“No Black Artists Were Awarded 'Woman Of The Year' This Decade, And People Are Pissed - Junkee” plus 1 more |
| Posted: 27 Nov 2019 12:00 AM PST  Billie Eilish was just announced as Billboard's 'Woman of the Year' for 2019. With that appointment, it officially marks an entire decade where not a single black woman has been awarded the title. Twitter page Pop Crave tweeted out the final list yesterday following the 2019 award recipient being announced. The controversial list spanning from 2010 to 2019 features Fergie, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, P!nk, Lady Gaga, Madonna, Selena Gomez, Ariana Grande and now, Billie Eilish.
People were quick to notice the significant lack of diversity over the past ten years, with only one woman of colour being awarded the title. The list of past winners fails to reflect the major cultural impact that black artists have had on the music industry in the last decade. The complete absence of any black women was concerning because of the obvious influence that these woman had in the image and sound of artists on the list.
The biggest omissions that people noticed were Beyoncé and Rihanna, two wildly successful artists from the past decade. Despite their impact on the music industry, particularly with the release of Beyoncé, Lemonade and ANTI, neither were awarded the title of 'Woman of the Year' this decade.
People were particularly angered by Beyoncé and Rihanna being snubbed in 2016 when they released Lemonade and Anti. Despite both Anti and Lemonade debuting at number one on the Billboard Charts — and with Beyonce having the year's top-selling album globally – the pair somehow lost to Madonna. The biggest issue with this was that Madonna didn't actually release any music in 2016. Madonna took out the 2016 'Woman of the Year' title off the back of her 2015 album tour, Rebel Heart, which was the highest-grossing female tour at the time.
Some highlighted that Beyoncé didn't win the title in 2016 because she had been 'Woman of the Year' in the decade prior. The Billboard 'Women of the Year' award, which started in 2007 with Reba McEntire, previously honoured Ciara and Beyoncé in 2008 and 2009, respectively. However, there are no rules against an artist winning the award more than once, as demonstrated by Taylor Swift's win in both 2011 and 2014.
Beyond the release of Lemonade in 2016, Beyoncé's self-titled album shook up the industry in more ways than one. The surprise release of Beyoncé changed the standard release day for all albums in the US – shifting to a Friday release over the original Tuesday. As with Lemonade, Beyoncé debuted at number one on the Billboard charts and became the fastest-selling album in the history of iTunes at the time. However, Beyoncé lost the 2013 title to P!nk after she scored her first-ever number one album despite Beyoncé having five.
Taylor Swift's recent win of the newly-formed 'Woman of the Decade' award just further reinforces the issues with the list of past winners of the 'Woman of the Year' title. And begs the question: How much more do black women need to do to start getting the recognition they deserve? |
| 10 Artists Who Defined The Decade: The 2010s - NME.com Posted: 03 Dec 2019 12:00 AM PST As we continue to review the pop culture landscape of these 10 turbulent years, we today celebrate the 10 artists who defined the 2010s, in which we reflect on the artists who pushed things forward, changed the conversation and defined the times we live in. Unlike the albums list, this one isn't strictly ranked – they're all winners here. Tell us what you think on the usual channels. This week, we round off our 2010s coverage with the Songs Of The Decade, Films Of The Decade, TV Of The Decade and Games Of The Decade – so stay tuned to NME to make sure you don't miss a beat. Merry listmas, one and all.
