07/10/2017 Girls allowed?

The women on top in the music industry | Music | The Guardian

Girls allowed? The women on top in the music

industry
After Sinead O'Connor's open letter of concern to Miley Cyrus, sexism in the music business has never
been more discussed. But what do the women behind the scenes, from video directors to artist managers,
think?

Jude Rogers
Saturday 26 October 2013 19.05BST

I
t's been a giddy few months for women in pop. If you haven't been living in a cave, you may
have heard about Miley Cyrus swinging naked on a wrecking ball, and Sinad O'Connor's
subsequent open letter to the former child star. "The music business doesn't give a shit
about you," O'Connor wrote. "They will prostitute you for all you areworth."

Another former child star reacted to the Miley/Sinad saga later Charlotte Church, in an hour-
long Peel lecture for 6 Music. The male-dominated music business had "a juvenile perspective
on gender", she railed, before slamming how acceptable this state had become. She added: "the
culture of demeaning women in pop music is so ingrained as to have become routine, from the
way we are dealt with by management and labels, to the way we are presented to the public."

But behind the scenes on Planet Pop, women also work. They're in the minority, as Church
acknowledged, but they also direct videos, produce records and develop artists' careers.
Director Diane Martel may have defended her video for Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines topless

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girls were in a "power position", she said, if they stared at a camera while strutting nearfully
clothed men but many other female voices haven't been heard, until now.

As a journalist who has encountered some sexism in her own career (being directed to put
more shoes and less debate in my feminist pop culture site, the Lipster, by our funders that
was fun), my conversations with these women were as fascinating as they were complex.
Many praised Church's lecture, but also acknowledged how huge and knotty her subject was;
several emailed me later to clarify their positions. Any decent discussion of these issues is
always dicult, I nd, because women always know the criticisms and awkward questions
that inevitably crop up. Hasn't sex sold records for ever? Aren't you prudish if you say women
shouldn't express themselves sexually? Are women being exploited by others or happily
exploiting themselves? There aren't easy answers, either.

I do know one thing, however. A year ago, I wrote a piece for the Quietus about my experience
of the Rihanna marketing machine, noting that her career success was being measured not
only by her sales, but by Twitter followers and video views. Similarly, this July, Miley Cyrus
was delighted to get 306,000 tweets a minute during her notorious "twerking" performance
with Robin Thicke at the VMAs and didn't seem to mind that many of them were negative.
YouTube views count towards chart placings in America, and inuence UK radio playlists these
days, so mainstream pop's economy is driven by one thing: hits and clicks.

The irony of this feature adding to that whirlwind is not lost on me. Neither is the fact that by
focusing on the perils of lowest-common-denominator sexism, we're ignoring the
commercially successful pop women who avoid them (Emeli Sand and Taylor Swift have
outsold Rihanna this year, for example). There are other glimmers of hope in the conversations
that follow too. Only by bringing dierent women into the mix who have had valid experiences
can we broaden this debate, and lessen that juvenile perspective after all.

MAIREAD NASH
Manager of Florence and the Machine since day one, after discovering Florence Welch singing
in a toilet in a nightclub, and founder of Luvluvluv Records. Formerly half of female DJ duo
Queens of Noize, who had an MTV show and made a single in which the girls deliberately
dressed like boys in the video.

My company is pretty much all women. I didn't do that on purpose, but we do feel more
powerful as a troupe. Maybe I did do it subconsciously, because the industry's so male-
dominated.

I got involved with music young. It infuriated me that men were allowed to hang out with
musicians, but if women did, they were groupies. I used to say if you worked at a dentists,
you'd hang out with other people from there, wouldn't you?

The backlash against us turned nasty, though, and I ended up leaving the country. I had to
rethink what I wanted to do in the industry, how I wanted to be a part of it.

I've worked with Florence from the beginning and, like us, she will not compromise. On big TV
shows, if someone says to her: "You've got to dress sexy for this", she'll go: "Right, then, give
me the black bin bag." I thought her Brits dress [a long peach gown with sheer panels] was
amazing, though, and a great compromise. It also irritates me if you do anything as a woman,
you've got to say why. If Florence collaborates with a writer, she's got to justify it. If a man
does, hedoesn't.

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I think the traditional music industry

collapsing in terms of how the digital world
has changed it has been a good thing for
women, though. If you can make something
work and come up with a good idea, you can
own it. It's almost like punk again... you can
make up your own rules. Plus, there are more
women coming through now who don't
conform, like Lorde, who's fantastic. Despite
everything, I can only see it getting better.

