Courtney, Tkay, Emma: These are the Aussie women who should headline our music festivals
COURTNEY Barnett, Tkay Maidza, Emma Louise: These are the Aussie singers who should be headlining our bloke-heavy music festivals.
Music Festivals
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WOMEN may be missing from our festival line-ups but there has been an explosion of world-class Australian female musicians online, on traditional airwaves and scoring international deals.
Following in Courtney Barnett’s trailblazing footsteps, a plethora of pop, electronic, hip hop, rock and experimental artists are winning fans and industry champions with their innovative sounds.
It is ironic Australia is enjoying a golden age in female creativity as women struggle for equal representation on festival stages, industry boards and the commercial and alternative airwaves, both as announcers and artists.
Some festivals such as regional event Spilt Milk are addressing the imbalance after being called out by punters but others blame unavailability or budgets for the lack of women on their bills.
Yet if you were to program the ultimate female fantasy festival, let’s call it All About Eve, you would need multiple stages to house all the talent on offer in Australia.
The headliners could include Barnett, Sia, Kylie, Missy Higgins, Sarah Blasko, Kasey Chambers, Kimbra, Iggy Azalea and Julia Stone. Can we claim Lorde for the main stage too?
And why not have a pop stage where Tina Arena, Delta Goodrem, The Veronicas, Jessica Mauboy, Kate Ceberano, Clairy Browne and Dami I'm could add some sparkle.
The genre-defying alternative stages would be spoiled for choice with Megan Washington, Katie Noonan, Meg Mac, The Preatures, Kate Miller-Heidke, Stonefield, Emma Louise, Melody Pool, Sally Seltmann, Adalita, The Jezabels, Big Scary, Little May, Hiatus Kaiyote, Olympia, Ngaiire, Elizabeth Rose, Thelma Plum and Clare Bowditch just for starters. Kiwis Ladyhawke and Broods are also cordially invited.
While over at the electronic/DJ/hip hop stage you have Nina Las Vegas, Anna Lunoe, KLP, Alison Wonderland, Helena, Tkay Maidza, Banoffee, Nicole Millar, Kucka and Thandi Phoenix.
Joining them are the women you need to hear this year, a collection of wildly creative and bold female artists and bands who are currently dropping exciting new tunes or wowing sold-out audiences throughout the country.
Triple J’s Mornings presenter Zan Rowe said she had observed a raft of “younger and younger women” connecting with their listeners both via the station and their Unearthed portal for unsigned artists.
They are also cutting through with “phenomenal stage presence” and she nominated hip hop poet Sampa The Great and multi-instrumentalist electronic innovator Tash Sultana as two young women who have blown her mind in recent months.
Others on her radar are Melbourne punk all-girl trio Camp Cope and recent Unearthed discovery Alex Lahey who has topped their Hit List with her quirky single — and quirkier video — Let’s Go Out.
“I think there’s so many young women making incredible music right now. I’m noticing they are more confident and self-assured and have ownership over what they are doing,” she said.
“The digital accessibility of music has also affected the way they create and deliver music; genres are out the window as they create their own sound.
“And the response we get from our listeners is they are hungry for and will support artists who put themselves out there; we are spoiled for choice when it comes to great female musicians.”
Leading the mainstream charge is Grace, the younger sister of another rising Australian pop star, Conrad Sewell.
She topped the Australian charts with her cover of the Lesley Gore feminist anthem You Don’t Own Me and like her brother, was signed and developed in America.
The 19-year-old singer and songwriter has held her own with some of America’s biggest hatmakers and worked with Quincy Jones and Puff Daddy leading up to the release of her debut album FMA (Forgive My Attitude) on July 1.
“When you’re that young, you stumble into things fearlessly,” she says of working with legends.
“Obviously Conrad being in the industry helped, to have him there for advice.”
Her old-world soul voice combined with postmodern production struck a chord in the crowded field of female r&b artists in America.
She joked that anyone checking out her iPod playlists crowded with Etta James and Aretha Franklin songs would think she was “60-years-old but I just fell in love with soul and Motown and big, epic voices and I don’t hear anything else.”