1Robyn – architect of the sadbanger Robyn CREDIT: Press You can fit a lot of loss into a decade. In the last 10 years, you've probably lost at least two phones, four games of FIFA and hundreds of lighters. Unfortunately, most people have probably lost a person they loved, too. And through the snotty-faced break-ups, the best mate that just stopped texting, and the shitty emotional battering ram better known as grief, there's been one constant: Robyn. Rewind to the beginning of her career in the 1990s and industry cogs were conniving to try and make Robyn into the 'perfect' pop star. She resisted. By the time the noughties rolled around she was fearlessly independent, artistically liberated and making shattering, glimmering pop music that fixated on imperfection instead. Towards the end of 2010, the Swedish artist smushed together the biggest cuts from the two mini-albums she'd released that same year: the resulting 'Body Talk' is her undisputed masterpiece. From that record, 'Dancing On My Own' is flawless, devastating pop gold. It's the tangled-up knot of loneliness that throbs in the pit of your stomach; the sadistic pang of flicking through hundreds of adorable photographs of yourself on a romantic holiday with the fucker who recently dumped you. Put simply, it's standing frozen in the corner of a club with tears pouring down your face, watching your ex trade salvia with a random. "I'm right over here," that fist-clenching chorus howls. "Why can't you see me?" It's impossible to name a more savage skewering of isolation and heartbreak.
2Kanye West, the creative genius Kanye West CREDIT: Getty Images What do you want from your pop culture icons? For them to be likeable? For them to always be right? Or do you want them to be macro versions of what it is to be human: hubristic, compassionate, egotistical, insightful, ambitious and deeply flawed? Every single person in the world is problematic in some way, despite the contemporary appetite for pretending otherwise, and the id of Kanye West is an XXL example of all of the above. Kanye started and ended the decade as a pariah. In 2010 he was the most hated man in music, having been called a "jackass" by Barack Obama in the wake of interrupting of Taylor Swift's acceptance speech at the VMAs. As he put it on 'POWER': "They say I was the abomination of Obama's nation/Well that's a pretty bad way to start the conversation". That track appeared on 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy', Kanye's magnum opus, an open-hearted exploration of ego, America, love, sex and self-loathing. Arriving at the end of 2010, it marked the beginning of what would be a turbulent nine years for West. '…Fantasy' was Kanye's plea for forgiveness, a lush collaborative record that saw him pioneer his 'rap camp' approach to recording; countless musicians travelled to Hawaii to hang out and work with him. And it was perhaps the last time he truly invited the listener into his world. 2013's 'Yeezus' was a much more claustrophobic affair, while 2016's 'The Life of Pablo' was an extremely unrelatable – but no less brilliant – portrait of a man longing for purity as he gorged on the filth and the fury of 21st Century celebrity. 2018's muddled 'Ye' was an austere depiction of the fall-out from his renewed pariah status and this year's much more successful 'Jesus Is King' saw him implore God to shield him from the criticism.
Because, yes, having won people over with '…Fantasy', 'Yeezus' and '…Pablo', Kanye managed to alienate himself once again when, last year, he told TMZ that 400 years of slavery sounded "like a choice". He later tearfully apologised on local radio in his hometown of Chicago, blaming his mental health and alleging that his management should not have allowed him to speak to journalists at that time, given his state of mind. Having been spurned by Obama all those years ago, he also aligned himself with Donald Trump, in a move that dismayed many fans. Kanye West defined this decade, for better or worse, because he defined divisiveness, the single most prevalent quality of the 2010s. He headlined Glastonbury and they signed petitions against him. He called himself a genius and for every person who agreed, there was another who sided with Obama. He outraged rap purists when he appeared on his wife's reality TV show. He picked a political side and dared us to abandon him, like a family member you love but can't see eye-to-eye with. Part of this is built into Kanye – as he said on the 'Yeezus' track 'On Sight', "As soon as they like you/Make 'em unlike you" – and part of it is iconoclasm: unwittingly soaking up the times you live in and refracting them back to the world. He got it very right and he got it very wrong. He was compassionate and he was careless. That was Kanye West. It was the 2010s, and it was you and me. JORDAN BASSETT Key track: 'Famous'
