(Photo: Olivia Bee)
With the release of Taylor Swift’s, “Look What You Made Me Do,” a woman has made it to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time this year. For 12 weeks this summer, the top five featured only men. That’s three whole months with no female artists anywhere close to number one, the longest drought of this nature since 1972. In April, female artists didn’t even make it into the top 10. The last time this happened was in 1984, the year Apple released their first ‘personal computer.’
A similar drought has also been seen in Billboard’s other main list of the top 200 albums. In June, Halsey broke the over six-month female lull in the Top 200 albums, with the release of Hopeless Fountain Kingdom. In the past several weeks, both Lorde and Kesha have topped the album charts with Melodrama and Rainbow respectively. Neither of them made it anywhere close to the top of the top 100 singles chart.
So what does this mean for women in the music industry? Or for women in the world in general right now? It is a coincidence that this drought began in the months following the U.S. 2016 election? We know women are creating phenomenal music. So where is it? Why aren’t we hearing it even half the amount of times we hear “Despacito”? Women are back for now, but are they here to stay?
Ali Meehan
Staff Reporter