FEATURE:
Queens United
PHOTO CREDIT: cottonbro studio/Pexels
How Women Are Defining the Music and Live Highlights of 2023
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TO continue what I have been saying….
IN THIS PHOTO: Lana Del Rey/PHOTO CREDIT: Chuck Grant
for a very long time now: the current music scene is dominated and defined by women. I have explored this before many times. What I mean is that the best albums and songs have been created by women. I think they are leading the way and doing something extraordinary. I will end with a playlist of songs from the best albums made by women this year so far. I think that the festival bills for this year are disappointingly unbalanced. All should be aiming for a fifty-fifty gender balance, and yet very few have. In terms of headliner, as Glastonbury showed, there are plenty of worthy women ready to headline that have been booked further down the bill – Lana Del Rey springs to mind. I wanted to discuss women in music 2023 a little bit more. In terms of the most spectacular gigs and festival performances, I think that female artists have also delivered more in that respect to their male counterparts. The aforementioned Lana Del Rey’s Glastonbury set, despite being cut short, was among the very best. Her other gigs this year have been immense. Alongside new groups such as The Last Dinner Party marking themselves out as future legend, right across the musical broad, we are seeing incredible female artists strike out with the most incredible music. There are a couple of reviews I want to bring in that highlight some epic performances from amazing women. The first is from The Guardian. They were reviewing Green Nan Festival. Artists such as Self Esteem (Rebecca Lucy Taylor) and Julia Byrne provided highlights:
“The national park in which it takes place has changed name to Bannau Brycheiniog, but 21 years in, most else about Green Man remains reassuringly the same. Subtle evolution, not revolution, has been the steady success of this 25,000 capacity all-ages celebration of musical eclecticism and reverence in nature: it’s practically as much a part of the Powys landscape as the soaring mountains that wrap the site in their misty embrace.
IN THIS PHOTO: Self Esteem (Rebecca Lucy Taylor)/PHOTO CREDIT: Suzie Howell for The New York Times
Green Man tickets sold out almost immediately this year before any artists were even announced – no mean feat in tight economic times. There’s no denying that prices have crept upwards sharply (£6.50 a pint of Growler). Yet Green Man’s core values hold strong. Sponsorship is eschewed. Sustainability, inclusivity (the lineup is gender balanced; two of the three main-stage headliners are female) and laid-back good vibes reign. Emerging artists, zeitgeisty heavy hitters and heritage heroes alike are platformed to often much bigger crowds than they would typically reach, and usually seize their moment.
However, on Friday night, not ponchos, nor 6 Music Dad caps nor the homemade versions of headliners Devo’s trademark energy dome hats can defy the lashing rain. Akron, Ohio’s boiler-suited Spudboys are on a goodbye tour and prove ideal for Green Man with their litany of jittery, improbable post-punk hits including Whip It and a wickedly shredded cover of the Rolling Stones’ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction. In what may lend credence to Devo’s pet theory about of the devolution of mankind, humans dance madly in the muck. Earlier on the same stage, in a Friday of farewells, psychedelic jazz explorers the Comet is Coming played one of their last ever shows, sending the crowd into similarly soggy raptures.
American alt-folk singer-songwriter Julie Byrne’s magnificent new album The Greater Wings is a triumph of grace and hope against the odds. The sun makes its immaculately timed entrance on Saturday as she begins to sing her exquisite synth-dappled hymns of love and loss. Later, Arizonan Americana heartbreaker Courtney Marie Andrews holds a hushed crowd in the palm of her hand, in spite of her and her band being forced to busk it on borrowed instruments after losing their gear in a frantic dash to Wales. “I’ve been wearing the same clothes for 72 hours!” Andrews admits. The slow drama of sunset is matched by Irish folk radicals Lankum’s droning Celt-goth waves of dread and bliss.
“I’m going to go away for a year to do new things, ta ra!” announces power-suited Rebecca Lucy Taylor AKA Self Esteem, as she brings down the curtain on her breakout era as Britain’s most righteous new pop superstar. How apt that it should end here, where touring for her acclaimed second album Prioritise Pleasure began with a bang in 2021 in the Far Out tent. Taylor’s connection with the festival goes back much further still, to her previous band Slow Club. To see her elevated to main stage Saturday night headliner, leading ecstatic dances and howling, cathartic singalongs, is an all-time Green Man high.
Just as Self Esteem’s career took root here so too might that of others to appear on smaller stages across the weekend. Homegrown up-and-comers from the musical hotbed of Monmouthshire the Bug Club are a fizzing reminder of how much fun rock’n’roll can be when you keep it funny and simple, dummy. The intriguingly named Uh clash dreamy electronic textures with acid house squelch and blasts of punky dissonance. Indie buzz band most likely to “do a Wet Leg”, the Last Dinner Party, pull probably the biggest crowd the rising stage has ever seen (evidence suggests they have already risen)”.
It is not only the summer that has seen female cultural dominance. I feel the entire year has – and will continue to be – been defined by them. It is almost impossible to compile a playlist with all the best music made by women so far this year. I will do as much as I can. The point is, whether it is live performances, festivals sets, albums, singles or any musical highs, most of the best and most memorable have been from women. Epic tours from Taylor Swift and Beyoncé have confirmed them as legends. A definite legend, Madonna, begins her Celebration Tour in October. I also think that, as festivals balance their books and book more women, we will see some icons of the future come through. Before wrapping up, and highlighting a trio of tremendous women whose album, the record, and live performances have been heralded, The Guardian reviewed boygenius when they played Gunnerbury Park, London recently:
“If there is a better after-party to England losing the World Cup on Sunday morning than seeing Boygenius play to 25,000 fans, it’s hard to picture it. The US songwriting supergroup of Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus trade in both intimate commiserations and a celebration of female interdependence that runs counter to the concept of singular male brilliance that gave them their cheeky band name. They chose Irish songwriter Soak, US alt-pop star Ethel Cain and pop trio Muna to support them today: all queer artists, a bill reflected in a very polite crowd primarily comprised of girls, goths and gays (and England shirts). This spiritual sister to Lilith Fair feels like an apt conclusion to a summer defined by women succeeding on an epic scale, from the England squad to blockbuster, headline-dominating tours by Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and SZA, to Greta Gerwig’s Barbie painting the box office pink.
