N&G Greatest Music Artists of All Time

Lee Newman said:
Im a reveal mine ten at a time every Friday, but starting now:

50. Lake Street Dive
49. John Prine
48. Fugazi
47. Thundercat
46. Tyler Childers
45. Kamasi Washington
44. Bon Iver
43. Madison Cunningham
42. Mavis Staples
41. Hiss Golden Messenger
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40. Brandi Carlile
39. Peter Gabriel
38. Al Green
37. Beyonce
36. Chatham County Line
35. The War on Drugs
34. Andrew Bird
33. Mandolin Orange
32. Joni MItchell
31. Wilco
 
waruv said:
I am considering just doing a list of 50 women and calling it. My current provisional list is split roughly 2:1 (male to female) gender line wise and the handful of genres I need to really dive into more are, well, very male dominated in terms of profile, so that ratio is likely to get worse. And I made it a point to consider this. It's kind of stark how gender biased musical history (and history) has been on this front.

One thing I've noticed is that I (and I think in general) have a weird tendency of loving a release by a female artist, but then if an album comes out that isn't really matching up, the consideration goes away whereas male artists get a lot more slack for a miss or two in the discography.
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I've been dwelling on this a bit, questioning my own biases in music as well as the industry. And there's definitely ample evidence of the male dominance or popular music and my list in no way counteracts that.

But then I wondered how much of this was the genres I favored (e.g. hard rock, punk) and whether there was some artistic self-selection of male artists towards those. Pop, R&B, and country all have much higher representation of women but I'm also a much more casual fan of that sort of music. Usually it takes a transcendent talent like Madonna or Dolly Parton to even catch my attention in those genres. My genre bias is probably partly related to how much exposure to that kind of music I had growing up, which is certainly a mix of family, culture, and local radio programmer decision-making so that's not an excuse. But I also don't know how many more bands like Heart, Blondie, and Elastica (all of whom are fucking awesome) there were out there who just never got the chance.

I don't really have an answer here. It bothers me that my list is as male-oriented as it is, but I also wouldn't apologize for a single entry on it.
 
CroutonBoy said:
I've been dwelling on this a bit, questioning my own biases in music as well as the industry. And there's definitely ample evidence of the male dominance or popular music and my list in no way counteracts that.

But then I wondered how much of this was the genres I favored (e.g. hard rock, punk) and whether there was some artistic self-selection of male artists towards those. Pop, R&B, and country all have much higher representation of women but I'm also a much more casual fan of that sort of music. Usually it takes a transcendent talent like Madonna or Dolly Parton to even catch my attention in those genres. My genre bias is probably partly related to how much exposure to that kind of music I had growing up, which is certainly a mix of family, culture, and local radio programmer decision-making so that's not an excuse. But I also don't know how many more bands like Heart, Blondie, and Elastica (all of whom are fucking awesome) there were out there who just never got the chance.

I don't really have an answer here. It bothers me that my list is as male-oriented as it is, but I also wouldn't apologize for a single entry on it.
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Absolutely. I am not willing to say anything about any individual's specific choices because, in my view, the gender biases in music is not reflective of the listener as much as it is of the overall industry and it's a very subjective thing. Personally, when my list is finalized there will be several choices that aren't only very skewed by my personal experience but I can't objectively justify - I don't feel bad about it - it just is.

Part of doing the Top 50 albums list was me having a kind of ugly realization about the music I listen to - it was very, very, very white. It was a good realization to try and broaden out a bit to me - still working on it.

On the more overall phenomenon, The Rolling Stone list is a collaborative list of 55 people who probably know more about music than many of us ever will and that list produced exactly one woman in the Top 35 (Aretha). Three other women made it to the Top 50. I believe there is a same number in the back half of the list as well (maybe there's more...I went through it three times to ensure they actually did list The Eagles and not Fleetwood Mac but alas that is what happened). I have to ask myself is there any rational reason that over 50% of the population should only represent 8% of the greatest artists of all time? Well...not on merit. But the music industry and cultural views do some crazy things. The RS list loves pioneers...male pioneers at least. Sister Rosetta Tharpe or Mahalia Jackson ain't showing up on that list.

I would probably question though how self-selected genres really are and how much of it is produced, to your experience, by things like family, culture, programming, industry and general societal factors. Like if we go back to the 1950s, the most prominent and arguably greatest female musicians were in areas like vocal jazz, vocal blues, and a bit of country - but it is a lot more segmented even in the pre-rock and roll era than it was for men. This extended into later decades where it felt like elements of nearly every genre either weren't drawing in women or weren't accessible to women with there being pretty clear evidence that women could do the job just as well as men in a theoretical sense. There is no good reason that women shouldn't be prominent in things like hard rock or punk or other historically male dominated genres (rap, jazz non-vocal, etc.). They aren't nearly as prominent as men...but why? I don't think self-selected is really fair - maybe more like not promoted, or not given the opportunity to do anything outside of what an industry prescribed them to do, or not allowed in at all. Like, the common trope is that Elvis Presley and Pat Boone make music from black artists palatable to white audiences, which I think is rather fair and people account for to some extent, but often when the issue is female focused that recognition kind of disappears.
 