DAWN SHADFORTH
Award-winning music video director who has
directed videos for Kylie, Oasis and Florence
and the Machine. In 2000/2001, she directed
and edited Kylie's Spinning Around and Can't
Get You Out of My Head videos, which were
widely considered to have reignited her
career worldwide.

When I went to art school, there was an

Mairead Nash: 'It infuriated me that if women hung out with
musicians, they were groupies.' Photograph: Katherine Rose for
the Observer
expectation that if you were a woman you
had to make work about your gender, while
men were free to express themselves how
they pleased. I felt that was unfair. I have
always carried around a little feminist art
tutor on my shoulder, though. Now I am
older,I listen to that voice more.

Probably the two sexiest videos I have made were for Kylie. When I edited the video for Can't
Get You Out of My Head, there were more risqu shots where the suit was more revealing, so I
cut them out.Also, I very clearly remember Kylie and I sitting in my grotty little at in Brixton,
deciding whether to put the close-up shot of her bum into Spinning Around. Kylie looked at
me and said: "What do you think about that shot, Dawn?" I probably said I liked it, and it
stayed in without me considering its wider sociopolitical implications. I never said: "Let's lm
her arse now" though when she swung into frame, there was just this beautiful oating
bum.Plus, the real sexiness of Kylie's performance comes because she just is sexy.

More recently, however, I've been booked on jobs where they want things to be sexy. I was
recently shown a picture of girls wearing thong swimsuits by a manager as a styling
suggestion, but I didn't style it like that because I'd feel very uncomfortable with girls wearing
thongs dancing around a man. The dancers all thankedme for dressing them in big knickers
too.

I was also making a video recently for a very talented, ballsy girl, who at 20 wrote a global No 1
hit for another band.She wanted to dress in a way that was punky and erce, but there was a
push from the label boss for her to wear a low-cut top, show her breasts, and be less "scary".
That male executive tried to use my inuence as a woman to inuence her it's the rst time
anyone has said anything like that to me. I told them where to go.

What bothers me now more than anything is that big artists are very straight in terms of their
sexuality., perhaps with the exception of Lady Gaga. Men have to be cool and hardass, which is
repressive too; they couldn't dry hump a guitar like Prince today, or get naked like D'Angelo
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did in 2006. The glamorisation of female

victims is also everywhere, in videos such as
Rihanna's Pour It Up, but also ones by Drake
and the Weeknd.It's like we have gone back
to lm noir times, where voracious sexual
women are punished and die, rather than
have fun like Madonna did.

The pressure today is to make your video rise

to the top among all this stu. As a result, the
music industry is more risk-averse, going for
shock tactics, the lowest common
denominator. Very simply, it's market forces
in operation.

ADRIENNE AIKEN
Only female director of the Music Producers
Guild, where less than 4% of listed producers
are women. Producer and engineer for more
than 30 years, making records and music for
TV.

Whenever I meet new people in the music

Dawn Shadforth: 'I'd feel very uncomfortable with girls wearing
thongs dancing around a man.' Photograph: Katherine Rose for the
Observer
I'm saying men don't but "feminine" qualities of empathy and sensitivity are very useful
aroundartists.
industry, they assume I'm a singer or artist-
manager. It gets annoying, but then again,
that's just statistics. There aren't many female
producers, but women have qualities that are
very suitable for the job. As child-bearers,
we're supposed to have compassion not that

I've only experienced direct prejudice once, working on a co-production with a guy who
didn'tshow for most of the sessions. The guycommissioning the job knewI wasdoing all the
work, but atameetinglater on that everyone attended, he wouldn't evenlook at me and only
talked to mymale partner saying he was happyfor the other guy to carry on doing his work!
So I said ne and walked out, shaking with anger. I also nd ifthere's a problem at any level in
the music industry, and there's a woman behind it, then it's mentioned.It's notmentioned so
much the other way.

When I'm producing female artists, I don't tell them not to cross lines. If they are a sexual
person trying to get that out in their music, I draw that out. I don't agree with the overtness of
someartists today, but that makes me sound old every generation has its Elvis, after all!

What is wrong to me is that younger artists, appealing to an even younger audience, are being
overt sexually before they know what it all means... but equally, how could you stop kids
watching this stu? You'd have to go allbig brother with retina or ngerprint scans! The only
way to moderate what is fed to new generations is to moderate what is delivered, and that
responsibility needs to come from the labels.

