Anyone who's read my other site knows I'm an ardent user of Last.fm. I let my subscription run out long ago, so I no longer have access to my playlists and tag stations, but yesterday morning I checked out some of the universal "tag" stations: stations created by the other listeners' tags. (Basically, if you tag one of your artists with, say, rock, pop, punk, etc;, it gets thrown in to a larger pool with artists with the same tags. It's an easy way to scope out new music without buying it first.) Since this blog focuses on music made by women, I clicked on the "female vocalists" station.
Captain Obvious moment: there is no "male vocalist" tag (okay, there is, but I'm guessing it's limited to male artists known for their singing above anything else -- generally, they're tagged as singer-songwriter or rock or whatever), the female vocalists station is pretty loosely defined: Madonna, Nina Simone, Karen O, Beyonce, Edith Piaf -- all are women, and yes, all provide vocals. The station itself was okay: lots of over-blogged, over-buzzed about pop stars and critics' pets, but nothing I'd listen to except as background music for writing.
In theory, I like the idea of being able to tune in to a radio station and hear nothing but women singing and playing their own music, but the catch-all female vocalists (and I'm getting really tired of typing those two words) isn't it. Slapping a label on "the girl in the band" doesn't promote music made by women as a whole, nor does it address women in other aspects of music: as musicians or songwriters.
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