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CroutonBoy said:
I've been dwelling on this a bit, questioning my own biases in music as well as the industry. And there's definitely ample evidence of the male dominance or popular music and my list in no way counteracts that.

But then I wondered how much of this was the genres I favored (e.g. hard rock, punk) and whether there was some artistic self-selection of male artists towards those. Pop, R&B, and country all have much higher representation of women but I'm also a much more casual fan of that sort of music. Usually it takes a transcendent talent like Madonna or Dolly Parton to even catch my attention in those genres. My genre bias is probably partly related to how much exposure to that kind of music I had growing up, which is certainly a mix of family, culture, and local radio programmer decision-making so that's not an excuse. But I also don't know how many more bands like Heart, Blondie, and Elastica (all of whom are fucking awesome) there were out there who just never got the chance.

I don't really have an answer here. It bothers me that my list is as male-oriented as it is, but I also wouldn't apologize for a single entry on it.
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I think that’s fair, but I did take a look at my list after the conversation happened and I did make a conscious effort to include a few more. I actually want to (but am lazy because 2000+ Is a lot) go through my collection and see what the percentages of noncaucasian and female percentages are.
 
waruv said:
Absolutely. I am not willing to say anything about any individual's specific choices because, in my view, the gender biases in music is not reflective of the listener as much as it is of the overall industry and it's a very subjective thing. Personally, when my list is finalized there will be several choices that aren't only very skewed by my personal experience but I can't objectively justify - I don't feel bad about it - it just is.

Part of doing the Top 50 albums list was me having a kind of ugly realization about the music I listen to - it was very, very, very white. It was a good realization to try and broaden out a bit to me - still working on it.

On the more overall phenomenon, The Rolling Stone list is a collaborative list of 55 people who probably know more about music than many of us ever will and that list produced exactly one woman in the Top 35 (Aretha). Three other women made it to the Top 50. I believe there is a same number in the back half of the list as well (maybe there's more...I went through it three times to ensure they actually did list The Eagles and not Fleetwood Mac but alas that is what happened). I have to ask myself is there any rational reason that over 50% of the population should only represent 8% of the greatest artists of all time? Well...not on merit. But the music industry and cultural views do some crazy things. The RS list loves pioneers...male pioneers at least. Sister Rosetta Tharpe or Mahalia Jackson ain't showing up on that list.

I would probably question though how self-selected genres really are and how much of it is produced, to your experience, by things like family, culture, programming, industry and general societal factors. Like if we go back to the 1950s, the most prominent and arguably greatest female musicians were in areas like vocal jazz, blues, and a bit of country. There is no good reason that women shouldn't be prominent in things like hard rock or punk or other historically male dominated genres (rap, jazz non-vocal, etc.). They aren't nearly as prominent as men...but why? I don't think self-selected is really fair - maybe more like not promoted, or not given the opportunity to do anything outside of what an industry prescribed them to do, or not allowed in at all. Like, the common trope is that Elvis Presley and Pat Boone make music from black artists palatable to white audiences, which I think is rather fair and people account for to some extent, but often when the issue is female focused that recognition kind of disappears.
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I think that is why I like clubs so much. It’s not that I can’t curate my own music and seek it. I definitely can and do, but no matter what the club, I am usually introduced to music I would not have listened to otherwise.

I find the new music Friday thread and the lists that @Bluecloud777 and @avecigrec post every week fascinating and have been introduced to genres I didn’t know where a thing and music I never would have listened to:

There are also folks like @Twentytwo and @Yer Ol' Uncle D who listen to my more traditional tastes and find things I didn’t know about.

I’m sure I do the same to others in some realms.

I also listen to a large swath of music, so I’m weird. Ymmv
 
Just a bit more of a pile on on the topic and I'll shut up for now.

Rolling Stone did a list of the Top 100 guitarists of all time. I don't think there's a reasonable argument behind genre limitations on this beyond those genres that don't regularly use guitar. How many women do you think made this list of Top 100 guitarists?

Two - Joni Mitchell and Bonnie Raitt both near the tail end of the Top 100

As a fun note, one of those answers appeared both on the Top 100 vocalists and Top 100 guitarists and had at least one Top 500 album and didn't make it on Top 100 artists.