AMY MORGAN
Talent scout for Island Records at university, then worked in A&R/publishing for Island,
Zomba, V2 and Cooperative Music in her early 20s. Now a creative director at Beggars Music
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since 2009, working with Cat Power, Warpaint

and US rapper Kitty.

When I've faced problems in the industry

because I'm a woman, it's always been at the
mainstream pop end. I dipped my toe in
there, and it was awful, a real boys' club.
Being a 21-year-old girl in a company signing
21-year-old girls who never have any clothes
on... I sat in rooms thinking, ifthey're talking
that way about them,what must they be
thinking about me?

Young A&R guys are also taken moreseriously

than women because there's this weird
tradition where knowledge of music has
always been considered quite male.

The real problem is that there aren't enough

women high up in the industry, because it's a
very unfriendly place to be an older woman.
It's quite hard to have children, for instance,
because of the nature of the job, and the
industry is also obsessed by younger women.

But the music industry is also only a mirror to

bigger social problems. All it's doing is
Adrienne Aiken: 'When I meet new people in the music industry,
producing cultural products that people want
they assume I'm a singer.' Photograph: Katherine Rose for the
Observer
to buy, whether that's the Chris Brown and
Rihanna thing, which horried me, or the
Robin Thicke video, which will have been brainstormed and worked out from a formula
they'll have got the inuences from how people are, how people are dancing on danceoors.
And all Miley Cyrus is doing, even if it was her decision, is being reective of a wider sense
where to be successful as a young woman she has to take all her clothes o and lick a hammer.

I feel as frustrated about this as everybody else, and that's why I've chosen to have my career
in the independent sector. Without women in more positions of power everywhere, beyond
this industry, it's not going to change.

LISA PAULON
PR/marketing director who began her career working for indie labels Wax Trax, Caroline and
Sub Pop. Joined Polydor/Universal in 1997, helping launch Queens of the Stone Age, Ian Brown
and the Cardigans. Director of own marketing company Trafc since 2001, and director of
Camden Crawl festival since 2005.

My original ambition was to be a major record company director, but it took me a long time to
realise that that was never going to happen. Why? Because you have to modify your behaviour
essentially, you had to behave as one of the lads to progress.

Working in PR and marketing with the Cardigans taught me a few lessons, though. Nina
[Persson, the singer] is a bright woman, and she was going for a sexy biker chick look at the
end of the 90s. We did a shoot for Loaded, and she did go topless, but they said it was goingto
be shot artily, in black andwhite, really cool. It ended up looking disgusting, so we actually

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stopped those photos coming out. That's a

rare positive example of an artist not being
sold down the road, but you have to have the
strength to do that.

There are so many artists that major labels

know they can't sell just through their music,
so they try and create a stronger hook. Heavy
rock and metal artists are made more angry
and shocking, for example, but there isn't a
female equivalent of Alice Cooper or Marilyn
Manson, where the imagery is aggressive
rather than sexualised.

With Camden Crawl, our booking committee

is very mixed, male-to-female, and my
experience working on it has been so positive.
It's also funny how people look dierently
andpositively! at women when they're
working independently from a big company,
as I have done since 2001. You're not a cog
any more. The music industry is becoming
more mixed too. Five years ago, there were no
female agents, but now about 50% of the
people I'm dealing with are women. It gives
me faith that the old boys' clubs are being
Amy Morgan: 'The problems I've faced have always been at the
torn apart.
mainstream pop end of the industry.'

ALISON HOWE
Former John Peel producer, now series producer of Later... with Jools Holland. Also executive
producer of Glastonbury coverage.

I don't have any advertisers, sponsors or shareholders to deal with at Later, so I'm quite lucky. I
haven't had any issues because of my sex either, but that might be because I don't work in the
music industry I work in broadcasting.

I don't book artists because of their gender, but I do try and get a good mix. I would never
refuse to book an artist because of the way she presents herself, though. I mean, I'd love Lady
Gaga on Later, and whatever she wore would be entirely up to her.

As for the sexualisation of women today, I don't think it's a million miles away from what
Madonna was doing. The dierence now is that kids can watch these clips endlessly, which
only 10 years ago just didn't happen. But equally, they might watch an Adele performance, and
that might make a mark. As long as they've a choice of things to take in and talk about, then
that's ne. If they start to feel they've got to be provocative to get on, that will be a sad day.

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Lisa Paulon: 'The old boys' clubs are being torn apart.' Photograph:
Katherine Rose for the Observer

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