FEATURE:
Dancing Queens
IN THIS PHOTO: RAYE is an artist who has scored her biggest hits as the featured vocalist on a song by a male producer (such as Jax Jones), rather than on her own merit
Why a Beloved Genre Needs to Address Its Gender Imbalance
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THERE is a bit of an odd split…
IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna recently provided a terrific remix for Beyoncé song, BREAK MY SOUL/PHOTO CREDIT: Madonna
happening in Dance music at the moment concerning women. On the one hand, Dance is offering women over the age of forty an opportunity to enter the charts. I will come to it more in a while but, if you look at artists like Madonna and Beyoncé and D.J.s like Honey Dijon, they are getting their work onto ‘younger’ stations because of the genre. Whether it is an original song or a remix, artists who might otherwise have been ignore by stations are being played. I am not sure what the situation is like in the U.S. and other countries. Here, stations such as BBC Radio 1 have an age demographic. They play Pop, Dance, and other styles, but most of their playlist consists of artists under the age of forty. It is different for BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio 6 Music but, even then, they can be strict regarding genre – I think this is more common with BBC Radio 2. With a lot of young listeners tuned into BBC Radio 1, they are only really hearing from artists their age. Whilst some may feel that Dance music is for the young and, therefore, artists of their age are easier to identify with, this is not the case. I am going to come to an issue when it comes to featuring female Dance acts on radio. Maybe the news is a couple of weeks old, but I wanted to cover it now…
I find it frustrating that there is an age limit that specifically seems to apply to women and non-binary artists! It does not only apply to Dance. If you have a Folk or Pop artist releasing a new track, how much airplay are they going to receive if they are over the age of forty!? Maybe the age limit is lower than that! When I think back to my childhood, the most evocative and memorable music was Dance. I was not at the clubs (obviously), but songs from the likes of Snap!, Urban Cookie Collective, and N-Trance were led by women. It was their impassioned performances that brought these songs to life! If there is ageism happening when it comes to other genres, maybe there is more flexibility when it comes to Dance. Perhaps it is a genre not beholden to algorithms and demographic. I still think Pop is a younger genre – the same with Hip-Hop and Grime -, whereas Folk and similar sounds are traditionally seen as for slightly more mature audiences (though this is not necessarily true today, radio stations do not play this genre as much as they should!). Music bound for the clubs is designed to be embraced by all. I think, because of that, age is not such a massive issue. A recent Billboard article attests to the fact that Dance music is not beholden to the rules and age limits of the charts and the Pop market. That is giving new possibility and airplay to legendary female artists who are otherwise finding it harder to get mainstream and wider airplay:
“Break My Soul,” the lead single from Renaissance, commenced the music icon’s latest reinvention. A raucously blissful ode to building a “new foundation,” “Break My Soul,” situated Beyoncé in a rather intriguing pop music lineage. From Aretha Franklin and Eartha Kitt to Madonna – and now, Beyoncé – once female pop stars hit 40, they seem to always deliver an undeniable anthem rooted in dance music. These songs simultaneously innovate each artist’s core sounds and use the queer history of dance music and the genre’s unique avenues of consumption to catalyze commercial success – in the face of ageism in the music industry and pop culture, at large.
Ageism in pop music is hardly a new phenomenon. A look at Billboard’s 2021 Year-End Radio Songs chart, which ranks the 75 most played songs on radio for that year, reveals a stark age cutoff for female artists vying to get a record in regular radio rotation. Just one song, Taylor Swift’s “Willow” (No. 45), sung by a woman over 30 landed on the 2021 chart. As for the 2021 Year-End Pop Airplay chart, just one woman over 30 appears on the 50-spot ranking: SZA, as a featured artist on Doja Cat’s “Kiss Me More” (No. 4). Nevertheless, plenty of male artists and acts over 30 – including Bruno Mars, Anderson .Paak, Travis Scott, The Weeknd, Charlie Puth, Masked Wolf, Maroon 5, Machine Gun Kelly, Blackbear, Chris Brown, and Ed Sheeran – all had songs make the Year-End list.
