This year is going to be iconic (Picture: Getty Images)
It’s finally here and I personally could not be more excited.
All hail Rihanna’s performance at the Super Bowl halftime show (which she did pregnant – how, we do not know).
Bow down to the return of Queen Beyonce in a tour of her most electric album yet.
Take a moment to appreciate Taylor Swift making and breaking records all over the world.
If you haven’t already, get well and truly pumped for Madonna bringing all the hits back again in one of the most historic tours in music history.
And thank Miley Cyrus for putting the ultimate strut into all our steps with her new single, Flowers – which, let’s face it, not even the coolest cucumbers on the planet can get out of their heads.
Rihanna performed her Super Bowl halftime set pregnant and we are in awe (Picture: Kevin Sabitus/Getty Images)
Beyonce has now won the most Grammys of any artist of all time after she scooped her 32nd earlier this year (Picture: JC Olivera/WireImage)
Taylor Swift is breaking records left, right and centre (Picture: Taylor Hill/FilmMagic)
Of course, there’s always been incredible women making music for as long as I can remember.
I could talk to myself for hours about this, having grown up listening to I’m Like A Bird by Nelly Furtado on repeat, with a smattering of Missy Elliot, Dido, Natasha Bedingfield, and a hell of a lot of Amy Winehouse and too many a portable CD car journeys wailing along to Britney Spears and Pink to count.
And then of course, Adele, Lizzo, Florence and the Machine and Billie Eilish are all fabulous women who have conquered the industry in the last 10 or so years.
But these inspirational women are ones who have beaten the odds, and shone as a few bright stars in an otherwise male-dominated musical galaxy.
While so many male bands climbed the ranks as greats of the nineties and noughties – Kings Of Leon, The Killers, Kasabian, The Kooks, One Direction, Busted, Foo Fighters, The Backstreet Boys, Blue, The Strokes and Coldplay, to name a few – their female counterparts were left struggling for air.
All-female bands that were a constant growing up in the same period included, and were almost limited to, The Spice Girls, Destiny’s Child, The Pussycat Dolls, Girls Aloud, The Sugababes and Atomic Kitten – the latter two of which were often pitted against each other as rivals because, you know, they were both made up of three women (meow!).
We’re still waiting for another group as iconic as the Spice Girls were (Picture: Getty Images)
The Sugababes have been doing bits in recent years and we love to see it (Picture: Getty Images for The National Lottery)
And, just as an aside, isn’t it sad how all but one of those bands’ names include gendered words like ‘babe’, ‘kitten’, ‘dolls’, and ‘girls’, perhaps to shine a light on their USP in a world which saw – and sometimes still sees – an all-women group as a novelty who speak only to women.
Indeed, a 10-year study into gender and race/ethnic equality in the music industry published last year found that female representation in the recording studio – and therefore the charts – is bleak, and has not significantly increased in the last decade.
The study looked at artists, songwriters and producers on the Billboard‘s Hot 100 Year End Chart from 2012 to 2021, and it found across all 10 years, 78.2% of artists were men and 21.8% were women.
In 2021, there were 180 artists on this chart — 76.7% men, and 23.3% women.
It’s not good, especially as just this year we’ve had an all-male line-up for Artist of the Year at this year’s Brit Awards, and Glastonbury failed to book a single female headliner for 2023.
Florence and the Machine has shone bright over the years in a sea of men (Picture: Naomi Rahim/WireImage)
Which makes it, perhaps even more impressive that, at a time when women are still not being recognised or given the same opportunities as men, the ones we do have are making some incredible noise.
This year, there’s a line-up of legendary women all walking in some killer heels (or trainers!) towards enraptured crowds. And they are creating a buzz for music I’ve never seen before.
And while I’m still waiting for some spicy girl bands to climb the ranks in 2023 – aside from Brit Award-winning Wet Leg and FLO, of course – solo women artists are creating their own army of icons.
At their head is Beyonce, of course, who has reigned the music scene for this whole millennium so far, and is still growing in popularity, despite already being a certified legend.
Queen Bey’s new album, Renaissance, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 charts last year, making her the first ever woman to have all seven of her solo albums hit the top spot on landing.
The album, which is quite honestly her best work yet, received 179million streams, making it the largest streaming week in the singer’s career history.
And get this: Beyonce’s Beehive of fans are so devoted, they didn’t even listen to the album when it leaked online ahead of its release.
Renaissance is perhaps Beyonce’s best album to date (Picture: AP)
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‘So, the album leaked and you all actually waited until the proper release time so you could enjoy it together,’ Beyonce wrote at the time. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. I can’t thank you enough for the love and protection.’
Now, the legendary musician is looking forward to her upcoming tour, which inevitably sold out in minutes.
Oh, and welcome back Madonna, nice of you to pop by and drop the biggest musical tour in decades, The Celebration Tour, which will honour the Queen of Pop’s illustrious 40-year career.
Despite continually getting knocked back by haters and body shamers who can’t deal with a 64-year-old living her best life, Madonna doesn’t care.
The icon, who is the female artist with the most number-one singles ever, just casually sold-out 36 shows with over 600,000 tickets vanishing in a flash. No biggy.
Welcome back Miley Cyrus and the new album Endless Summer Vacation, which will drop on 10 March. Already, in true Harry Styles’ As It Was form, we can’t scroll five videos on TikTok without hearing Flowers, a song that epitomises female empowerment, as it sees the legend strut around in a fierce dress while singing about loving herself.
Taylor Swift, who used to be mocked heavily for her ‘girly’ crooning – yawn – just dropped the highest selling album in two months of all time, after she sold 6million album equivalent units of Midnights in that period.
It was also the fastest-selling album she’s ever made, as Taylor became the first artist in history to claim the entire Top 10 on the US Billboard Hot 100 Chart, beating The Beatles as she did it.
Surely – surely – by now people would all agree that she’s one of the most successful musicians in history, because, erm, having sold over 22million records globally, she is.
Clearly the great women of the industry have built some massive momentum for 2023, and surely it’s a comeback that’s here to stay and will inspire a generation of talent.
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This is an uprising of artists who inspire, not just for their talent, but because they could have so easily been stomped into digestible shapes and torn apart by a world and media landscape that wasn’t ready to see women thrive, and yet they are back fiercer, and more themselves, than ever before.
And while some festivals and awards bodies might not be listening, the world certainly is.
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Beyonce, Miley, Madonna, Taylor, Rihanna… I can barely contain my excitement.