3David Bowie – a long shadow over a tough decade David Bowie CREDIT: Press You might think it strange that artist who first achieved fame in the 1960s, and who died precisely halfway through this decade, on January 10, 2016, has earned a spot on our list. But David Bowie's death was a watershed moment of the 2010s, one that has changed how we view artists' lives and careers forever. Bowie's comeback began three years before his death in that same, gloaming week in the bleak days after New Year's when the decorations have gone but the cold and the darkness remains and all is tax returns and diet plans and regret. On Bowie's 66th birthday, January 8, 2013, his first solo single since 2004 appeared like a mirage, opening a new chapter in the narrative of an artist who seemed to have gone on permanent hiatus. And where previously Bowie's reinventions had been in the guise of a man who apparently had the font of eternal youth in his backyard, 'Where Are We Now' was different. Bowie was old and fragile and nostalgic, looking back on his time in Berlin during his celebrated creative purple patch in the late 1970s. The track was released with no fanfare into that January morning – Bowie embracing the incoming trend for dropping new material with little warning – and the accompanying album 'The Next Day', released in March, quickly became one of the most talked-about records of the year. Where Bowie had spent much of the previous 20 years releasing new music to disinterest, or even ridicule, 'The Next Day' found a warmth from the public that had long eluded him. The campaign was one of quality control – no interviews, few pictures, just a series of talking-point music videos and the album itself to pick over.
4Christine & The Queens – the pop icon redefining gender Christine And The Queens CREDIT: Bella Howard/NME Everyone loves a pop fairytale, and when it comes to this decade's most fantastical fable, the crown surely goes to Christine and the Queens. After being expelled from a theatre program in 2010 for staging her own play without permission – remarkably, women were not allowed to direct at her school – Hélöise Letissier locked herself in her flat and spewed out barbed scripts articulating her fury. Her protagonist was named Christine: representing a bolder, braver, and more transgressive version of her creator. Shortly after being expelled, Letissier was also unceremoniously dumped – as years go, it's safe to say this one was a bit of a shitter. And so she headed for the hazy neon lights of London's Soho to escape. There, with the encouragement of drag queens at the now closed Madame JoJo's, Christine was born as a fully fledged artist, as her plays steadily morphed into music. Four years after everything fell apart, Christine and The Queens released her debut album 'Chaleur Humaine' in French, and became a superstar in her home country. A couple of years later, the rest of the world caught on. It's easy to understand why word about Christine spread like wildfire. Touring the European festival circuit the year after her debut's initial release, you could sense the fizzing excitement of each crowd growing, show-on-show. Her theatrics-heavy staging, crammed with leaping choreography and slowly rotating neon, was refreshing. As a queer artist infiltrating the mainstream – and predominantly heteronormative – pop world, Christine and The Queens felt vital: her songs harnessing the pain of growing up feeling like a misfit, and turning that loneliness into something joyful and warm.
The soft edges of 'Chaleur Humaine' later grew gleaming fangs: second album 'Chris' is lustful, filthy and dripping with desire as well as a half Tippex-ed out name. It's a playful kind of sexuality, too: gravelly voices husk Chris' name on the swaggering 'Girlfriend', and campy hip-hop samples punch from a vintage E-MU Mo' Phatt synthesiser at every swerve. "When you play me loud me, baby," Chris grins on 'Comme Si' "we are making love". Chris' meteoric rise shows no sign of slowing, but she won't play the game in order to bag chart successes. She also refuses to allow her queerness to be packaged up into a palatable selling point. Over the last few years, she's spoken astutely about pop's habit for co-opting select aspects of LGBTQ culture, and interrogated the way she's been hailed as a fashion icon for cropping her hair short or wearing sharp suits. Christine and the Queens herself is far more interested in uncertainty and evading definition. In other words, she's exactly the pop star the world needs. EL HUNT Key track: 'Girlfriend'
5Billie Eilish – the voice of the next generation Billie Eilish CREDIT: Rachael Wright/NME The phrase "the kids are alright" might have been hanging around since The Who said it in the 1960s, but never was it more true than in the latter half of the 2010s. Faced with the colossal mess adults had made of the world, Gen Z-ers stepped up to give their fellow kids – and a fair few older folk too – some hope. Greta Thunberg was adopted as a figurehead for change, attempting to halt the climate crisis when she should have been worrying about exams. Emma Gonzalez and her classmates caused a seismic wave in the conversation around gun control after surviving a shooting at their Florida school. And kids found another teenager to get behind in Billie Eilish. The 17-year-old LA musician has proved herself to be one of her generation's most outspoken, smartest, and inspiring stars. She's an advocate for the youth, telling NME earlier this year that young people "know everything" and shouldn't be ignored. She's refused to let people ogle or body-shame her, dressing in a uniform of oversized and baggy clothes that both hide her form and look ridiculously cool. She's stood up to the sexist double standards of the music industry and the world at large with eloquence and a "fuck you" attitude that makes it clear that she won't settle for the shit the rest of the world accepts as the norm.
