidentally getting one of my nominations in the wrong order, which I think is not huge... I resubmitted it the right way round. Second, I put all of my nominations in quote marks, which I thought was what you wanted, but obviously not. Sorry...

[sqbr]

That's ok, as it turns out I can edit responses. So it was a learning experience! :)

[naraht]

Thanks!

[tree]

the only musical genre i own where the men aren't far, far outnumbered by the women is composers. come to think of it, i don't even know of any female composers. whenever i want to make a mix, i'm constantly trying to scrape together a couple of male singers/bands so it's not just women on there. according to my last.fm profile, of my top eight artists, four are female singer/songwriters and four are male composers. in fact, it's not until you get to number twenty-six that you hit a male singer. interesting.

[naraht]

come to think of it, i don't even know of any female composers.

Ethel Smyth.

[tree]

oh, thank you. i suppose i was thinking of modern rather than classical - not that i knew any classical ones, mind you. lisa gerrard is a composer, but i tend to think of her more as a vocalist since that's how i came to know her. wikipedia has given me food for thought, at any rate.

[sqbr]

I listen to so little instrumental work that the male dominatedness of composers never occurred to me. I wonder what the gender split would look like for the hottest 100 etc if we considered who wrote the music rather than who sang/played it.

[onceamy]

Most of my music is female-fronted; I like art rock and gothic music, when tends to rely on a specific vocal range.

No wonder I don't listen to Triple J any more! This is a fail on the larger end, and where I wouldn't expect it.

Anyway, I filled in your poll!

[sqbr]

I don't pay much attention to triple J any more (I think I'm too old :)) but afaict they do play a moderate amount of female singers and previous hottest 100s weren't anyway near so male dominated. It's..odd.

[softestbullet]

Oh no, I did it wrong too! WTF. I kept looking at "ABBA, Dancing Queen," to make sure I had them in the right order, but didn't notice that I had it the opposite of right. Sorry! Those are all me. :(

[sqbr]

Easy fixed! (I think, let me know if I missed any)

[softestbullet]

Just one: M.I.A. is the artist, Paper Planes is the song. :) Thank yooouu.

[nixwilliams]

wow, i had NO IDEA about the 2/100 deal (because i had no interest in the whole thing, really). FAIL FAIL FAIL.

[sqbr]

Indeed.

[velithya]

I went to my top 25 most played in itunes. Most of them were linkin park (shh) but there were four songs there with female vocalists. I have now voted four times as requested!

[sqbr]

Heh. I first read this as 250 (since I was choosing mine out of 230) and thought "She has 246 Linkin Park songs??" :)

[velithya]

ahahaha sadly, no. I do have all of their albums though (I think)!

[sqbr]

*googles* According to a very dodgy looking list I found they have 181 songs, so you're not far off :)

[ex_peasant441]

I'm not looking at the poll because it's not my type of music, but just taking your numbers I am astonished by the scale of the contrast with classical music, where the soprano voice is head and shoulders celebrated above any other and always has been. This actually makes me wonder if there is at least some component of musical attributes involved. Possibly related to the different levels of contrast within the types of instrumental accompaniment and vocal techniques used?

But anyway, if you want some relief from male dominated singing, turn to classical where the sops get all the best tunes. (I speak as a bitter alto.)

Not that there isn't huge glaring sexism within classical music because there is - Vienna Philharmonic anyone?* - but it clearly wins on this count.


*If you don't already know what I am referring to, do not look it up unless you are calm, happy and feeling strong enough to cope with some gut wrenchingly sickening stuff.

[sqbr]

I think with classical music there's also much more of a split between the people who make and get credit for the music and the people who play/sing it, so you can believe that men are the only ones who can create Important Music while still listening to female voices. Though, yes, as the Vienna Philharmonic thing shows, that doesn't mean the musicians don't get discriminated against anyway.

I am also a bitter alto (married to a somewhat bitter base) so I share your pain :)

[yiduiqie]

I suppose I have to stick to English-language only songs, yeah?

[sqbr]

No, vote for whoever you want! I'd say "Though the more obscure the song the less likely anyone else will vote for it" but last I checked I only have one song with two votes anyway :)

Your question does lead me to the question "What about trans/intersex/genderqueer vocalists?" which totally didn't occur to me. Hmm.

[yiduiqie]

well! my opinion is that any female-identifying singers should count for this poll (though off the top of my head I can't think of any trans women vocalists).

[sqbr]

*nods* Trans women definitely count, it just occurred to me that some voters might assume I'd think they didn't.

I'm not sure I can articulate it but:
I was pondering if explicitly including genderqueer and intersex singers in the list would end up being more tokenistic than inclusive: the conversation is about female musicians, and adding a disclaimer to my poll without doing any serious thinking/talking about the issue doesn't do much to change that, it just makes me look inclusive. Though I guess any genderqueer or intersex people reading the poll might appreciate the acknowledgement.

Basically I haven't encountered much meta/theory etc around the more subtle forms of discrimination against intersex and genderqueer people (rather than more concrete issues like surgery without consent, government forms, toilets etc) and afaict don't know anyone with either identity so don't have a very firm understanding and flail about a bit :)

[patternsofchaos.livejournal.com]

I join the ranks of people who stuffed it up, I accidentally voted for Nemo by Nightwish twice. Though IMO it deserves two votes :P

I admit I don't listen to much music with female vocalists. I don't have that much and I'm often not in the mood for it. According to last.fm, the female vocalists make their first appearances at #11 (Massive Attack - guest female vocals, but I like their songs with women singing the best), #13 (P!nk), #14 (Nightwish) and #20 (Black Eyed Peas).

[sqbr]

Heh. Sorry, it's fixed now, and only one vote so far :)

[whatistigerbalm]

Voted in Google - and if I may plug stuff away, here's a playlist of some of my favourite female singers: http://8tracks.com/whatistigerbalm/slightly-unsettling-worlds-of-haunting-female-vocals

[sqbr]

*listens*

I'm not normally a fan of folk music but quite like these.