Progression of women in hard rock

Throughout the history of music, there is a genera called rock and roll. It's emergence in the early forties was created by an influx of African and White cultures, and dominated by males. As time progressed, females started to get a presence, but it was mainly in groups or as a stereotypical diva. Chosen for looks and rarely for talent it wasn't until the 1960's until the first talented females that relied on singing and song writing skills rather than looks. They sang a form of rock that was shedding the "rock and roll" type stigma and sang songs with meaning rather than made up nonsense words. These songs also utilized the electric guitar like non other before them. Woodstock would bring these people together and really get hard rock underway.

Janis Joplin was perhaps the first female to make it big based on talent alone. She put her sole into her music and was well noted for it. Her performance at Woodstock was extremely well noted and her fans loved her for it. If she hadn’t overdosed in 1970 who knows where her music would have gone.

Joplin influenced women to not worry about sex appeal and to focus on talent. The band Heart took to her example and took off in the mid 70’s. Nancy and Ann Wilson started the band; they’re also the bands vocalists. They created hits like Barracuda and Crazy on you, which are authentic hard rock songs. In an era where disco reined supreme Heart held their own.

These women strayed way from the diva persona. In the eighties grunge band L7 and metal band Vixen stood as equals to their male counter parts. Both of these bands where made up completely of women, and proved that women could not only sing, they could also play instruments.

In the nineties trends continued to rise as music got easier to come by. Downloading made new artist able to be heard just by placing a song on a shareware program. Artist like the Nightwish and Lacuna Coil from Europe began to gain fandom in the US. Later in that decade Evanesance with their female vocalist went platinum with their plethora of top hits. Women continued to see how far they could succeed and in 2001 Arch Enemy, one of the hardest bands in music, picked up Angela Gossow to replace their male front man. Many fans renounced the bands decision but in 2002 with the release of Wages of Sin, Angela proved that women could rock as hard as any man.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu