The right way for a woman to sing

Since the fallout over Chuck Klosterman's tUnE-yArDs piece, which I addressed last week,  I've been thinking how women's voices are policed within the music industry. Critics seem especially befuddled by women whose singing voices are deemed "unconventional."



Merrill Garbus's voice is undeniably powerful, but not pretty in the way that female singers' voices are, even those fully ensconced within the the indie world. In fact, it's distinctly un-pretty --  emotive, but sort of brash and borrowing equally from jazz, dub, and reggae,  sounds not commonly heard in pop music.  In an interview for The Guardian earlier this year, she said,"I adored [Nina] Simone when I first came across her, because she didn't fit any typical idea of the feminine voice [...] Listening to her, I realised that in music, there is this ability to shake off those stifling ideas about what women are 'meant' to be."

Silvana wrote a great post about "the prettiness imperative " for Tiger Beatdown's Ladypalooza series a few years ago. In it she explains how having a conventionally pretty voice can work against a performer, while subverting the pretty paradox can have equally damaging effects to a woman's career:

That’s the kind of experimentation that is hard to do when you are a member of the oppressed sex class that is women. Because for women, prettiness reigns. Being pretty, sexy, fuckable, is of paramount importance. This extends not only to appearance but to action. Which is where rock ‘n roll comes in. Because in order to make good rock music, you have to be able to do things that are not pretty. Pretty is not interesting, pretty is not groundbreaking (unless it’s juxtaposed with things that are not pretty), pretty is boring. And pretty is the thing that our culture enforces on women with a vengeance.

A few months ago, I wrote a post about a site that pitched the vocals of pop stars, essentially making them sound "male," except they didn't. Instead, they sounded like women with exceedingly deep voices, but not men, even while the notes dipped into baritone range. I think this is a really good example of the prettiness imperative, especially how much pressure is put on pop singers to sound sexy and available, but still vulnerable and childlike. (Britney Spears has exploited the hell out of this.) Granted, in commercial, American Idol-styled pop music, there isn't a ton of room for experimentation, but less mainstream acts still fall victim to the same kind of judgement.