80s Pop Legend Madonna 60 today.

[Mr Allen]

Link.

She did some great songs back in the early to late 80's and into the mid 90's.

Happy 60th, she doesn't look it though.

 

[Butterfly88]

Happy Birthday Madonna! I agree she doesn't look it.

 

[pamelaperejil]

Wow. Time flies.

 

[Aeolienne]

According to her Wikipedia entry, Madonna played guitar and bands in a band (The Breakfast Club - no relation to the John Hughes film AFAIK) before achieving success as a solo artist. That surprises me as I don't recall her ever playing an instrument on her Top of the Pops performances in the 80s. Feel free to provide evidence to the contrary.

It bothered me back then, and still does, that pop music performance was so gendered. Off the top of my head, the only mainstream bands I can recall from that era with female guitarists were the Bangles and the Pretenders. Why is it so rare for a woman to play an axe? Even today, if you ask children to pretend to be pop stars, you can bet your bottom dollar that boys will play air guitar and girls will mime singing into a hairbrush. Regrettably, Madonna only reinforced the stereotype that female stars sell themselves by their looks rather than their musical talent.

Imagine how different the history of pop might have been if the Beatles had been female. [/soapbox]

 

[Starfire]

What about Joan Jett, Joni Mitchell, Amy McDonald, Courtney Love and Amy Winehouse, there’s a few.

 

[Mr Allen]

According to her Wikipedia entry, Madonna played guitar and bands in a band (The Breakfast Club - no relation to the John Hughes film AFAIK) before achieving success as a solo artist. That surprises me as I don't recall her ever playing an instrument on her Top of the Pops performances in the 80s. Feel free to provide evidence to the contrary.

It bothered me back then, and still does, that pop music performance was so gendered. Off the top of my head, the only mainstream bands I can recall from that era with female guitarists were the Bangles and the Pretenders. Why is it so rare for a woman to play an axe? Even today, if you ask children to pretend to be pop stars, you can bet your bottom dollar that boys will play air guitar and girls will mime singing into a hairbrush. Regrettably, Madonna only reinforced the stereotype that female stars sell themselves by their looks rather than their musical talent.

Imagine how different the history of pop might have been if the Beatles had been female. [/soapbox]

2 things:

1: Ir was the '80s, almost nobody sang live or played their own music on TV back then, they all mimed.
2: See 1

 

[Starfire]

Sheryl Crow, Mille Cyrus, Pink, Suzi Quatro, Nita Strauss, Jennifer Batten, Poison Ivy (The Cramps), Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, Avril Lavigne, Shakira, Nelly Furtado, Jordan Sparks, Ellie Goulding, Carly Simon, Christina Perri, Kate Bush,Tracy Chapman, Joan Armatrading, Joan Baez all well known female guitar players.

 

[Aeolienne]

How many of the women cited are/were 80s mainstream pop acts? I've never seen Kate Bush play a guitar, only a ukulele on the video for Rocket Man. And why did so many men mime playing a guitar on TOTP but so few women?

 

[Starfire]

Oh I see, I didn’t realise the thread was focusing on the 80s only, my mistake. In that case very few were mainstream in the 80s.

Just out of interest how do you know how many men versus women played live or mimed on TOTP? Has someone made a comparison of this? I’m just wondering, it would make interesting reading I used to watch TOTP most weeks when I was young.

 

[Tom]

I liked her 1st Album in '83.

 

[pamelaperejil]

If I remember, she played guitar but badly, at least when she first started in bands. I think they figured Madonna's trump card was her personality and not her guitar playing, so they took away the guitar and made her lead singer. Also, she had the moves. She studied to be a professional dancer.

 

[Aeolienne]

There was a BBC documentary earlier called The Joy of the Guitar Riff which did feature a reasonable number of women, albeit all of whose careers had peaked in the 70s or earlier. IIRC think someone made the point that it was in the 80s the guitar became a kind of macho, phallic-extension type thing. Maybe there's an analogy to be drawn here with the IT industry. Whilst it's never been a haven of gender parity, interestingly in the early years of computing there was a higher proportion of female employees. This wasn't exactly due to enlightened attitudes; in fact computing was promoted as "women's work" precisely because it was seen as undemanding and repetitive, similar to being a switchboard operator. Then from the 80s onwards there was a noticeable decline in the proportion of women in the IT workforce, which some say can be traced to the point at which home computers were marketed as boys' toys.
The first 1940s coders were women - so how did tech bros take over?

There is a movement afoot to get more girls into rock music, not just as singers but as all-round performers: Girls Rock. I wonder if Madonna would be interested in becoming a patron?

 

[Judge]

No one mentioned the Go-Go's. They go all the way back to 1978.

New Wave more than pop...but what they hey.

 

[WildCat]

If you wish on a lucky star during the holiday, she might go crazy for you.

Happy (belated) birthday to Madonna.

 

[balsabonbon]

I used to listen to The Immaculate Collection quite a bit. I think I like every song on that one.

I also seem to remember that she was cast in the Dick Tracy movie that came out somewhere in the 90s too.