Eilish also represents a generation that refuses to be moulded by its elders, summed up in the way that she swerves the typical steps to pop stardom. Her critically acclaimed debut album 'When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?' is pleasingly feature-free – a rarity on pop records in this age – and she's only worked with Khalid (a friend) and Justin Bieber (a hero) on her other tracks so far. She's trusted her own voice and work and, along with brother and constant collaborator Finneas, refused to let outside voices disrupt her vision.
6Beyonce – the survivor Beyoncé CREDIT: Getty Images It's hard to know where to start with Beyonce, not least because the word icon doesn't seem to quite do her justice. A powerful example of just how great America can be, it's worth looking back to the very beginning of the towering Texan's storied career when considering how much of an impact she's had on this decade. Breaking out in the late 1990s as the most engaging member of Destiny's Child, it was always obvious that Beyonce was the one who'd thrive solo. But when it came to going places, it's incredible to see how far Beyonce Knowles has actually gone. So much more than a popstar, Beyonce has become an outspoken advocate for civil rights, feminism and self-expression, proving that it's possible to be politically engaged and still hold down an extremely successful career in mainstream entertainment. Over the past few years she's also lived out personal trauma in public, turning pain into art by flinging back husband Jay-Z's infidelity in his face by way of one of her most powerful albums, 2016's multi-layered revenge record, 'Lemonade'. It was this album, her sixth, that saw Beyonce at the peak of her creative powers and also at her most collaborative. Here she blended old blues and Isaac Hayes samples, worked with men whose talent just about matched hers; namely Jack White, James Blake, The Weeknd, Father John Misty and Kendrick Lamar, and in 'Freedom' sampled a speech made by Jay-Z's grandmother at her 90th birthday, her words closing out the song as if they were a time-travelling mirror to Beyonce's own lived experience and giving the album its title in the process. "I had my ups and downs, but I always find the inner strength to pull myself up," says Hattie White. "I was served lemons, but I made lemonade."
