Why 2015’s Pop Music Scene Looks a Lot Like 1995’s
Sleater-Kinney, Bjork and PJ Harvey are back. And they have something to teach the new wave of ‘feminist’ artists.
BY SADY DOYLE
According to just about every reputable source, we live in a golden age of feminist music. TIME magazine declared 2014 “the year of pop feminism”; Carl Wilson, in Billboard, called 2014 “Pop Music’s ‘End of Men’ Moment”; VICE, meanwhile, has dubbed 2014 “The Year Feminism Reclaimed Pop.” This is all well-deserved. Beyoncé’s choice to sample a feminist lecture by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie—complete with definition of the term—was a watershed moment even before the pop star stood in front of a gigantic, glaring “FEMINIST” sign at the VMAs.

Beyoncé made feminism fashionable. Lorde, Charli XCX, Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift have since claimed the term; even the nominally apolitical Meghan Trainor made her name with a song about fat-shaming and Photoshop abuse, topics that used to be the exclusive province of feminist blogs.

All of this—coupled with pop culture's 20-year nostalgia cycle—has created the perfect climate for legacy feminist musicians to get more serious attention than they have in years. We’re only a month into 2015 and already, Sleater-Kinney has released its first album in ten years, Björk unexpectedly dropped a new album, and PJ Harvey began recording a new album as a live exhibit in Somerset House, a London art space.

But feminism's dominance can be a precarious thing. The very names Sleater-Kinney and Björk ought to remind us that—in the immortal words of Battlestar Galactica—all of this has happened before, and it will happen again. Feminism “reclaimed” mainstream music two decades ago and was hailed as a conquering force, only to be wiped off the map by the next hot trend. Musically, 2015 looks a lot like 1995.