Girls Need Love Too!

Pop music isn’t shit.

I remember so many times as a teenager chatting about music with my friends. I think it’s a pretty common topic of conversation, judging each other’s playlists, introducing each other to new songs we’d heard. But if anyone dared to suggest a pop song they’d almost universally be met with cries of ‘your music taste is shit’. Recently I was on the phone to my friend who told me she’d been talking to a group of guys about music, one of whom took a look at her playlist and immediately told her she had bad taste in music.

And why? Sure, I’d never deny that some pop music is really, really shit but so can be music of all genres. So why do we categorise ‘shit’ or low grade music being pop? And why do people who are not music critics (and actually why do music critics) decide they have the authority to tell you your taste in music is bad? Why is it that telling someone you’re well into rock n roll is met with ‘wow so cool you have great taste’ but if I start chatting about my favourite disco tracks I’m immediately a heathen?

As a society, we have widely accepted the erasure of cultural forms that are enjoyed by women by deeming them low quality and therefore anyone who engages with them must have bad taste. We can see this with rom coms, gossip magazines, reality TV and even ‘chick lit’. Rock n roll, despite being created by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, was later popularised and then completely dominated by straight white male artists and is generally associated with a straight white male fan base. Pop music, by contrast, has been dominated by female and queer artists, artists of colour and similar fan demographics. Coincidence? I think not.

The answers to all of my previous questions lie in a quick history of music criticism over the past century. According to recent stats, women still only make up just over a quarter of music critics. In 2023. Let me tell you that number does not improve the further you look back.

A 2019 statistic from Spotify shows that male-identifying users listened to 94% male artists and around 3% female artists, with the rest made up by mixed groups. Female identifying users, by contrast, listened to 31% female artists and around 55% male artists. Given that the very large majority of tastemakers in music are male, and as we’ve proved here, men tend to listen to pretty much only male artists, is it a surprise that they would push us to believe that male dominated genres are superior?

This erasure of music enjoyed by women also extends to people of colour and the queer community. In case I haven’t already convinced you, let’s talk about Disco Demolition Night in 1979. Disco was the mainstream form of pop music leading America through the 1970s. Almost all of the most famous artists were people of colour and a large majority of them powerhouse women like Donna Summer and Gloria Gaynor. A huge quantity of fans were women, people of colour and the queer community. Note: not cis-het white men. At a Chicago White Sox baseball game in 1979, an anti-disco riot erupted, led primarily by white men, fuelled by white radio presenter Steve Dahl. He headed up a stunt, offering fans tickets for 98 cents in return for him destroying their disco records. The rioters brought with them not only disco records, but records by famous Black artists like Otis Redding, records by female and queer artists, meaning the riot descended into being not anti-disco, but anti-women, anti-Black and anti-queer.

The association between disco, women, queerness and Blackness and disco’s subsequent erasure is proof of music’s damaging and destructive relationship with genre that doesn’t centre straight white cisgender men. It’s not a huge leap to say that this is exactly what we’re witnessing in 2023 with pop music. 

Here we see the issue become more complex with fan demographics playing a part in how an artist is viewed. The Beatles for example, were ridiculed for years by critics for the fact that most of their fans were female. Now, with their catalogue being reclaimed by male fans, mostly based on their later, more experimental albums, they are seen as music heroes and they’ve been welcomed with open arms into the music-that-means-you-have-good-taste group. I wonder if the same thing will happen to One Direction?

Now, as it turns out my friend who had been told she has trash taste is a big fan of a lot of female artists. And the person telling her she had trash taste was, indeed, a straight white man. I think you could hear my eye roll in Japan.

The erasure of culture consumed primarily by women is an insidious problem the music (and film, tv, literature etc) industry must face. How can female artists thrive in an environment where their music is seen as lower value than male artists? The music industry is, at its core, misogynistic, racist and homophobic and it has to change.

So, can we please agree once and for all that in 2023, telling someone they have trash taste because they prefer Taylor Swift to Ed Sheeran, Nicki Minaj to Jay-Z or The Slits to The Sex Pistols is outdated. In fact let’s just say making yourself the judge of anyone’s taste in general is outdated, ill-informed and offensive. Taste is subjective, as male critics have proven by successfully driving the idea that male dominated musical genres are ‘better’ despite having no basis for this.

Music is one of our oldest forms of entertainment and it means something different to everyone. All art forms are to be interpreted by the consumer in whatever way it appears to them. So why would you ever compare your own tastes to someone else’s? Especially if your comparison has highly misogynistic, racist and homophobic overtones.

Male readers of this – do better. Male music listeners – do better. Male music industry professionals – definitely do better. Support female artists, uplift them and for the love of god actually listen to them.

N.B. the same argument could (and maybe I will) be made about rap with regard to racism and misogynoir however this article would be ridiculously long. 

If you are interested in the points raised in this article I will also take the liberty of recommending the book Shine Bright by Danyel Smith.