Nothing was more illuminating that Beyonce's own brand of lemonade. She performed the album's first single 'Formation' at the Super Bowl halftime show with backing dancers dressed in Black Panther inspired costumes and tapped 20-something British-Kenyan poet Warsan Shire for the accompanying 'Lemonade' film, which featured the mothers of murdered black American citizens Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner. No longer was she just a pop star; she was a phenomenon using her platform to bring the stories of others into the light. Nothing was without purpose. There were deeply personal meanings to the songs, but with the surrounding creative, they were deftly placed into a wider political context. Taylor Swift's '1989' it was most certainly not. Looking back to her first album of the decade, 2011's '4', you can see how Beyonce was planting the seeds for this kind of commanding statement. Its first single 'Run The World (Girls)' was hen-party feminism that would later be weaponised. It's true that 10 years ago Beyonce was already a force to reckon with. In 2010 she won six Grammys and in 2011 slayed Glastonbury with a performance that's had fans begging her to return ever since. But it's a post-'Lemonade' Beyonce that we end the decade with; a woman with the kind of work ethic that would make HR insist that she has to use all her holiday days; a woman who truly gives a shit about people and a woman who still can't fail to get you on the dancefloor. LEONIE COOPER Key track: 'Formation'
7Ariana Grande – the relatable superstar Ariana Grande CREDIT: Press At the beginning of the decade, Ariana Grande was best known for appearing in a couple of Nickelodeon TV shows. Ten years on, she exits the 2010s one of the most successful, impressive and resilient musicians on the planet. She's overcome huge tragedy with remarkable strength, released some of the decade's biggest hits and, despite being one of the most mega-sized popstars around, she's managed to do everything on her own terms. It goes without saying that Grande has an extraordinary, distinctive voice, and that she's released a gamut of smash hit singles. In 2013 Grande dropped her debut 'Yours Truly', but it was next year's follow-up 'My Everything' that catapulted her onto radio playlists, up the charts and into the Grammy nominations list. The hulking EDM-pop of 'Break Free' and 'One Last Time', and the R&B-tinged, sextuple platinum certified 'Problem' established Grande as a hit machine, something that has remained a constant since. She followed it up with her third record 'Dangerous Woman', which featured guest appearances from Lil Wayne and her mate Nicki Minaj, and fused trap, disco and house with her trademark sparkling pop. While touring the album in arenas around the world in 2017, the unthinkable happened. On May 22, 2017, at Grande's Manchester Arena show, 22 people were killed by a homemade bomb in a terror attack. The atrocity rocked the nation, and while nobody would have blamed Grande for cancelling the entire tour and taking some time off, she did the opposite.
8Skepta – the saviour of grime Skepta CREDIT: Dean Chalkley/NME The king of carving out a career on his own terms, Skepta did the 2010s right. The Tottenham MC might have started the decade with the taste of a dodgy novelty single still fresh in his mouth (never forget 2008 electro-skank 'Rolex Sweep', which came complete with its own dance move) and the controversial decision to swap your more traditional music video with hardcore porn (search for 2011's 'All Over The House, if you dare and then immediately wipe your browsing history) but he closed it out triumphant. On the cusp of 2020 Joseph Junior Adenuga Jr. can take a bow as the man who took grime to the rest of the globe and became the figurehead of the UK's most groundbreaking new sound since Britpop. We are not worthy. His somewhat questionable promo moves included, Skepta has always done things his way. Take the video for 2014's 'That's Not Me', which won him a MOBO – it cost a bargain £80. The track itself only just missed out on the UK Top 20, but by then the wheels were already set in motion for impending superstardom. Skepta might have spent much of the 2000s in the underground, joining forces with Wiley's Roll Deep crew before founding Boy Better Know in 2006, but finally he was becoming kind of a big deal. It's hard to remember the last time that a British movement connected so well with an international audience, but when the likes of Drake, A$AP Rocky and Kanye West started to fall at the feet of grime there was one man they needed to link up with first. At Ye's 2015 Brit Awards performance, Skepta was there, shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of Novelist and Stormzy, but by dint of already being in his 30s and something of an elder statesman of the scene, North Amerian rap stars were tripping over themselves to be his mate. Artists from across the pond found themselves imbued with a whole new kind of cool thanks to hanging out with Skepta. This new interest from America made the youth of the UK even prouder to fall in love with a homegrown sound that spoke to them and their lives.
