Paramore, The Grammy’s and The Lack of Female Acts in their Best Rock Album Category
Written by Eszter Vida, edited by Millie Cain
Legendary rock trio Paramore took home the Grammy for Best Rock Album this past month, commemorating their lead singer-songwriter Hayley Williams as arguably the most influential frontwoman of our generation to pave the way for female rock singers thus far. Before their time, the likes of Alanis Morrissette, Sheryl Crow and No Doubt have also been associated with the award amongst a wider company of male musicians who’ve won and lost out on this achievement; this year, the list included Foo Fighters, Greta Van Fleet, Metallica and Queens of the Stone Age. While a commercialised, exclusive award show like The Grammy’s should never be taken seriously over well-researched academic musicologist unphased by the music industry politics that usually plays out at these ceremonies – it does provide us with some microscopic insight into how female acts are assessed in the eyes of the music industry and how these factors may be the leading factors into why despite an equal interest in music, there are 4 men signed to UK record labels for every one female (The Gender Gap study).
The Grammy’s never fail to surprise me with their growingly controversial choices in nominations. It clearly panders to some major record labels and industry figures more than others, which is possibly timely to mention that not long after receiving this award, Paramore declared themselves independent with a strong desire to have long careers in the music industry while shedding light on Independent Record Stores. Who exactly are we pandering to at these award shows?
Data from Music Venue Trust already outlines the disparity between major acts versus grassroots musicians and how the lack of funding has been punishing the fresh talent of the UK especially, making it harder for new acts to rise to the scene when it’s so financially difficult. Music is in an ideal world and its subjectivity would always come before business, but that’s a complex topic that impacts massively on who exactly gets to have their break, whether short-lived or partially sustained by vain titles that act as knighthoods for the music world.
This leads me to my next point: is our definition of ‘rock’ inherently male-centric? For decades in popular music, women have not been considered worthy enough of being labelled as rock acts, likely due to their perceived image as more passive consumers and fangirls (Beatlemania, Directioners, Swifties) and often more associated with the inferior fabricated version – pop music.
Popular music is too vast to be labelled in such a way. It has evolved so much since it boomed in the 1950s and its beauty as a genre is that it often breaks traditions, experimenting and becoming more adventurous with the influences that constitute what exactly it is. That is partially how over the years these sub-genres of past decades have been birthed from different music scenes. I am not saying that acts like Olivia Rodrigo should suddenly get placed into this category for their pop-punk inspired albums, but we should start to recognise that rock is no longer or has only falsely been claimed as a male-only zone of expression.
First presented in 1995, the award has missed out on awarding some notable female figures: The Cranberries, Wolf Alice, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Wolf Alice, PJ Harvey, Florence and the Machine, Avril Lavigne, Le Tigre and Hurray for the Riff Raff just to remember a small handful. No doubt, This Is Why is worthy of this award. Paramore proved their legacy as a rock band when they produced an energetic, post-punk revival of their established sound, notably attempting to escape the label of a nostalgia band by going back to the sounds of William’s youth in the 2000s by the likes of Bloc Party.
The label of frontwoman itself can be problematic on my part; why make her gender so apparent when she does the same job as any other lead singer of a band? But her activism has always been clear and for that, Williams achieves the standards of the rebelliousness that rock should be about without being tokenistic in their sound or trying to cosplay as anything other than their authentic selves. That should be one of the qualifying factors of rock, if there were any major ones to begin with, as a genre of defiance that has shapeshifted over time. Their career is not short-lived and the hype around them will not just die once their members turn past the age of being accepted as musicians with the freedom to produce original albums.
