This week SXSW is all up in our grill, and so is Women’s History Month! What better way to celebrate the two than with a timeline of awesome females–girls who rock. Oh, and after the timeline, tune in for a sweet video featuring female rockers–including Workman author Jessica Hopper of The Girls’ Guide to Rocking, a very appropriate book for this week.
A Brief and Incomplete Timeline of Girls Rocking Through History
1923: Bessie Smith, now legendary blues singer, is signed by Columbia Records.
November 26, 1939: Tina Turner, future queen of rock ‘n’ roll, is born Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush, Tennessee.
August 1952: Big Mama Thornton records “Hound Dog.” Three years later, Elvis Presley, who had never heard of Thornton, scores a No. 1 hit with his own version of the song.
1963: Country-singer pioneer Patsy Cline posthumously scores three top ten hits this year, after her plane goes down on March 5, over Camden, Tennessee.
October 1964: Girl group the Shangri-Las scores a No. 1 hit with “Leader of the Pack”; it stays on the charts for a total of twelve weeks.
June 16-18, 1967: Monterey International Pop Music Festival features Janis Joplin‘s first big performance and Jimi Hendrix’s first U.S. show.
March 1971: Carole King, who’d written dozens of pop hits for other artists, releases her solo album Tapestry, which becomes one of the bestselling albums of all time.
June 1971: Joni Mitchell releases her fourth LP, the landmark Blue.
Dec. 1972: Helen Reddy‘s feminist anthem “I Am Woman” goes to No. 1.
September 1, 1974: R&B icon Etta James performs to 120,000 with James Brown, B.B. King, and others at a music festival in Zaire.
1976: Female -fronted new wave band The B-52s forms.
1978: Singer-songwriter Kate Bush, at age nineteen, tops the U.K. charts for four weeks with her debut song, “Wuthering Heights,” becoming the first woman to have a U.K. No. 1 hit with a self-written song.
March 1980: Blondie scores their biggest hit with “Call Me”; it will be the biggest song of the year and stay at No. 1 for seven weeks.
September 20, 1982: Former Runaways guitarist Joan Jett hits the big time as a solo artist. Her single “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” is certified platinum.
December 1983: Cyndi Lauper releases She’s So Unusual, one of the landmark albums of the ’80s.
January 1988: Sonic Youth, with frontwoman bassist Kim Gordon, releases the double LP Daydream Nation. Underground will never be the same.
1991: All-female L.A. quartet L7 forms Rock for Choice, a women’s rights group supported by other prominent bands of the era, including Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana, and Rage Against the Machine.
July 1, 1991: Hole, fronted by mercurial singer Courtney Love, releases their debut album, Pretty on the Inside.
June 24, 1993: Liz Phair releases Exile in Guyville, a song-by-song response album to The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Mainstreet. The album is a huge success with critics and fans for its frank depictions of Phair’s life.
April 8, 1997: Sleater-Kinney releases their third album, Dig Me Out. In 2005 it is ranked No. 24 in Spin‘s 100 Greatest Albums.
2000: Bjork receives an Academy Award nomination for the song “I’ve Seen It All” from the film Dancer in the Dark.
July 31, 2001: Rilo Kiley, featuring lead singer and former child actress Jenny Lewis, releases their debut, Take Offs and Landings.
March 4, 2003: Evanescence, fronted by singer/pianist Amy Lee, releases their debut, Fallen, which sells more than 15 million copies worldwide and wins the band Grammy Awards for Best New Artist and Best Hard Rock Performance. It goes seven times platinum.
2007: Feist‘s song “1234” off her third solo album, The Reminder, is featured in the iPod Nano commercial. The single reaches No. 8 and earns a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Performance.
June 12, 2007: Paramore releases their second album, Riot! It is certified platinum in eleven months.
November 11, 2008: Seven songs off eighteen-year-old Taylor Swift‘s Fearless chart on the Billboard 100 in the album’s debut week. Both Fearless and her debut album go on to become the No. 3 and No. 6 bestselling albums of the year, a first in the recorded history of album sales.
Have a good example of girls rocking in history that belongs in this timeline? (No Doubt you’re GaGa for TLC, Whitney, or Brit Brit?) Write it in the comments!
Also… we know about your, um… little fur problem:
The Girls’ Guide to Rocking ft. Kate Rose from Alan Del Rio Ortiz on Vimeo.
2 Comments
Mila Montreuil
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Cooking Devotee
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