Posts Written by Olivia
By Olivia • 13 years ago

My Favorite Female Musicians

I’ve always loved music. Always. I’ve played it and made it and listened to it and appreciated it. And when deciding that I’d like to make music part of my career (I’ll be entering college in the fall), I was a bit dismayed to realize that women are quite underrepresented in music. 

How many women music producers are out there? Sound engineers? Mixers? Backup and session musicians? Music magazine editors, or music magazine journalists? Well I’ve looked on the backs of all my favorite CDs and in the credits of all my favorite magazines, and the numbers are slim. 

That’s just talking about people behind the scenes. For the longest time, I struggled to find female musicians I could look up to. I remember going through a big style change in 2005 at age 13, especially musically. I turned on to quite a few alt-rock bands, who all featured guy-singers, guy-drummers, guy-guitar players, and so on and so on. I discovered, when I tried to pick up guitar, that guitar was not quite a “female-friendly” instrument– or at least that’s the term I’m going with, because every male I talk to seems so shocked and awed at girls who play guitar (in fairness to these guys, they were all encouraging, and seemed to find girl-guitarists intriguing, but their reactions made me deduce that they have had few crossings with girls playing and learning guitar). I limited myself to things I “was able” to do based ...
By Olivia • 13 years ago

I think I’m a wig away from becoming one of Lady Gaga’s “Little Monsters”

No matter how much she is slagged by others, Lady Gaga has eaten my heart and my brain. I must admit, she certainly turned me off in the early stages of her career, when I thought she was being weird just for publicity. But her weirdness, her personality, her musicality, and her VOICE (it’s amazing, it’s true) have just awed me.

I wanted to share an article from Caitlin Moran that appeared recently in the Times Online. Lady Gaga’s gotten some flack here at feministing, mainly because (as I see it), some people argue that she’s a budding feminist, while others argue that she’s a fake. This article in particular, however, put a smile on my face. Gaga’s ideas, it ...

No matter how much she is slagged by others, Lady Gaga has eaten my heart and my brain. I must admit, she certainly turned me off in the early stages of her career, when I thought she ...
By Olivia • 13 years ago

Sometimes, I’m afraid to say the “f” word.

Last year (my junior year of high school), I had the “click” where I realized my ideas aligned with feminism. I’d always been an avid music fan, especially in the rock/indie genres, and I came upon the realization that all the bands I liked were full of men. It’s as though I just looked around one day, and wondered where all my female idols were. Because I’m aspiring to do something with music myself, I really became concerned about where females stand in the music industry. All I saw then were pop-divas who I had trouble relating to. Now that you’re familiar with a little bit of my backstory, I’ll go into my main issue.

Being in high school while discovering ...

Last year (my junior year of high school), I had the “click” where I realized my ideas aligned with feminism. I’d always been an avid music fan, especially in the rock/indie genres, and I came upon the ...