In 2016 Skepta released his fourth album, 'Konnichiwa'. Barrelling straight into the Number Two slot, it was at the time grime's highest charting album – until Stormzy bested him with a Number One the following year. Skepta was hot property and though he was denied a visa to tour the US, that didn't stop him from doing a fair bit of travelling. He soon became a fashion show front row mainstay, constantly adding his own twists to his unique personal style, making him grime's most chic as well as most successful. And that's before we've even mentioned his dalliance with the iconic Naomi Campbell. Then, when he casually rocked up to the Ivor Novello Awards in a women's blouse, his status as the best kind of rule-breaker was settled. That Skepta ends this decade whilst finishing up his first ever arena tour as well as with a spot on Debrett's list of the UK's most influential people is perfect poetry. LEONIE COOPER Key track: 'Shutdown'
9Matty Healy – rock frontperson 2.0 The 1975's Matty Healy CREDIT: Matt Salacuse/NME The 2010s were the decade in which the millennial came of age, not just as a generation, amorphous and difficult-to-define as they are, but as a set of values, too: compassion, inclusivity, driving for change, and not defined by the boundaries of their predecessors. That ethos extends beyond the identity politics of nationhood (witness the outpouring of millennial grief when the rest of the family voted to strip them of their European citizenship) but to artistic boundaries too. Musically, we've witnessed the widespread casting aside of subcultural identity and genre loyalty. There is, perhaps, nobody who embodies that shift more than Matty Healy, frontman of The 1975, the band who released their debut album in 2013, and over the course of three albums have proven themselves masters of genre-bending pop. Few would have anticipated the artistic gulf between the group's self-titled debut, essentially a teen movie in musical form, and last year's 'A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships', but you suspect that Healy, with his unflinching belief in the creative core of his band, probably did.
10Kendrick Lamar – hip hop's boundary-pusher Kendrick Lamar It's hard to believe that at the start of this decade, the majority of us lived in a K-Dot-less world. His contributions to the rap canon, hip hop culture more generally and even wider conversations around the boundaries of art and music, over the length of his career, have been so incredibly tangible and incendiary. Over the course of the 2010s, Kendrick Lamar Duckworth of Compton, California, has represented, pushed and questioned the state of affairs at every hurdle, providing his own theories of existence as his audience grew rapidly both in size and enthusiasm. And with each project, from first mixtape 'Overly Dedicated' in 2010 to Grammy and Pulitzer-awarded 'DAMN.' in 2017, the now 32-year-old rapper, songwriter and producer has evaded categorisation and defied expectation both implicitly in his music and explicitly through his lyrics to become one of the most influential people of our generation. After being featured in XXL's Freshman Class of 2011, Lamar's first independent album 'Section.80' released with the weight of Snoop Dogg and Dr Dre co-signs behind it, and served as an ambitious and unforgiving statement of intent for his career to come, which of course lived true. In fact, over the hurried jazz instrumentation of soul-seeking 'Ab-Souls Outro', Kendrick likens his relation to the world to a newborn baby killing a grown man before pre-empting the clickbait taglines of his career and clarifying: "I'm not the next pop star, I'm not the next socially-aware rapper, I'm a human motherfucking being over dope-ass instrumentation, Kendrick Lamar!" And that ardent simplicity, of Kendrick Lamar as just an idiosyncratic individual who talks about "money, hoes, clothes, God and history" in the same sentence, is the basis for his creative freedom to mutate and transform constantly and fully realise his art beyond the bounds of genres and trends.
Following on from 'Section.80', a record that held a mirror up to his community as it drew upon anecdotes to illustrate the lives of those close to him, 'good kid, m.A.A.d city' landed in 2012 as a true elevation of that wildly compelling storytelling narrative into a cinematic coming-of-age tale with Lamar at the centre. Where 'Section.80' wore different masks in the form of Keisha, Tammy and more, 'good kid…' had you in the driver's seat, sometimes literally for example on 'The Art of Peer Pressure'. Receiving immense critical acclaim for managing to fuse the fearless grit of tracks like 'Backseat Freestyle' with the infectious immediacy of songs like 'Swimming Pools' and 'Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe', it was hard to imagine where Lamar would venture next. Heralded with awards and titles, as well as the infamous Grammy snub, it was clear to everyone (except maybe the Grammy Academy) that he was at the top of his game.
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