At the beginning of this year, a rash of articles appeared in the print and online music media hailing 2009 as the year of women. The shortlist for the Mercury prize, announced last Tuesday, appears to bear this out: the five female artists nominated — Florence Welch, Elly Jackson of La Roux, Bat for Lashes’ Natasha Khan, the Irish singer-songwriter Lisa Hannigan and the south London rapper Speech Debelle — represent the biggest female presence in the prize’s 17-year history. Tweaked and recontextualised, the same slightly fevered articles have duly reappeared, with the five nominees (out of 12) cited as irrefutable evidence that the music business has been turned upside down, that the rulebook is being rewritten, that this is only the beginning.
It isn’t. It’s the end, or getting on for it. Artistically, the five women — three signed to major labels, two from the independent sector — may have been afforded space to develop and flourish creatively, and benefited from a degree of receptiveness to their music among record labels, radio stations and the music-buying public that would arguably not have been available in, say, 2005. Yet the cyclical nature of market forces, and the record industry’s response to them, suggest that 2009 will, in fact, be a high-water mark for women in pop. The arc that began with the worldwide success of Amy Winehouse and continued with similar breakthroughs by Duffy and Adele is dipping, rather than continuing to climb.
Market forces dictate music-making and our consumption of it as much as they do which brands of cereal and soft drinks are manufactured, promoted and purchased. Pop purists cry foul about this iron law, but without it, much pop would never be made. In the music industry, the market moves rather like a shoal of fish — setting a course, veering suddenly this way and that, those at the front dictating the direction, those at the back obeying the command. The market for this year’s female Mercury nominees was created directly by the multimillion sales of Winehouse’s Back to Black album. The major labels’ first response to that record’s success was to seek out similar artists: the second wave, if you like. Riding the crest of this were Adele and Duffy, both of whom made albums infused with the same retro-soul stylings. When Adele and Duffy broke through, labels saw the way the commercial winds were blowing and flung cheques in the direction of other up-and-coming female artists: the third post-Winehouse wave. In some cases — VV Brown, Pixie Lott — these were singers cut from Back to Black’s cloth. In others, newcomers such as Kate Nash benefited from a smaller, though far from insignificant, wave created by Lily Allen’s success. The fourth wave — with Florence and the Machine, La Roux and Little Boots at its forefront — is now approaching the shore.
If there is a fifth wave, it is unlikely to be more than a brief ripple.
Our focus will have switched. Different artists, probably male and almost certainly making music that isn’t either soul or electro-pop, will fill the music press, airwaves and charts. The biddability of all concerned — A&R executives, radio playlisters and the public — and the narrative we adhere to are the key factors here. During the nearly three-year period since Back to Black was released, that narrative has gradually come to be dominated by the notion that women are the driving commercial force in pop. As a result, everyone with a stake in the sourcing, marketing, making, publicising and purchasing of music has been more suggestible to the appeal of records released by female artists than at any other time in recent history. So, Winehouse begat Adele and Duffy, Allen opened the door for Nash, and the narrative in January this year was all about that dominance. Fans of particular artists would, of course, prefer to see their idols’ success as being based entirely on their distinctive merits. But that is simply not how the market operates.
The receptiveness is now embracing the five women on the Mercury shortlist, all of whom are making music of an experimentalism and fearlessness long, but quite inaccurately, associated with male musicians. They didn’t make that music because of the post-Winehouse narrative; but we are getting to hear their songs on a much wider scale as a result of it. These artists, the three signed to major labels in particular, are the beneficiaries of a process that began with Back to Black. We can wring our hands about the arbitrary and flibbertigibbety nature of that process, and bemoan the market’s short attention span and the briefness of its flirtations. Or we can look on the brighter side and conclude that a process that, no matter the impulses that drive it, results in the signing, release of music by and public enthusiasm for female artists as talented as Amy Winehouse, Adele, La Roux, Speech Debelle and Natasha Khan is getting something very right indeed.
That process is now, inexorably, reaching its end. The narrative will soon be rewritten. Record-company cheques are now being signed that are made out to male musicians. Earlier this year, the female spoken-word electro singer George Pringle spoke about her experiences with major labels. “Some of them have said things,” she remarked, “such as, ‘We’ve signed a lot of girls recently, so we can’t sign you.’” So, 2009 may indeed be the year of women in pop, and hallelujah for that. But we had better enjoy it while we can.
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She's gonna be big; I knew that first time I heard her sing on the boozing ad.
