Major Project – Sexism in the Music Industry

    A total of 899 individuals were nominated for a Grammy Award between 2013 and 2018. 90.7% of those were male, and 9.3% were female, according to the billboard. In the MTV’s Video Music Awards (VMAs) of 2018, Ariana Grande performs “God Is A Woman.”  This song is special because it is all about female empowerment and how women are the world’s center. Ariana Grande has had many backlashes as a woman in the music industry. In that year, she faced much negativity from the people based on her relationship with Pete Davidson. This song lets it be known that those comments do not phase her, and she is still flourishing even when they always try to bring her down. Many other women have faced the same challenge in the music industry, like Selena Gomez, Queen Najia, Joan Tower, Beyonce, and Taylor Swift. The music industry favors men and does not believe women are capable of the same things as men. The industry is sexist, and while there has been some progress, there is still much progress to be made.

    In an interview with the New York Times, Joan Tower was asked many questions about her music and how she felt towards her success. During her interview, “Joan Tower Interview – La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest”, Tower brought up sexism in the music industry and why she felt she was not ready for the success that she was getting. The interviewer asked her what made her feel that she was not ready to perform, and her answer was, “I have always had a low opinion of myself. I think it’s a female thing, in a way. For women, in a field like composition, which has been male-dominated for years and years and years, it’s a hard thing to walk into and feel that you are as empowered as your male colleagues are. That’s  a very superficial answer to the question.” As a woman in her industry, she felt like she was not up to where she should have been. She compares herself to men in her industry; this is problematic because the music industry has held men to such a high standard and has had the notion that women are not as great as men or that they cannot make music like a man can and that women tend to be scared while going into the music industry. It is not common for a woman to go into music because men are usually the ones that businesses want to represent, and they get more opportunities than a female gets. In most genres, women are underrepresented, contributing to sexism, believing a woman can not do what a man can. In our personal interview, Joan Tower was asked how she felt about being labeled as a female composer. She responded that she did not mind being labeled that way because she wanted more recognition for female composers since there are not many women in composition.

    While Tower may not mind being advertised that way, there is an issue emphasizing that if a woman did a certain achievement, in this case, it would be in the music industry. When a man gets an award or special recognition, there is no focus on his gender,  but simply the artist’s name and his accomplishments. When a woman wins an award or is great at what she does, the word woman or female is more likely to be published before her name, or when they speak about performances, the word woman is in the article. When Billboard conducted research to show the differences between the genders it was found out that between 2013 and 2018, 899 individuals were nominated to win a Grammy award, out of those individuals 90.7% of those were male, and only 9.3% were female. Women do not win awards often and when they do the public brings awareness to the artist’s success and establishes that it was a woman. In Tower‘s case, she was labeled as a female composer, and the festival that she was in was published as a women’s festival which she revealed in her interview “Joan Tower Interview – La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest.” The need to emphasize gender makes this an issue because there should be double standards in the music industry. When gender is emphasized, it makes the readers perceive it as something unusual or not accustomed to it. These issues may seem small, and while there has been a progression, these small issues remain. 

     Ariana Grande is another example of a woman being a victim of sexism and she uses her platform to stand up against it. She used symbolism throughout her performance of “God is a woman” in the VMAs to emphasize women’s empowerment while still mentioning the progress that still has to be made. Her background is the universe and a woman in its center, which symbolizes women being the center of the world.

 Ariana is putting women in power with the visuals in the performance. In the music industry and society, women are looked at as submissive and weak. Ariana is saying the opposite of that; women are not powerless. She continually brings up the idea of the strength of womanhood throughout her performance in “VMAs God Is A Woman” and in her actual music video. In her music video “God is a Woman”, the messages are kept constant, like in her performances. She shows men calling her names like “fake”, “sucks” “little girl” “b*tch” “stupid” and “dumb”, and what they are saying literally bounces off her. This suggests that she is aware of the negative comments, but she doesn’t care because she is still powerful. All media assumes they know who the real Ariana Grande is, but she is much different from what the media portrays. She lets it be understood that while she is aware of those hate comments, she knows who she is and will not be altered by the media. This is evident by how she is portrayed, the men are much smaller than her, and she is visibly bigger than them. This suggests that the men are not on her level and do not phase her. She also offers a similar visual when she is portrayed on top of the world, controlling the weather. This visual reveals the incredible power that women have and shows that they are not as weak as society portrays them. Ariana Grande shows that women are powerful, and society needs to get out of that mindset, but also women need to know their worth and not care what others think of them. “God is a woman” is a memorable song in her album, and it motivates women to see beyond what society tells them to be. 

  Another issue with the music industry is how women are acknowledged next to a man. Selena Gomez has had many songs and albums during her career, yet she is not known for those accomplishments. When people hear “Selena Gomez,” they think of Justin Bieber or The Weeknd. When she was performing songs from her “Revival” album and “Rare,” Justin Bieber was frequently brought up. After her performance of “The Heart wants what it wants” in the VMAs, people tried to find out what was his reaction to the songs instead of paying attention to the actual song. If she does a song about love or heartbreak or her flourishing, it is always connected to Justin Bieber even if it is not about him. For example, the song “Wolves” was not about her love life; it was about her having Lupus and her battle. The Latin word “Lupus” means wolf, which would explain the title of the song. The song was much more personal than what people speculated; however, it was seen as if it was about a guy. In pop, women are always expected to speak on love and heartbreak since it will be feminine. 

