Women On Vox is our series highlighting talented ladies in music by tipping over 100 brilliant bands where women take centre stage.
With female artists still underrepresented on major platforms, radio and festival stages, especially those performing in alternative genres, there’s so much boundlessly great music that isn’t given the same chance to be heard and loved.
That’s one reason why, every day this week, we’ll be celebrating female flair.
We’ll be profiling no less than 125 artists in total – mostly bands, with a few solo talents thrown in – that represent a diverse range of styles, from alt-pop to vicious punk.
The final picks were whittled down from a shortlist of close to 400, constructed with the help of a tip or two from friends around the UK music scene. We then split our selections into five equal parts, each roughly based around a specific genre or mood. These are:
• Part 1 (Today) – A guitar-drawn opening 25, starring a mixture of styles, some of our favourite talents of the moment and a few big tips for the future;
• Part 2 (Tuesday) – A sugarier selection, featuring electropop and alternative pop picks and the band we most expect to achieve colossal success in the future;
• Part 3 (Wednesday) – A heavier showcase of brilliant punk, rock, grunge and riot grrl bands, from the highly political to the ridiculously bizarre;
• Part 4 (Thursday) – Music of a more melancholy nature, including dream pop, darker pop and shoegaze, three of which you won’t find on Spotify;
• Part 5 (Friday) – An overflow assortment of the artists we had to include but couldn’t fit elsewhere, including some of the biggest hitters.
We set a few criteria for inclusion. We decided to not feature the obvious bands we’re sure everyone has heard of, omitting the likes of CHVRCHES, Daughter and HAIM despite being big fans of all of them.
Likewise, we opted to only include acts that made their recorded debut this decade, the vast majority very recently, ruling out long-runners like Tamaryn. We lastly skipped a number of groups in which women only provide some vocals and not as the only lead, making just three exceptions along the way.
Finally, the name Women On Vox reflects that, while we’re promoting women in music, band lineups often include men and non-binary people too. (If you’re interested, 70.7% of band members on our list are women.) We’re strong believers that “female vocalists” is not a genre.
Read on for the first installment, with profiles of every artist from FEISTY editor and Women On Vox assembler Katy. We’ve also included vital statistics and the key discography you’d need to collect to gather everyone’s entire essential output.
Or, if you’d prefer, dive straight into the music with the full Spotify playlist of Part 1:
