hey guys if u like Pvris u should totally listen to Anavae bc they’re a similar style and they’re really cool! here is their bandcamp and this is one of my fave songs by them! you should totally check them out!!!!
Hello, FRR: I was wondering if you'd be willing to feature or mention a project on your Tumblr page. It's a music video that I directed recently for The Baby Magic, a No Wave/punk band based out of Chicago lead by amazing frontwoman, Mary Beth Brennan. The video is for their song "Huts" off of their album Rent a Place in Hell (2015). The song is really good and the music video is a lot of fun. Thank you, Sincerely, Derek Quint (an indie filmmaker in Chicago), Addovolt Productions
To this day, I STILL occasionally get bullshit “paramore is a BAND you know” and “why don’t you film the guys more?” comments on my videos on you tube. Despite the fact that I’ve explained over and over in descriptions that the angle was easier for filming her at that time, and despite the fact that, on some of them, it’s obvious why I filmed her more; she was talking or just doing more. Why people feel the need to say those kind of things at all, I don’t understand. It’s not like people are disrespecting the guys or acting like they don’t exist.
Recently I took advantage of a special offer, getting a month's worth of Kerrang for £2. This covered the issues with cover dates December 6th to January 10th - five issues in total. I was struck by how male dominated the magazine seemed to be, so decided to work out whether female rock musicians were fairly represented. My findings are below.
The Data
Each issue of Kerrang is 64 pages cover to cover, with the exception of issue 1548, which is the bumper Christmas/New Year issue, coming in at 80 pages. (The sample period also included the release of the 2015 calendar, included for completeness' sake.) The 2015 preview issue, 1550, also included a double sided A2 poster, A4 sticker sheet and separate poster book (the latter devoted to a single band). These will be covered in the Misc section below.
Each average issue contains 18 pages of adverts (28%) and 8 pages of a poster pullout in the centre of the magazine. The latter will be counted, the former won't be as it's unfair on the editors to judge them on non-editorial content. So that's 46 pages of content in each issue, and 62 in the Christmas issue. How much of that is given over to the ladies?
Issue 1546
Half a page on The Hype Theory. A page and a half on Against Me live in Leeds. (A brief sentence about Candy Hearts supporting New Found Glory on the same page.) A quarter of a page review of Paramore's fourth album rerelease - given 5/5 rating. Quarter of a page about unsigned band Hearts On Fire - an all girl band from London.
Total: 2.5 pages out of 46. 5% of the magazine features female acts.
Issue 1547 - 2014 review
Mention of Hayley Williams joining her then-boyfriend on stage at New Found Glory's headlining date in London. Full page introducing Code Orange as "fresh blood", despite them being 6 years old. Top 50 albums of the year features Pretty Reckless (49), Brody Dalle (37), Pvris (33), We Are The In Crowd (22), Code Orange (14), and Marmozets (2). Becca from Marmozets gets a half page piece. Songs of the year feature Paramore (18), We Are The In Crowd (16), Against Me (10) and Marmozets (7). Becca also features solo in a quarter page picture announcing Marmozets' spring tour.
Total: 2 pages out of 46. 4%
Issue 1548 - Bumper Christmas Issue
Tay Jardine is on the cover! Ok, it's along with four other people, all male, and she's squashed over to the right at the back, but it's something, right? Inside she gets half a page to review the year, as do Laura Jane Grace and Taylor Momsen. Tonight Alive and Babymetal get single page posters each. Becca Marmozets gets a quarter page about her Christmas list. The reader's poll features Paramore (4) and WATIC (5) for Best Band, WATIC (4) for Best Album, Paramore (1) for Best Video, Laura Jane Grace as Hero Of The Year, Marmozets as Best New Band, and Hayley Williams as Tweeter Of The Year. Code Orange get a 5/5 live review squeezed into as much space as Bryan Adams receives, half a side bar. Tonight Alive get 3/4 of a page for the same live rating. A list of Christmas cover songs nods at Nightwish's cover of Walking In The Air.
Total: 4 pages out of 62. 6.5%
Issue 1549
Double page article about YouTube musicians, which mentions Emma Blackery for a total of half a page. A tweet from Hayley Williams is one of the tweets of the week. Posters feature Tay Jardine as a quarter of a Warped Tour poster, Becca Marmozets and Taylor Momsen getting a page each. Tay, Becca and Laura Jane Grace each offer us their New Years resolutions. There's a 3/4 page review of The Pretty Reckless live in London. The Kerrang tour featuring WATIC is listed as one of the ten tours to see in 2015.
Total: 3.5 pages of 46. 7.6%
Issue 1550 - 2015 preview
Becca's on the cover! Again, at the back, squashed over to one side like Tay two issues back. Again, like Tay, sharing with four blokes. It's the opposite side though. Double page spread on Halestorm. Quite a few bands mentioned in the 2015 preview (detailed below) - Marmozets get a quarter of a page, Tay of WATIC gets a quarter page as part of the Kerrang tour, everyone else is a sentence or two.
