The Runaways’ hit ‘Cherry Bomb’, the first single on the band’s eponymous debut album, raucously proclaimed the arrival on the scene of the all girl teen rock sensation, fronted by Cherie Currie with Joan Jett as co-vocalist.
The forthcoming biopic The Runaways ch-ch-charts (sorry) the antics of the eponymous all-girl teen rock band at their inception in 1975. The film stars the queen of the aloof/awkward tightrope, Kristen Stewart as Jett, and an alarmingly pubescent Dakota Fanning as lead vocalist Currie (they really do grow up so fast). At the helm is Floria Sigismondi, better known for her work on music videos for the likes of Interpol, The Cure and Sigur Rós.
Sigismondi’s treatment of The Runaways’ rise to fame chronicles the band’s sex, drugs and rock’n’roll lifestyle, and the manipulation by record producer Kim Fowley of their unique selling point – jailbait rock (band members were all sixteen years of age or younger when recording their first album). Nonetheless, The Runaways went on to establish themselves musically, playing sell out shows across the United States and supporting big names such as The Ramones and Van Halen, representing a seminal foray by women into the hitherto male-dominated realm of stadium rock.
The Riot Grrrl movement of the ‘90s in particular further paved the way for girls with guitars in the midst of what its Bikini Kill-penned manifesto deemed “beergutboyrock that tells us we can’t play our instruments”. Now firmly ensconced in the twenty-first century, however, we exist in a world where the term ‘feminism’ seems archaic and vaguely embarrassing, like those hirsute sketches in The Joy of Sex. The frisson surrounding The Runaways’ emergence in the ‘70s would hardly register a blip on today’s prurience radar, honed by The Pussycat Dolls and The Saturdays. With this in mind, it’s intriguing to see how women are faring in music today – or to use a friend’s quaint wording, in “real music” today, a nebulous genre wherein, crucially, the ability to shimmy ruthlessly sculpted pelvic bones is not a prerequisite.
Proving that the contemporary interpretation of “girl band” is not necessarily synonymous with “manufactured”, Brooklyn-based Vivian Girls bring excellent punk-tinged lo-fi tunes like ‘Moped Girls’ and ‘Tell the World’ with their sophomore effort Everything Goes Wrong, released in September 2009. Far from the musical equivalent of the boys lining up on one side of the dance hall with the girls clustered at the opposing wall however, bands such as supergroup The Dead Weather toy with the sexual static of the girl/boy dynamic to great effect, Jack White replacing Jamie Hince’s scuzzy guitar grinding on Alison Mosshart’s smoky vocals, while much-hyped newcomers The xx play Romy Madley Croft’s sweet vocals off Oliver Sim’s richer bass tones.
The swagger and charisma of the lead singer position is not monopolised by men in 2010. Following in the footsteps of some of music’s greatest lead vocalists such as Siouxsie Sioux and Debbie Harry, female lead singers front a number of serious contenders at the outset of the new decade.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O’s tidal wave of success shows no sign of abating. In 2009’s It’s Blitz, O gave us more streamlined vocals than previous albums but lost none of her edge, pounding out floor-fillers ‘Zero’ and ‘Heads Will Roll’ with quasi-orgasmic abandon. O’s soundtrack for the painfully hip project of ex-boyfriend Spike Jonze, Where The Wild Things Are, earned more brownie points, her naive piping voice and vulnerable yelps complementing the tender core at Jonze’s adaptation of the childhood classic.
Toronto natives Metric feature Emily Haines at the helm, their fourth album Fantasies released last year. Haines and guitarist Jimmy Shaw recently performed a spine-tingling acoustic version of standout track ‘Help, I’m Alive’ at a Canadian telethon to raise funds for the Haiti disaster.
When looking at prominent women in music at the moment, attention cannot be deflected for too long from 2009’s greatest discovery, Florence and the Machine. Having garnered acclaim from the critics, the mainstream and the cool kids on the street, the only question remains is when the Flo-flavoured backlash will set in. Not for the foreseeable future, it seems; Florence and the Machine have two sell-out shows in Dublin’s Olympia this coming May.
Florence Welch is not the only London-based female musician to watch out for – tousle-haired musical wunderkind Mica Levi brings her multi-instrumental genius to the outfit Micachu and the Shapes, ‘Golden Telephone’ remaining one of the most joyously cacophonous singles of the past couple of years. Further afield, Charlotte Gainsbourg has all but exorcised the shadow of famous father Serge that inevitably haunts the Gallic actress/musician. With fans still reeling at her turn in Lars Von Triers’ merciless Antichrist (genital mutilation, ahoy), Gainsbourg released critically acclaimed third album IRM last year, collaborating with none other than multitalented alt rock legend, Beck.
So what’s in store for the teenies? The jury is gearing up to see what Jack White’s new protégés, The Black Belles, have to offer. The group is newly signed to White’s Third Man label and is quite literally cloaked in mystery; one of the few images available of the group shows them in sexy witchy get-up that may or may not be remnants of Sarah Jessica Parker’s wardrobe in Hocus Pocus. Facetiousness aside, the snippet of their track ‘What Can I Do?’ available on their MySpace page is a tantalising taste of the gritty garage rock to come. With White, who by now could be considered something of an industry heavyweight, acting svengali to a band of guitar-wielding girls, parallels with The Runaways are hard to resist.
Incidentally, The Runways director Flora Sigismondi directed the video for The White Stripes’ ‘Blue Orchid’, on the set of which White met future wife, model Karen Elson. With The Black Belles remaining elusive and a release date for The Runaways as yet unconfirmed on this side of the Atlantic, we’ll just have to hold our breath and see what 2010 has to offer.
