disorder of written expression

When virtuoso female guitarists appear on the rock radar, they tend to gain the spotlight in the lulls between dominant, malecentric scenes (Britpop, grunge, glam rock), celebrated in isolation as brief, intermittent flashes of brilliance that flare up between the wider, collective scenes. When these women are innovative enough to operate successfully outside a zeitgeist, and gain an audience without the legitimacy and safety of a wider scene, they are seen as ancillary to rock’s larger, holistic pantheon. They are rounded up for “women in rock” trend pieces where “gender is genre”, a rock press narrative that creates a separate, and implicitly lesser, form of rock.

Charlotte Richardson Andrews