No ‘best of’ list can satisfy everyone. Every list claiming to count down the ‘greatest’ the ‘most awesome’ or in triple j’s case ‘the hottest’ is bound to leave most people disappointed and few, if anyone, believing ‘they’ got it right.
But this year’s triple j Hottest 100 left me more disappointed than most. Not because I dislike Vance Joy, who took the number one spot, or even that I particularly like Lorde, who came in a close behind. Rather that because for the first time in the Hottest 100’s 21-year- history it seemed a real possibility that a solo female vocalist might take the top honours.
And why wouldn’t she? New Zealand’s Ella Yelich-O’Connor, AKA Lorde, provided a 2013 anthem for the teenagers — and the rest of us — with her hit Royals. Good enough for the 17-year-old to take home a Grammy over the weekend for best song of 2013. Although Lorde’s popularity may have moved too far from the triple j curve, given the national broadcaster was playing the track back in 2012 and the song’s since taken a life of its own (although that hasn’t stopped others), she still seemed a shoe-in for the usually predictable top spot.
Not so. When it came to the popular vote, of which triple j presenters boasted they received almost 1.5 million of, Lorde couldn’t nudge out the guy who hasn’t even released an album yet. Although we were told less than 1000 votes separated the number one from the number two, Lorde missed out and we’ll go into year 22 of the countdown once again wondering if the ladies can break the glass around the number one spot.
In 21 years of the yearly countdown, women have featured in the number one spot four times with the Cranberries, Spiderbait, Angus and Julia Stone and Kimbra singing a verse in Gotye’s Somebody that I used to know. All four of these acts also featured men. No all-female group or solo female artist has made it to the top.
But it’s not just in the number one spot that women are hard to find — or knocking on the door Liberal Party style in an effort to get heard — as in previous years women were difficult to hear across the remaining 99 songs, whether they be featured as solo acts, all women bands, or groups or tracks including the musicianship of at least one woman.
Women-fronted acts actually fared well in this year’s top ten with four boasting some kind of female lead: Lorde, Lana Del Ray, The Preatures (a male/female combo) and London Grammar (a female-led three piece).
But that’s where the almost-equal representation ended. Lorde became like one of those female directors on so many boards that her retirement can significantly shift the proportion of women on the boards of ASX-listed companies, given she featured three times in the top 20. Her three spots, along with all-girl group Haim and the women in Arcade Fire, saw women participate in seven of the top twenty songs. We start to thin out more from there, with one in five of the 100 songs featuring solo women or groups fronted by women (a total of 11 acts).
Still, women did a lot better on the 2013 list than in the 2012 list (just nine female acts featured) and the 2013 Hottest 100 of all time, based on 20 years of the countdown and a public vote conducted in the first half of 2013. Women were harder to spot fronting the best songs of the last 20 years than they’ve been to find in the boardrooms of our largest mining companies. And that’s really saying something.
As Justine Hyde wrote for Women’s Agenda in 2013 in the days after the ‘all time’ list went live, just 19 of the 100 songs involved a woman: five with female leads and 14 played by female musicians. The lack of female voices prompted some to ask if gender-based quotas were needed, saying the station’s programmers who determine which acts get airtime — and ultimately hold significant power over which local artists ‘make it’ — don’t give enough consideration to female musicians.
At the time, triple j Manager Chris Scaddan defended diversity at the station, referring to stats from its overall 2012 playlist to demonstrate it does support female musicians: in that year 29% of the songs triple j played featured female lead and co-lead vocals. It’s hardly a 50/50 spread, but it’s much better that the representation of female voices that come up in its popular votes.
Do we have an issue voting for female artists? Or is a lack of ‘merit’ the problem? Are women not featuring because 30% isn’t enough of a tipping point to make the popular vote? Is it that more men listen to triple j — Nielsen reported the station’s listeners to be 55% male in 2012. Or are women not putting their music out three in equal numbers to men?
What we do know is that Lorde is just one of the talented and original female artists out there — they don’t all get the airtime they deserve, nor the popular vote, but thankfully they no longer have to be cut from the same cookie-cutter in order to get heard.
And when it comes to representation, female musicians are still doing a lot better than women in the upper echelons of corporate Australia.