In 1972, the NME issued a “Wall of Fame”, a poster listing the best musicians in rock. It was almost exclusively the preserve of men.
By Miles Salter
Feature photo: Raye by John Hayhurst
Thirteen years later, and Live Aid was also a boy’s party, dominated by U2, Queen, Paul McCartney, Pete Townshend, Boomtown Rats and Status Quo. In America, it was rather more balanced: Cyndi Lauper, Madonna and Chrissie Hynde all appeared. Overall, though, it was a bloke’s event.
Fast forward to 2026, and things couldn’t be more different. The top music acts in the world are women. Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Billie Eilish, Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan and Olivia Rodrigo are bossing it. In the UK, they are joined by Raye, Olivia Dean (recently winning Best New Artist at the 2026 Grammy Awards) and Dua Lipa, to name a few. In 2024, nine of the top ten vinyl albums sold in the US were by female acts.
It’s a curious change but perhaps makes perfect sense. Many music consumers are young and female, they want to sing and dance and jump around. Female emotion can be a pretty overpowering thing, especially if set to music. It’s more open, less inhibited than male expression. Just listen to Aretha Franklin’s Respect or Joni Mitchell’s sublime River, or perhaps Kate Bush’s The Hounds Of Love.
More recently, The Subway by Chappell Roan is an incredibly emotive song that reeks of sad longing. Roan’s track makes Rick Astley’s insipid and uninspiring Never Gonna Give You Up sound like an old man coughing at the bottom of a cave.
Young female fans love the untrammelled emotion of acts like Roan, Taylor Swift and Raye. When I was at an Olivia Rodrigo gig in London in 2022, the noise of several thousand screaming girls was somewhat intimidating. It was like being at a Beatles’ gig. Those teenage girls loved the full-throated emotion of Rodrigo’s songs. It was like an exorcism set to soaring hooks.
‘Women make the best pop stars,’ Lauren O’Neill wrote for The Guardian in 2024, ‘and it’s about time the industry recognised it.’ O’Neill had a point. Compared to glitzy stars like Sabrina Carpenter, male acts often look less energetic and less interesting.
Older male stars – Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton, for instance – can command huge sums and sell plenty of concert tickets, but they look somewhat staler, often with voices that are diminished by age and overuse.
Younger male acts like Hozier and Sam Fender are certainly worth their salt, though, and are writing great songs, even if they don’t employ make-up and costume changes in the way that Taylor Swift or Olivia Dean do. It would be good to see men make more of a comeback; they are starting to look a little anachronistic. But, backstage and onstage, they have got some very strong competition to contend with.
Miles Salter is a man, but don’t hold that against him. He’s a writer and musician based in York. His band is Miles and The Chain Gang.