When was the last time you heard some jack-off say that women don’t make music, or that chick-fronted bands pale in comparison to bands of Big, Strong Men? Well, tell those jerks to whine no more, because I have a playlist for you that will prove them all wrong.
Extremely funny Twitter lady Amber Earnest (@rare_basement, and if you don’t follow her yet I suggest you do) made a 1,000+ song Spotify playlist composed entirely of female-fronted bands, culled from suggestions given to her in the form of @replies.
Earnest, who commands a loyal following of over 35,000 Twitter users, tweeted a request for female-fronted bands from her followers and got “easily hundreds” of responses – over 14 hours of music to listen to. She pared down those responses into a followable Spotify playlist called “Typical Girls.” The name is a reference to influential female punk band The Slits’ song of the same name, and a tongue-in-cheek jab at the idea that “chick music” is by and for “typical girls.”
“I wanted to encourage myself to listen to more women,” Earnest told me via email. “I like a lot of female artists, and it goes without saying I think women are equally as good at music as men, but when left to my own devices I drift toward listening to a lot more men because that is what I have been subconsciously taught is Good Music.” She added that she thought she had “internalized” the idea that male contributions to music are valued more than female ones and wanted to dispel that notion.
Earnest previously assembled another huge playlist, called “Twitter’s Favorite Song,” in which she compiled the absolute favorite songs of her followers from @replies and other Twitter interactions. For “Typical Girls,” she said she was “so bored” on the day she set out to make it and decided to make it a similar project to “Twitter’s Favorite Song.”
“Female artists are often pushed into the box of Chick Music but a thing like this shows plainly that there are talented women working in EVERY genre.”
Amber said that she crowdsourced options for this playlist in acknowledgement of her experience’s limitation. “I wanted the greatest diversity of artists I could find. The suggestions I received both reminded me of songs I might not have thought of on my own, and introduced me to some really cool stuff I hadn’t heard before.”
In order to distill such a massive amount of music into a listenable playlist, Earnest made a few rules.
“One song per artist. If a particular woman was in more than one band, it is fine to include both bands, as well as [if they were] a solo artist. As far as choosing which song by certain artists to include, I went by my own personal taste for the artists I was familiar with and generally trusted the taste of the person who suggested artists I was not familiar with.”
The final playlist contains over a thousand songs, thirty of which are available here via Spotify. Bands included are classics like Patsy Cline, cult faves Sleater-Kinney and Earnest’s and my mutual new favorite, Hop Along.
“The list definitely isn’t perfect or complete – it’s still not just limited by my experience but also by the experience of the people who follow me. They broadened [the selection] A LOT but I still feel the playlist could use more country, hip-hop, electronic, and non English-speaking artists. Oh, and disco.”
“Ultimately I did this for selfish reasons (I wanted this resource), but I’m really, really glad I got to share the fruits of this labor with whoever wanted it.”
And we’re crazy grateful to Amber for sharing. You can listen to and follow the full playlist by going to this link or by searching “Amber Earnest” in the Spotify application (Spotify account required).
