Gender Bias in PopMatters

I came across an article about Polly Scattergood, and although I'm not familiar enough with her music to actually care, I read the first two paragraphs because I've taken a liking to mentally reviewing reviewers. There's an art to writing reviews, after all, and I really appreciate a well-written one. I can learn things from them, and not just about the subject at hand.

Anyway, within the first two paragraphs and a little bit throughout the rest of the article, Alex Ramon, the writer, places careful consideration on gender bias and how female musicians are being handled by popular media, which I think is refreshing and an overdue accusation. I've copy and pasted the beginning, the rest of the original article can be found here.

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For reviewers writing about the work of new female musicians, the Kate Bush comparison remains the laziest critical shorthand that there is, and one that’s still far too frequently wheeled out as a substitute for proper engagement with the work of a new artist. Without wishing in any way to undervalue Bush’s impact on both male and female performers, it seems that her influence may now be being overstated; this is, after all, an artist who has offered us a mere eight albums and just one tour in 30 years. The greatest sufferer from the Bush Comparison has always been Tori Amos, who, 10 albums and 1000 live shows on, still finds reviewers myopically concentrating on the superficial similarities that link her work to Bush’s rather than the massive disparities in performance style, vocal approach, lyric content, and career philosophy that differentiate them.

What’s worrying is the accusatory and diminishing tone in which these comparison criticisms are often phrased. While it’s apparently perfectly valid for male artists to derive “inspiration” from one another, comparable relationships between female musicians are usually described as simple parasitism, as copying or stealing. Overall, such comments suggest that the majority of music reviewers are still reluctant to properly attend to or appreciate the differences in work by women composers, preferring, instead, to view them as an entirely homogenous group who get by by blatantly ripping each other (or, rather, Bush) off. And while it seems that there can never be enough male guitar bands (no matter how samey), just a few high-profile women with pianos is quickly deemed more than enough.

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Refreshing, no?

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