IN THIS PHOTO: Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus of boygenius/COMPOSITE: Gus Stewart/Getty Images
Gunnersbury Park is, Baker estimates, the trio’s biggest show ever, and there’s almost something incongruous about it: these three songwriters often sing in close-woven harmonies, and keep a similarly tight lyrical focus, from an imminent ex’s unbearable “keys on the counter, your dirty dish in the sink” in Dacus’s Please Stay, to Emily I’m Sorry, a Bridgers-led track about a crisis in the back seat of a car that seems to shudder with the precariousness of the situation. They have just one EP and an album, this year’s The Record, and many of their Americana-tinged songs proceed with a crushed, under-covers smallness, or a nostalgic dreaminess reminiscent of Sheryl Crow’s 90s hits. Yet the response among the crowd is one of abject hysteria – there are tattoos of Bridgers’ lyrics, and a woman wearing wings to cosplay as the lyric “always an angel, never a god” – reflecting a generational hunger to hear these small, never-ending embarrassments blown up sky-sized. One of the biggest yell-alongs comes in Emily I’m Sorry, as Bridgers sings, “I’m 27 and I don’t know who I am.”
Boygenius are well aware of this, and take a knowing approach to their own iconography, perhaps having observed from Mitski’s gigs being overrun by screaming gen Z-ers that if you can’t beat ’em, you may as well join ’em. The merch features various well-done riffs on the classic heavy metal aesthetic. They walk on to The Boys Are Back in Town, adopt the verve of a wrestling announcer to introduce one another and, in their matching suits and ties, function a bit like a boyband. Bridgers, the most influential songwriter of the past five years, is obviously Robbie Williams and could presumably sell out the park alone, yet their formation is well balanced, highlighting each member’s strengths – the unblinking clarity of Dacus’s voice, the weather-worn innocence of Baker’s – without making their self-written songs sound like individual showcases, nor subsuming them to a blanded-out whole.
Balancing their heart-piercing lyrics are the self-consciously meme-able ones: Dacus’s “you say you’re a winter bitch but summer’s in your blood” from True Blue gets another scream-along, and Bridgers starts Boyfriends by asking the very LGBTQ-centric crowd: “Who here has a boyfriend?” After they boo, she says: “Who is a boyfriend? Who is an aspiring boyfriend?” to rising cheers, then the climax: “Who here is gay?” gets another scream. The hysteria becomes so much that the band keep having to stop the show to get security to attend to fainting fans: it’s not hot, nor exactly druggy, so you can only assume they’ve been overcome by pure swooning. The other price of this sort of extremely online fandom is the plague of phones, and before Letter to an Old Poet, Bridgers asks fans to put theirs away as it’s about “the hardest part of my adult life and I’d prefer to look you in the face”.
Sometimes the mid-tempo-ness of it all gets a bit overwhelming, though even when they play another wistful epic, it’s worth remembering how seldom women musicians have had the scope to be so expansive and in front of such vast crowds. But the highlights are undoubtedly the thrashers that make good on the gnarly merch imagery: $20 leaps from hymnal harmonies to a brawny crunch that thunders like river rapids; Satanist surges; Not Strong Enough turns a song about an inferiority complex into an all-time great chorus (one that would fit perfectly on the Cardigans’ underrated country-tinged Long Gone Before Daylight).
And the ending maxes out their self-sustained rock lore: Muna come on for Salt in the Wound, which climaxes with fireworks and Dacus snogging every member of her band as well as Muna. The six musicians tumble over each other, a giddy, gleeful pride that deserve to celebrate the special community they’ve created”.
From the BRIT Awards recognising some amazing women to the fact that this year’s Mercury Prize sees Jessie Ware and (female-fronted) Jockstrap in the shortlist means that the industry is acknowledging their brilliance and importance. Rather than this being another feature where I poke the industry and say they are not doing enough to highlight women and create parity, it is a celebration of the awesome music – both live and recorded – that they have brought us. Teeming with stunning sounds from a brilliant and diverse range of artists, 2023 has been another where music’s queens have made the biggest impressions. This will continue through the next year. That is not to say men in music are lagging behind a lot. One cannot discount their amazing contributions. I feel, and as there is a long way to go before we see true equality across the board, that the standard of music coming from female artist is not being rewarded with opportunity and necessary fanfare. They do not want special treatment or to be isolated. Instead, there has been this wealth of wonderful music from women that people need to hear. Let’s hope, as we look towards 2024, that there is a radical shift. Progress and parity has been slow to come by. It has not happened yet and, in a year when festivals at least could have done a lot more to include women and make them headliners, they failed to do so. Cloaking themselves ion implausible and rather flimsy excuses, it has been angering to hear the same old lines trotted out by organisers. One only needs to look at what has been produced by women the past couple of years to know that there is an embarrassment of riches. It is largely down to amazing women in music today that 2023 has been…
SUCH a wonderful year.