Grace believes going out with the Lesley Gore classic as her debut single also sent a signal to the industry that she was a young woman prepared to speak her mind in an industry which tends to ignore their opinions.
“Those lyrics were saying I can make my own decisions and have a voice. As a young girl in this industry, you are constantly undermined, so having a song with that tone is important,” she said.
“But I have been lucky in the fact that everybody around me is nurturing and they have never pushed me to do anything I didn’t want to do.
“When I signed with them, I made it clear who I am and the music I wanted to make.”
Another breakthrough star on the rise is the equally power-lunged Montaigne who landed at the pointy end of the pop charts when she featured on the Hilltop Hoods hit 1955.
Now she is keeping those fans engaged with her own single Because I Love You, a hilariously sarcastic ode to a former boyfriend who teased her about her veganism.
Known as Jess Cerro on her passport, the full-throated pop powerhouse said the modern music fan sticks by their discoveries no matter how they find them, whether as a featured artist or via their own creations.
And she agrees with Zan Rowe that they welcome eclecticism rather than homogenic sounds, with most emerging artists exploring all their musical possibilities via introductory EPs.
“I don’t want to be pigeonholed, I want to try everything, be a chameleon. The digital world has opened up the possibilities and potential of people to dabble in different styles,” she said.
Cerro said her peers including Tkay Maidza, Gordi, Asta, Joy and Jess Kent are making waves because of their musical offerings rather than any affirmative action from the industry.
“There is a push for more women in the industry but no one is going to push for someone who is not good at what they do. It’s about the music and maybe there are more women being noticed because there are more women doing great things,” she said.
Another artist getting noticed a lot is George Maple, who is now based in Los Angeles and heading home to kick off a national tour at the Metro Theatre in Sydney on July 8.
She just performed at America’s biggest electronic festival, the Electric Daisy Carnival, where two Australian DJs, Alison Wonderland and Anna Lunoe, held court on the main stage in front of more than 100,000 fans for the first time in the event’s history.
Maple is steaming up the airwaves with two tracks, featuring with French hit maker DJ Snake on the single Talk which was originally her own single called Talk Talk, released back in December 2014.
The other is her latest single Sticks and Horses, a sexy slice of electronica she road-tested in American strip clubs.
And then there are her credits on tracks by Hayden James, Snakehips, Flight Facilities, Flume and Tkay Maidza, with those projects clocking up a total of 70 million SoundCloud plays.
She is indeed a young woman in demand who proudly describes herself as “bossy” in the studio.
“The industry side of things can be a boys’ club but I think in the creative sphere, you can eliminate the role gender plays if what you are doing is real,” she says.
On the eve of her homecoming tour, she says the sexy clip for Sticks and Horses is “expressive versus exploitative”.
Maple said it was partly inspired by the strip club culture in America which attracts a lot of musicians because they are the only venues open late enough to enjoy a drink after their gigs and have become a hub where DJs and producers play new tracks to see if they work.
“When did sexy become not OK?” she says.
“I knew there would be a reaction to it but I am really proud of it and for me the song is commentary rather than opinion.”
Down the road from Maple last week working on songs for her next EP is Vera Blue, a young singer and songwriter whose debut folktronica EP Fingertips blew up on Triple J this year, leading to her first national tour selling out..
For those who don’t recognise her, Vera Blue is the new artist name for Celia Pavey, one of the standout finalists in the second season of The Voice in 2013.
The 22-year-old artist said it was imperative for her to take time out to reinvent herself after the show and find her own sound.
“I needed the time to figure out who I am as a person as well as what I wanted to do musically,” she says.
“When I was younger, I would listen to Beyonce and loved the idea of heavy beats with a strong voice and I wanted to create that with my folk background to make a more organic sound.”
Selling out that first tour and opening for Matt Corby recently to see a venue full of Triple J listeners sing along to her songs confirmed her instincts were spot on.
“It’s been crazy so far. And here I am standing on a balcony in Malibu spending the day writing with the guys who did the last EP. It all feels like a bit of a dream.”
Vera Blue embarks on her next national tour in September.
Originally published as Courtney, Tkay, Emma: These are the Aussie women who should headline our music festivals
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