At this point in history there’s been a billion songs from female singers about relationships. Nearly every song revolves around that topic.
Where are the songs like:
Blue Öyster Cult - Don’t Fear The Reaper
The Charlie Daniels Band - The Devil Went Down to Georgia
Even great songs like Rhiannon by Fleetwood Mac though about a witch is still about a witch & unrequited love.
One reason why I like Trip Hop is because there’s some great female voices but the lyrics aren’t always themed towards relationships. I suspect though that many of those songs are written by the guys in the band.
Everything I have stated above about female singers applies to female comedians too. They primarily joke about relationship stuff. There are no female Mitch Hedbergs joking about silly shit.
I just want to hear Shakira or Jewel or Norah Jones sing a song about mudwrestling Satan in a dive bar in 1970s Louisiana. Ladies, where is your imagination?
I think you’re a victim of availability bias. You’re thinking of all the women who sing songs about relationships and forgetting all the men who sing songs about relationships. You’re remembering all the men who sing about not-relationships and forgetting all the women who do the same.
Tik Tok, Royals, I Love Rock and Roll, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Tom’s Diner, All I Wanna Do, Anti-Hero, 9 to 5, the list can go on indefinitely.
And that goes doubly for comedians.
Mitch Hedberg did jokes about relationships. “I don’t have a girlfriend, but I do know a woman who would be mad at me for saying that.”
There are dozens of currently active women who do comedy that isn’t just about relationships. Most probably include jokes about relationships, but comedy is about shared experiences, and relationships are fertile ground for material.
I get your point but one Mitch Hedberg joke out of all of his act is not the same as what most female comedians do. You know what I meant.
Nightwish
Amaranthe
Visions of Atlantis
Babymetal
Liliac
And those are just off the top of my head.
Jinjer as well.
Oooh yeah that’s the good stuff.
I have heard of them, but never listened to them… Yet.
“Today I killed, he was just a boy 8 before him, I knew them all”
I really love nightwish.
Babymetal’s very good. You’d think an idol metal group would never work, they feel like both opposites in their genres, but they work it out very well.
Are the females in those bands writing the songs or are the guys writing the songs?
What a strange and sexist thing to ask lol
Who’s writing the love songs?
It’s probably a mix but then you have Jewel or Taylor Swift who write their own lyrics.
Your says nothing about gatekeeping the lyricists, only the lyrics. Does it matter who writes?
My point was about creativity and coming up with ideas for songs. Women seemed geared towards relationships and never want to come up with off the wall wacky nonsense.
This says more about your interpretation of the world than the actual world. Congratulations, you’re incorrect. Now you have the opportunity to fix that.
Yeah my dude QueenB you’re working with a pretty narrow view of women that to me is past bordering on misogyny.
Is this article misogynistic?
Why Women Have Stronger Immune Systems than Men
Pointing out differences between men and women is not sexist or misogynistic.
FEMALES. You always know it’s going to be a nonsensical sexist take when that word pops up over and over.
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Cindy Lou Who has a death metal band that’s relatively famous.
The music is out there, it’s just never gonna pop level huge.
I always forget about her band. They are really good. ETA: the band is called The Pretty Reckless
Try this:
Also, “females” makes you sound like a Ferengi. It’s okay to say women, even when you’re using it as a sexist overgeneralization.
Women singers legit sounds like cave people speak as in “grug go hunt”. It’s so grammatically jarring.
Women of London - Normal
Female of London - Ferengi/IncelWomen Journalist- Caveperson
Female Journalist - NormalMen of London - Normal
Male of London - WeirdMen Journalist- Caveperson
Male Journalist - NormalEtc. I don’t know where this grammatical shift came from, but its only really popped up in the last 5 or so years and feels chiefly American.
For future reference:
Male/female is chiefly used to refer to biological contexts. “Female spiders in some species tend to devour their male mates” is a perfectly acceptable description.
Men/women is chiefly used to refer to human-centric sociological contexts. “Women in technology roles face hurdles that men in similar roles do not.” is also a perfectly reasonable description.
@SatanicNotMessianic @Deceptichum I think that’s somewhat fair, but linguistically “female” is an adjective and “women” is a noun. The noun in that sentence is “singer” and female is a classifying adjective.
The original post IS stupid and has sexist overtones, but I don’t think they come from word choice.
I think I’m going to have to disagree on the basis of such usages as “women singers/songwriters.”
The differentiation is socio-linguistic, because “female” is often used in a dehumanizing context in English. Sociology-linguistically, it’s similar to referring to “blacks” as opposed to “black Americans” or “deafs” as opposed to “deaf people.” The problem is specifically substituting a noun that historically been used to dehumanize the people to which it refers, because it is exclusionary of the “default” status (male, white, hearing).
