3 Comments

In previous decades, there were a whole set of fantastic women singers who didn't have to use sex to be successful: Joni Mitchell, Suzanne Vega, Tracy Chapman, Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie, Nina Simone, Janis Joplin, Roberta Flack, etc. And even many of the women whose sexuality was a part of their image (Debbie Harry, Chrissie Hynde, etc.) were still classy. There are very few women singers today (none in the mainstream) who don't use explicit sexuality in their images. Even Adele is posting bikini thirst pics!

Expand full comment
author

I know what you mean. I sometimes think about Aretha Franklin and how she was such a powerful artist just with her voice and the piano and try to imagine her rolling around in catsuit or some other ridiculous get up. I can't think of a young, mainstream female singer now who "just" sings, no weird transgressive/sexual performance required beyond that. There are a very small number of current mainstream women singers (IMHO) whose talent match their success -- just one actually. And more power to her, I have nothing against immensely talented people who can sing and dance and look amazing in tight outfits and manage to produce interesting music. But the success of one outlier has pushed all female artists in the direction of sexual explicitness that I think is highly distorting for young people.

Expand full comment

These people are crafted, they don’t appear genuine at all to me. You can compare their music to something like The Highwaymen..... Johnny, Willie, Kris and Waylon. They were real, raised Hell and sang about it, not a bunch of psycho depressed stuff. Just hard living, chain smoking and drinking. You can hear it in the song Born and Raised in Black and White. The “artists” these days have about as much talent as my epiditimitis scared.... they’re terrible.

Expand full comment