In 2015, perennial pop titan Madonna, who recently blessed “Break My Soul” with her appearance on the song’s “Queens Remix,” took on BBC Radio 1 after a programmer refused to play her Rebel Heart lead single “Living for Love” in an effort to lower the age of the station’s demographic. “My manager said to me, ‘If you’re not in your twenties, it’s hard. You might get your record played in your thirties. There’s a handful of people who do – Pharrell got lucky. But if you’re in your fifties, you can forget it,’” Madonna said. “I was like, ‘Wait a second. Shouldn’t it have to do with whether you wrote a good, catchy pop song?’”
In a 2017 New York Times interview, P!nk expressed similar sentiments. The “Just Give Me A Reason” singer said that she was told, “Just be prepared, they don’t play girls over 35 on top 40 radio. There are exceptions, but they’re songs, not artists — unless you’re Beyoncé.” But even that last exception wasn’t necessarily warranted: “Break My Soul,” which as of press time, has peaked at No. 4 on Billboard‘s Radio Songs chart, is the first song from a Beyoncé album to hit the chart’s top 10 since her self-titled set’s “Drunk In Love” rose to No. 6 in 2014. “Soul” is also Beyoncé’s first solo song to hit the top 10 on the Pop Airplay listing since “Sweet Dreams” in 2009.
The beauty of dance music, in terms of general consumption, is that while the genre has had its mainstream periods – particularly in the ‘90s diva house era “Soul” calls back to – it is not inherently reliant on the politics of radio. Dance music pulses and percolates in nightclubs, raves, and balls that stretch into the twinkling wee hours of the morning. From the underground queer subcultures that informed the disco movement to house music’s foundation of chosen families, dance music has always thrived outside of the mainstream. (Dance also had an undeniable top 40 moment at the beginning of the 2010s, with the commercial dominance of dubstep and progressive house, but it was a phenomenon that largely sanitized the history of dance music and prioritized straight white male artists and voices over the genre’s queer Black roots.)
The left-of-mainstream legacy has evolved in the digital age, with queer pop music fans often finding community in the fan bases of their favorite artists. These are often the most devoted and dedicated fans these artists have, so forays into a genre that is inextricably tied to queerness is an understandable move – as these artists’ commercial success becomes increasingly dictated by their core audience as opposed to the fleeting adoration of the general public.
DJ and music scholar Lynée Denise writes of the late 1980s club scene in cities like Chicago and Detroit, “DJs and house music producers, some queer and some straight, were calling on witnesses of the AIDS crisis to grieve and groove.” These were records that didn’t have to rely on massive radio conglomerates and callout scores to determine success. Instead, these records relied on their ability to bring people to the dancefloor and enrapture a crowd. In the same way, when pop divas turn to dance for late-career musical shifts, the songs are now reliant on both club play and radio. Sometimes, their dominance in the club scene can transcend any tepid reaction from traditional radio. (Many of the biggest stars also regularly rely on dance remixes of their hits from popular DJs to continue to get even their non-floor-ready hits club play, a practice established in the ‘90s by the likes of Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson, and Madonna.)”.
If there is a bit of light peeking through that means women over the age of forty in Dance are being heard more, it does raise questions. Why do other genres not have the same opportunities and flexibility? Why, in 2022, is age such an issue? One only needs to look at the recent resurgence of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) to know that a good song, regardless of the artist’s age (Bush is sixty-four) is a great song! It does not matter how old the artist is. It is still a problem that applies to women and non-binary artists. I feel that male artists and D.J.s do not have the same struggle. There does need to be quick change, because so many incredible artists and D.J.s are being overlooked and defined by their age. If Dance music is providing more established artists over the age of forty exposure they might not have got in other genres, there is a problem with Dance music as a whole. A recent report (as the BBC report) found that female Dance acts/D.J.s are largely being ignored by radio. I have said how, in the 1980s, 1990s and early/mid-2000s how Dance music led by female voices was very much embraced. It was so important to me. These women were responsible for some of the most memorable music ever! Now, when you think that stations would offer a wider spectrum and voices to women and non-binary Dance acts, it seems like there is a rigidness that is causing damage to the scene. The new report, which covered the years 2020-2021, was conducted by the Jaguar Foundation (the brainchild of Radio 1 DJ Jaguar Bingham).
