Posted on by March 16, 2018 by Linzey Rae
There has been a lot of buzz lately on this “Female-Fronted” thing. Should we say it? Should we not say it? Well I wanted to give my “female” two-cents on the matter. So here are the four reasons why I think we should all stop crying about this and move on with our lives.
Editor’s note: What you are about to read is not necessarily the views and opinion of all TNF staff. It is, however, worth examining.
- It’s just an arbitrary title that helps fans categorize music.
- Whenever we talk music, we use genres to express our tastes. For the most part, genres give a general description of music. They are not meant to decide the fate of the musicians we listen to, but to stimulate conversation with our friends. The point is, a genre is just a GENRE. It is just a means to categorize music around basic, surface level, characteristics. It’s not that deep guys…
- Being called female fronted does not make your band less than others.
- Yes, there’s sexism in the music industry. There is no denying that. I have heard and seen it all when it comes to being a chick in a band. My gender does not limit my musicianship and neither does intangible qualifying labels. Being called “Female-Fronted” isn’t meant to push girls out of the same league as the boys. There are few women in metal, therefore, when there is a girl in a band, people notice. It’s more of an observation, maybe even a celebration, than it is a means to oppress or divide women from men.
3. If you’re confident in your music and product, it shouldn’t matter how people label it.
- I am the vocalist of a metalcore band (or whatever you want to call it…) and we have been labeled as pop-punk, easycore, female-fronted, and recently alternative. We currently share the same space on iTunes as Imagine Dragons and Toto. We’re seriously not even close to that. Does it bother us? No! We believe in our music and our fans couldn’t care less about how it is categorized. Your music should speak for itself, regardless of any labels put on it by some PR ass-hat who thinks they’re a musical connoisseur. Record labels, publicists, promoters and music snobs are not your audience. YOUR FANS ARE. Period.
- Let’s be real, the only person who cares is you.
- The label, Female-Fronted, only carries weight when you allow it to. At the end of the day, it is just a name. If you are working your ass off and playing music you love, who cares what people call it. Girls, I get it, being a woman in a band has its challenges, given all the shit we have to put up with. But, rather than wasting our time getting all worked up about a label, let’s put our energy towards the thing that actually matters; our music.
Instead of getting hung up on what offends us, we should all live by this quote that I read on a cup, “No one cares, work fucking harder.”