    Another example of this is Taylor Swift. She is known as the singer that sings about boys and heartbreak. According to her documentary “Miss Americana,” on Netflix, she speaks on sexism and the music industry’s different standards. She talks about how women have to change in order to stay relevant in the music industry. Women have to switch up their style to stay relevant, while men did not have to do that. In the music industry, there is no double standard; women had to fight ten times harder than men to be recognized in the music industry. She says that women in entertainment are disregarded by the time they hit 35 and that the “female artists that she knows have to reinvent themselves 20 times more than the male artist, they have to or else you were out of a job”. Men in the music industry always stay relevant because they are the most popular and also like Taylor Swift, later on, says that women are held to ridiculous standards. In contrast, men are accepted the way they are. Some standards she mentioned are being young, being new, reinventing yourself in a way that’s comfortable for society, and remains a challenge to the artist but does all of this to please society: not too much or too little. These standards are incredibly higher and unfair because men are not held to those same standards. We see progress; women could not perform their own music, but they still have standards to maintain and are not treated equally in the entertainment business. Beyonce is an example of an artist who saw these struggles that women faced and decided to do something about it. In “Beyonce Commencement Speech Class of 2020”, Beyonce revealed that she had a lot of no’s and was seen as inferior because she was a black woman when first starting out. She noticed how male-dominated the industry was; thus, she built her label and her management company to make it what she envisions the music industry to be. 

   In rock, there is an equal underrepresentation of women as in pop and classical music. The article “10x The Talent = 1/3 Of The Credit: How Female Musicians Are Treated Differently In Music” articulates how a woman’s body becomes an instrument instead of her voice. It also brings up how women cannot play instruments because they cannot contain their feminine side to produce a song that beautiful. This is implicated in the article when she explains that “Musician itself implies masculine essence; men are presumed to have a “natural” musical talent. Ideal types like “musical prodigy,” “singer-songwriter,” “king of rock,” and “metal god” evoke images of masculinity. When a woman embraces these ideal types, she not only reflexively contradicts her femininity, she becomes a lesser copy—not simply a “musician,” but a “jazz frontwoman,” “indie rock chanteuse,” “pop diva,” or “sexy siren.” The word “sexy siren” sexualizes females and makes people believe that women are intended to be seductive even when they sing. A woman cannot only be an artist like a male or seen as great as men are. Even when a woman is seen as great, she is still less great than a male. Females have to work for their greatness; males are given that greatness already, which is where sexism in the music industry comes into play. Even when writing songs, women can’t do that by themselves. When women write songs or contribute to it, men are usually involved it’s never just women. Shockingly enough, of 2,767 songwriters that were given credit, 87.7% were male, and only 12.3% were female. Also, Some women find it challenging to go into specific genres due to it being too aggressive or even in certain fields. In a research conducted, it was discovered that out of 651 producers, 98% were male, and  2% were females. Women are seen as emotional, and when they make songs, it is expected for them to talk about heartbreaks—believing that women are not equally talented and even more talented than men is problematic in the industry. 

     Women are powerful, and in these women’s determination and accomplishments, we see how powerful we are and do not need men in our lives for anything. We have made much progress with women’s reformation, but there is still room for improvement.

 

     Some statistics on the popularity of women in the music industry: 

• In 2017, 83.2% of performing artists were men, and only 16.8% were women. 
• 2017 marked a six-year low for female artists in popular content
• 73.8% of female songwriters only worked once in 6 years, 7.9% worked twice, and 4.3 percent worked three times. Less than 6% of female songwriters had six or more credits across the sampled time frame.
• Nine male songwriters were responsible for 1/5 of the songs in the sample.

 

                                                         Works Cited 

Grande, Ariana. “God Is a Woman.” Youtube, uploaded by Ariana Grande, 13 July 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHLHSlExFis.

Jordan, Meggan. “10x The Talent = 1/3 Of The Credit: How Female Musicians Are Treated Differently In Music.” University of   Central Florida,  2004- 2019, stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?r   eferer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1945&context=etd.

Knowles, Beyonce. “Beyonce Commencement Speech Class of 2020.” Youtube, uploaded by Youtube Originals, 7 June 2020,   www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGtJE58bli0.

Pajer, Nicole. “New Report Shows Major Lack of Representation by Women in the Music Industry.” Billboard, 25 Jan. 2018,   www.billboard.com/articles/news/8096196/new-report-shows-major-lack-representation-women-music-industry.

Robin, William. “At 80, Joan Tower says Great music comes ‘in the risks’” The New York Times, Oct 2018. Accessed November   10. 

Tower, Joan. Personal interview. 24 Sept. 2020. 

Tower, Joan. “Joan Tower Interview – La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest.” Youtube, uploaded by University of California   Television, 16 Jan. 2009, www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZPBt-dsVm0. 

Swift, Taylor. “Taylor Swift Explains The Music Industry For Women In 2 Minutes.” Youtube, uploaded by Netflix Clips, 31 Jan.     2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcxV7URXuFE.