The other one had the following accolades on the RS Lists
  • #75 on the Top 100 Guitarists list (top woman)
  • #42 on the Top 100 Singers list (I think 7th or 8th ranked woman)
  • #3 album on Top 500 Album list (top woman)
Is the 62nd greatest musician ever. How does that even work?


How many of the 56 voters do you think were women? How many of the eight RS contributors were women

Four and zero respectively

Like, this isn't meant to crap on Rolling Stone specifically but more to the point that everything around us really shapes what we perceive as great and how those insidious biases and eliminations can come to play and that male artists and bands, IMO, get substantially more credit for the "sum of their parts" and their individual parts then women do. But hey, we are in a world where Whitney Houston is the 34th greatest singer behind Steve Winwood and Bono so...women don't even tend to get the appropriate credit in the spheres where they were allowed to hang out.

It's something to think about when ruminating over media and industry treatment and legacy based treatment of, say, Nirvana and Green Day vs. Bikini Kill and Hole if we're talking an era and style here.
 
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waruv said:
Just a bit more of a pile on on the topic and I'll shut up for now.

Rolling Stone did a list of the Top 100 guitarists of all time. I don't think there's a reasonable argument behind genre limitations on this beyond those genres that don't regularly use guitar. How many women do you think made this list of Top 100 guitarists?

Two - Joni Mitchell and Bonnie Raitt both near the tail end of the Top 100

As a fun note, one of those answers appeared both on the Top 100 vocalists and Top 100 guitarists and had at least one Top 500 album and didn't make it on Top 100 artists.

The other one had the following accolades on the RS Lists
  • #75 on the Top 100 Guitarists list (top woman)
  • #42 on the Top 100 Singers list (I think 7th or 8th ranked woman)
  • #3 album on Top 500 Album list (top woman)
Is the 62nd greatest musician ever. How does that even work?


How many of the 56 voters do you think were women? How many of the eight RS contributors were women

Four and zero respectively

Like, this isn't meant to crap on Rolling Stone specifically but more to the point that everything around us really shapes what we perceive as great and how those insidious biases and eliminations can come to play and that male artists and bands, IMO, get substantially more credit for the "sum of their parts" and their individual parts then women do. But hey, we are in a world where Whitney Houston is the 34th greatest singer behind Steve Winwood and Bono so...women don't even tend to get the appropriate credit in the spheres where they were allowed to hang out.

It's something to think about when ruminating over media and industry treatment and legacy based treatment of, say, Nirvana and Green Day vs. Bikini Kill and Hole if we're talking an era and style here.
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Like I said earlier, It’s systemic. Society is biased, and the industry is biased and those biases are passed along to music lovers. I make concerted efforts to listen to music outside of my white dude bubble but sadly that isn’t gonna change the years of of bias that were already baked into the system long before I was around.
 
I appreciate this discussion and I think it’s helpful as far as setting aside our preconceived notions of who the “best” or “most important” artists are…to the extent that those notions might come from cultural sources outside ourselves and we might feel pressure to disregard our actual favorites in favor of other artists who we perceive to be cultural consensus picks. But I equally wouldn’t want people to feel pressure to put choices on their list to achieve some kind of demographic parity that doesn’t actually represent what they personally enjoy. It can go both ways. We all have blind spots, but we all also have our own areas of focus and I’m more interested in seeing what music actually means the most to people than ending up with a list that’s less personal and more performative or aspirational. I feel like we have enough different kinds of people around here to come up with a lot of interesting artists with a wide variety of identities represented and covering the bases of who all should be in the conversation. We might not ALL have Aretha Franklin on our lists, and we’re not all going to have Radiohead on our lists, but I’m sure both of them will show up, for good reason, more than once in this conversation.
 
Ericj32 said:
I appreciate this discussion and I think it’s helpful as far as setting aside our preconceived notions of who the “best” or “most important” artists are…to the extent that those notions might come from cultural sources outside ourselves and we might feel pressure to disregard our actual favorites in favor of other artists who we perceive to be cultural consensus picks. But I equally wouldn’t want people to feel pressure to put choices on their list to achieve some kind of demographic parity that doesn’t actually represent what they personally enjoy. It can go both ways. We all have blind spots, but we all also have our own areas of focus and I’m more interested in seeing what music actually means the most to people than ending up with a list that’s less personal and more performative or aspirational. I feel like we have enough different kinds of people around here to come up with a lot of interesting artists with a wide variety of identities represented and covering the bases of who all should be in the conversation. We might not ALL have Aretha Franklin on our lists, and we’re not all going to have Radiohead on our lists, but I’m sure both of them will show up, for good reason, more than once in this conversation.
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Yeah, This it where I am at. I acknowledge my shortcomings but that isn’t going to interfere with my enjoyment of things I am fond of. I acknowledge the my blind spots and that my determination of “best artist” iis gonna come from a very narrow perspective that certainly isn’t universal.
 
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