I am on the side of the linguists who take a descriptive rather than a prescriptive approach to the analysis of language, but part of being a descriptivist is recognizing the subtext potentially if subconsciously involved.
@SatanicNotMessianic can’t say any of that is wrong or unreasonable, but I still do find the expressed intent of the post more misogynistic than the use of the word female in context.
Talk to me when male singers write a modern fairy tale about a monkey and bear who escape from a traveling circus only for the monkey to coerce the bear into prostitution to support the duo until one night the bear sneaks off to bathe and the monkey follows and sees the bear turn into an angel and then into dust after she realizes she’s been seen naked.
Do you have a link for that?
Joanna Newsom - Monkey & Bear
Whole album Ys is a 10/10
That song is so fucking good. Just unreasonably good.
Did you take into account that most pop songs are about that topics? It’s not only female singers
Both Spotify and apple music have massive playlists of female singers in the rock/metal genre, you need to stop looking at pop music if you want to find decent stuff
Are the females in those bands writing the songs or are the guys writing the songs?
Female singers only want to sing about love, relationships or breakups
Someone’s moving the goalpost
Not moving the goalpost. That’s what I was originally thinking during creation of the post but perhaps I could have phrased my title better. The whole point is about creativity and using your imagination to come up with song ideas.
Do you think that most pop singers write their songs themselves?
I gave you a suggestion to help find new artists/bands, the research on songwriting is up to you, but I can tell you now there’s a lot of bands where the front woman is writing
If this is a thread to recommend kickass woman songwriters, I’ll add a couple of names to the list:
- Gillian Welch. One of the best in country music. Time (The Revelator) is my favourite album, and has a really cool song touching upon themes such as the sinking of the Titanic, the troubles of getting red clay off your dress, and how hard it is to make money as an artist these days.
- PJ Harvey. Listen to hear early stuff for punk, or her newer stuff for all kinds of experimentation. I dig Rid of Me for the former and Let England Shake for the latter.
- Patti Smith. Because somehow I don’t see Patti Smith mentioned in this thread yet.
Just a note to say that PJ Harvey can send you down a dark, dark path. I can’t listen to her unless I’m able to clock out for a couple of days to recover. She’s a really powerful singer.
Also, I want to call out both Sinead (and I’m not even going to get into the character arc she was subjected to, but highly recommend her later work as well as her early stuff) and Kate Bush, if you’re into the more experimental stuff. Going further I that direction would be of course Björk and the incomparable Diamanda Galas. On the other end of the spectrum you’ve got bands like the Cranberries, with Zombies being easily if not superior to anything done by U2 on the Troubles.
“Why yes, I only listen to the Top 100 Billboard songs. How can you tell?” - OP, probably
In all seriousness OP, broaden your horizons in music. You clearly don’t listen to enough music to know that men also sing about breakups, love, and relationships.
I wrote in my original post that I listen to Trip Hop. Did you not see that?
Have you heard anything by 4 Non Blondes, Veruca Salt, or Hole?
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Left the burner on
I have but perhaps I should have phrased my title better. 99% of all songs by females are about relationships stuff and I think when it’s about eccentric stuff some guy in the band wrote the song. So, a few examples here and there does not invalidate my point. Most songs by females are about relationships.
lmao you forgot to sign out of your alt account, OP
Off the top of my head:
Massively well known: Annie Lennox, Suzanne Vega, some members of Chumbawamba
More indie: Grumpster, Lynette Knackstedt (RIP), The Dollyrots, Cher Strauberry
Also, I think you’re making a lot of assumptions here, especially the one where you suspect that if it’s not about a relationship, then a man must have written it
That’s truly an unpopular opinion.
Because it’s not really an opinion.
It’s a weird rant on a weird faulty assumption.
It’s a factually incorrect one, so…
Pop songs aren’t written by the singer and more of the writers are men.
@QueenB how the hell would you come to this conclusion ?? This is a troll right ?
@tournesol @QueenB Male artists keep writing about love, and this is disgusting. Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You, OneRepublic’s Counting Stars, Eminem’s Mockingbird (fatherly love), Snoop Dogg’s Beautiful, Linkin Park’s Numb… All this shit makes me want to puke, where are REAL men?? At least the ladies know how to do it, they should learn from Britney, at least she is Toxic!
I listen to music. That’s how.
I just don’t see many examples like Led Zeppelin - Immigrant Song that are not only sung by a female but also were written by one.
@QueenB OMFG like almost every Zeppelin song is about fucking or a woman that’s done them wrong, driven them to drink etc.
And please don’t use “female” to describe women unless you’re writing a police report.