IN THIS PHOTO: Jaguar
She wrote for The Guardian earlier this month about how Dance music is out of step when it comes to women and non-binary D.J.s:
“In the 1970s and 80s, dance music was born from minorities – the LGBTQ+ communities and Black and Brown people in Chicago, New York and Detroit – as a means of escapism and freedom from a world that was not built for them. The disfranchised created a microcosm to express themselves and feel safe. If you look at top-tier DJs and festival lineups in the UK in 2022, however, this doesn’t add up. Calvin Harris, Fatboy Slim, David Guetta – white men dominate the modern electronic scene, mirroring the world we live in, and those not part of the canon face many challenges.
My report, Progressing Gender Representation in UK Dance Music, is a deep dive into the gender disparity among artists within the UK electronic music scene. The seeds of the report were sown during the pandemic, when I became a DJ with no gigs. In a period of reflection, inspired by the Black Lives Matter protests, I questioned what I really wanted from my career.
I found my purpose. On my BBC Radio 1 shows, championing minorities was already a priority, but I wanted to do more to make UK dance music a more equal place for the next generation. In 2020, I launched Future1000 with Virtuoso, a free, online initiative where women, trans and non-binary people aged 12 to 18 can learn to DJ, in an accessible way. While researching the report I couldn’t find many official resources with data about gender in dance music, so the Jaguar Foundation was born and we decided to create our own research and provide solutions to gender inequality.
Through interviews with UK dance music artists, industry heavyweights, and those already lobbying for change in this area, we put together a strong narrative around what the challenges are, and what we can do to accelerate existing progress. This was backed up by plenty of data analysis, looking at festival lineups, radio airplay and the gender of ticket buyers at club nights.
There are other challenges for women and non-binary people too, such as the added pressure of how they look. Too often I’ve read comments referring to the success of some women DJs being down to their attractiveness. I have friends who dress androgynously when they DJ – or do anything front-facing – because they’re afraid to oversexualise themselves and be judged. During a DJ live stream my friend didn’t wear a bra and all the comments were about her nipples, rather than her performance. It negatively affected her mental health and confidence. It’s exhausting to have to battle through all this every day. When I did my first Boiler Room session this year, I was so nervous – not about the gig, but about what trolls were going to say in the comments”.
Whereas female and non-binary Dance artists might appear as featured artists and find a chart route that way, how many Dance tracks now do you hear played and rule the charts with women at the front!? Maybe mainstream artists like Dua Lipa are an exception, but I would consider her to be more Pop-based. I keep drawing a comparison between past decades. One can argue that a lot of the classic Dance tracks did feature female voices at the front, but the act themselves were male. Also, when it came to credit, do we remember the names of the women who sung the song, or is it still only about the acts they performed for? Maybe there is some truth in that but, from Lady Miss Kier’s memorable and timeless vocal for Deee-Lite’s Groove Is in the Heart to Heather Small’s vocal on Black Box’s Ride on Time, right through to Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s performance on Spiller’s Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love), we have examples of songs that will inspire for generations – led by amazing women and non-binary artists. In Dance and Electronica, there are so many superb women and non-binary artists who are not getting fair due and equality. This is a moment when ageism against women and non-binary artists is less of an issue in Dance compared with other genres. On the flipside, the genre as a whole is championing male artists. Radio playlists are still being dominated by them. It is baffling! There are so many incredible and varied women and non-binary Dance artists and D.J.s that warrant a platform and parity. Gender inequality continues to rear its head! Dance music should be ageless; for all genders, peoples and walks of life. It is music that has never judged; one that opens its heart and doors and welcomes people in. That’s how it should be anyway! When it comes to women and non-binary artists, stations who should be featuring more Dance music from them…