Updated February 23, 2022 8k votes 2.2k voters 79k views
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Vote up all the facts about the women of rock who rock.
Rock music is a wide-ranging genre that encapsulates many sounds, but ultimately comes down to an attitude. That air of "coolness" and rebellion that permeates the lyrics and cuts through the noise does more to define rock than any chords or arrangements. Many women in the history of the music industry were forced to be packaged and sold in neat, easily digestible soundbites, so when they finally broke out and simply spoke their minds, the results were inherently rock 'n' roll.
Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was dismissed from his company in October 2017, following sexual abuse allegations from women dating back to the late 1970s. His alleged actions seemed to be an open secret in the entertainment industry for years, with occasional allusions thrown out as jokes.
But singer, songwriter, and actor Courtney Love went further than joking, and actually warned young women about the executive back in 2005. During a red carpet interview at Comedy Central's roast of Pamela Anderson, someone asked Love, “What advice do you have for young women in Hollywood?”
Love replied, “I’ll get libeled if I say it... If Harvey Weinstein invites you to a private party in his Four Seasons [hotel room], don’t go.”
Genres (Music): Noise rock, grunge, folk rock, power pop, post-grunge
While Janis Joplin was growing up in Port Arthur, TX, the town was racially segregated. Her strong support of desegregation - which she developed in part thanks to her parents' affinity for art, literature, and learning - set her apart from her classmates and provided further incentive for them to bully her. She suffered frequent name-calling and would skip classes to avoid her tormenters, only attending enough to successfully graduate. "They laughed me out of class, out of town, out of the state," she said after moving to California.
Joplin's proud stances against segregation also came from a love of folk and blues music, which she later used as influences for her own songs.
Genres (Music): Blues-rock, rock, folk, acid rock, soul
During a Saturday Night Live episode on October 3, 1992, Sinéad O’Connor ended an a cappella version of the Bob Marley song “War” by tearing up a photo of Pope John Paul II. She later said she wanted people to face difficult truths, such as the child abuse in her home country of Ireland.
Angry callers flooded NBC's phone lines to express near universal disapproval, and the next week on SNL, host Joe Pesci spent his monologue condemning O'Connor.
As a teenager, O'Connor spent 18 months in a Catholic nun-run "Magdalene laundry," an Irish institution where girls and young women were sometimes abused, starved, and forced to work long hours in poor conditions. The year after O’Connor’s SNL appearance, a mass grave was discovered at a similar place.
More than a decade later, the world learned about child abuse inflicted by Catholic priests and the church's role in protecting offenders in the US and Ireland.
Genres (Music): Pop, rock, folk rock, folk, Irish rebel music
Patti Smith, AKA the Godmother of Punk, worked an early job at a toy factory after graduating high school in 1964, and had an awful experience. The silver lining is that it gave her the inspiration to write her first single, "Piss Factory," a tune that's often cited as the first true punk song. As Smith revealed about the job:
The stuff those women did to me in that factory was horrible. They’d gang up on me and stick my head in a toilet full of piss.
Genres (Music): Blues-rock, rock, protopunk, alternative rock, art rock
Although Cass Elliot was overweight for most of her life, she outwardly seemed to accept it. Her outgoing personality and independence led the way for other female music stars who rose to fame in the 1960s, such as Janis Joplin.
As much as she seemed to accept her weight, Elliot was internally unhappy with how she looked and frequently put herself on diets, many of them dangerous. She would basically starve herself - at one point going without food for four days every week during a seven-month period. Elliot admitted she knew her dieting method wasn't the smartest, and after losing more than 100 pounds, she ended up in the hospital.
After suffering multiple health problems, including hepatitis, tonsillitis, and hemorrhaged vocal cords, she never really regained her health. According to legend, Elliot died choking on a ham sandwich, but in actuality, she passed in her sleep of heart failure at the young age of 32. An uneaten sandwich happened to be near her when she died, inspiring the story.
The legendary Tina Turner is one of the most renowned singers in music history, and she's also a devoted Buddhist. Turner was actually raised Baptist, but found Buddhism in the 1970s and has become one of its best-known followers ever since.
"I have never separated my spiritual practice from my life as a rock singer. When I was going through the hardest times of my life, I was chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo," she said in a 2018 interview, adding:
Chanting helped me and changed my life for the better. I’ve left a good body of work as a rock singer, and I’ve made it very clear that it was because of my spiritual practice.
Genres (Music): Rock, dance-pop, R&B, blues, gospel
