Music. Apparently. Cop this playa haters… Triple J run a competition to track down the best 100 songs of all time. They make the process democratic… and bam. No female artists. In fact, very little female presence at all.
The SMH is running a left-wing fuelled paranoid condemnation of the countdown (or the voters… well not really, it’s more an opinion piece bemoaning the results) – and yet the facts don’t lie. Males are superior.
However, as the countdown progressed, something sinister emerged: of the 100 tracks that ended up comprising the list, there were no female artists. Not even “equal but different”. Lets see you artsy lefties trying to condemn the church on gender roles now…
The only women to appear in any notable capacity were The White Stripes’ drummer Meg White (Seven Nation Army, number 20), Massive Attack guest vocalists Elizabeth Fraser (Teardrop, 22) and Shara Nelson (Unfinished Sympathy, 93), Pixies bassist Kim Deal (Where Is My Mind, 29), Smashing Pumpkins bassist D’arcy Wretzky (1979, 35; Bullet with Butterfly Wings, 51; Today, 78), and Pulp keyboardist Candida Doyle (Common People, 81). And that’s it. Female artists with a history of solid Triple J airplay disappeared from the proceedings: Frente, P. J. Harvey, Tori Amos, Hole, Missy Elliott, Garbage, The Mavis’s, Bjork and Missy Higgins. They were all, to borrow Maya Arulpragasam’s stage name, M.I.A.
Comments
Ha, try telling that to a bunch of 13 year old boys who don’t want to be in their music class! Not only are the majority of great musicians, composers and writers of the last century male, but the vast majority of musical brilliance from the last two millenia comes from males. Maybe cultural, maybe not.
Until a boy discovers the guitar for himself, music is for girls.
my thoughts–
Most musical geniuses are men. I think men *generally* like music more, and invest more time in it.
However–
kate bush should be in the list. She is a genius. My choice would be ‘Cloudbusting’.
Bjork should be in there too. She’s a semi-genius.
Elizabeth Fraser is a genius, and her group The Cocteau Twins should be there. Not as guest-vocalist of that horrible boring dirge of a Massive attack song.
Also I thought Portishead ‘Glorybox’ deserved a place.
Of course men invest more time in music, the women are busy cleaning the house and raising the children…