Total: 3.5 (a generous rounding up of the sentences) pages out of 46. 7.6%.
Misc.
The Kerrang calendar features one picture per month. Tay Jardine gets a month (March) to herself, while Jenna of Tonight Alive shares February with Gustav from Young Guns. There's a 24 page poster book devoted completely to Black Veil Brides, a double sided A2 poster of Bring Me The Horizon, and an A4 sticker sheet featuring none of the women of rock.
Overall total: 15.5 out of 246 - 6% of the magazine, on average, would feature a female artist of some sort over the last month or so.
Overall
While 6% is a pretty shocking figure, considering 50% of the population as a whole are female, that 6% may be over-represented relating to women in rock. A more suitable comparison would be to find out the percentage of females in rock and compare the two.
I'm going to be fair to Kerrang with this. I will class any act with a person identifying as female as a positive in this study. For example, even though The Pretty Reckless are 75% male, they will be "a female band" for the purposes of this piece. After the replacement of Julia in Cherri Bomb with a bloke, and as The Donnas are on indefinite hiatus, I can't think of any active all-female groups who would be classed as "rock" - although I'm more than happy to be corrected! Broadly, then, if there's a woman in the band, they're a female band.
I don't actually know how many artists in rock today there are, and how many of those have females in. That sort of data would require extensive, exhaustive research, which is beyond the limits of my free time. Fortunately issue 1550 is a 2015 preview, containing titbits and larger bits about "122 bands" according to the cover strapline. To gain a rough percentage of female acts in rock, I'll total the number mentioned in the article and divide that by 122 to obtain a very shaky percentage. The list is not complete - Rolo Tomassi aren't mentioned, despite having a new album out in 2015 - but it's probably a safe assumption that the ratio of female acts left off to male acts left off is consistent with the overall totals.
The acts in question mentioned are: Against Me, Code Orange, Marmozets, Paramore, Pvris, Pretty Reckless, Tonight Alive, We Are The In Crowd, Within Temptation. Nine artists out of 122. Is the proportion of female acts to males in rock really only seven percent?! That would seem to match the percentage featured, though.
The Hayley Williams Conundrum
Hayley Williams and Paramore have been featured in every single issue covered. While she is the biggest female artist in rock (and, inevitably, who every other female will be compared to for years by a lazy media) they've done very little in the UK this year, aside from a Reading/Leeds headline slot in the summer and a rerelease of their last album this winter. So why the constant mentions? Well, there are strong rumours among the Paramore fans that Hayley herself is fed up with the magazine's focus on her rather than the band and is refusing to give any further interviews to them. The constant promotion could be seen as a way to get back into her good books and they are featured more as a band than her on her own - a luxury not afforded to others.
Frontperson != Band
You may have noticed, when talking about the artists featured in each issue, I referred to the woman rather than the band. That was deliberate. More often than not, if they did get featured, it was the frontwoman on her own rather than with her band-mates. When nominated for the Sexiest Female and Best Single in the Kerrang Reader's Poll, Tay Jardine of We Are The In Crowd pleaded for fans to vote for the latter, saying that she was prouder for the band to be recognised for their achievements than an individual one. Becca MacIntyre is the only Marmozet asked about anything. Taylor Momsen is the only Pretty Reckless member ever shown. Paramore may be a band, but any other female fronted bands are distilled down to the frontperson alone.
All Around Me Are Familiar Faces
Another thing to note: it seemed to be the same few bands featuring. You may argue for good reason - the aforementioned alleged sycophancy towards Paramore, We Are The In Crowd featuring on the Kerrang tour in February, The Pretty Reckless having a UK tour in November, and Marmozets releasing an album in the Autumn. But they're not the only bands around. Pvris are right up Kerrang's street but have only been featured once despite releasing their debut album. Echosmith (while more mainstream and pop than usual) are regularly featured in a magazine dealing with the same genre, Rock Sound. Against The Current could also be accused of being poppy, but are easy to mention - they're related to We Are The In Crowd!
Conclusion
Are Kerrang close-minded when it comes to female musicians? Yes and no. While the coverage is fairly proportional to the percentage of female musicians in the industry - admittedly, to the percentage that I've reached by dubious methods - they focus on the same regular names. If they actually cared about increasing the popularity of female musicians, showing more of them would help. There's plenty out there waiting to be discovered - I found three new bands just by sticking the women in rock channel of Vidzone on one afternoon - so feature them.
And for God's sakes, stop comparing everybody to Paramore!
Female Rock Revolution @femalerockrevolution - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
pixelskylines
gummygunk
germansingergirl
dailybridgerton
turnnoffyourmind
baratheonpilled
stormborns
