Lady Gaga Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift and Susan Boyle are just three of the many women who are changing the face of today's music industry. / Kevin Mazur | Wireimage
Taylor Swift / Casper Christoffersen | AFP/Getty Images
Just how powerful are they?
Female singers are more popular than ever. They dominated:
Record sales. Three of last year's four best-selling albums were by women. Young country-pop star Taylor Swift's Fearless ranked No. 1, followed by middle-aged sensation Susan Boyle and post-Madonna phenom Lady Gaga at No. 4. (Michael Jackson was No. 3.)
Radio. Swift and Beyonce ranked No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, as the most-played artists on radio and online.
Online. Seven of the 10 artists streamed most frequently on the Internet were female: Swift and Beyonce, at No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, followed by Mariah Carey (No. 5), Britney Spears (No. 6), Pink (No. 7), Lady Gaga (No. 8) and Kelly Clarkson (No. 9).
Globally. Boyle's I Dreamed a Dream album topped the charts worldwide with 8.3 million copies sold.
Susan Boyle / Kevin Mazur | Getty Images for Time Inc.
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Adecade ago, the mega, all-women Lilith Fair concert tour was considered a musical affirmation of female strength and autonomy. As the summer celebration relaunches next week for the first time in 11 years, supremacy might be a better word to describe women's place in popular music today.
Check out the numbers [see box]. Also, look around. Women are holding the upper hand in ways that can't necessarily be measured. This widely diverse group of women — did you say Susan Boyle and Lady Gaga? — is everywhere, from the covers of Vogue and People to the multiplex (Jennifer Hudson, Mariah Carey, Jennifer Lopez) and the mall (Lopez, Gwen Stefani). These stars are multi-platforming like mad, running businesses and websites as they juggle time in the studio, on tour and with their families.
All this comes at a crucial time in the music business, when album sales are dwindling and the ways people listen to music change at breakneck speed.
Why are women outshining the men? R&B star Alicia Keys believes it's DNA.
“Women have a natural, intrinsic way of making things work,” says Keys, 29. “We can be brilliant, be the heads of companies, take care of our families. We can have all the balls in the air and, most of the time, not one of them falls.”
Lilith Fair founder Sarah McLachlan is a case in point. The veteran singer/songwriter, who is raising two daughters, put together her latest album, The Laws of Illusion, while organizing the tour. Among the dozens in this year's lineup: young stars such as Rihanna and Ke$ha to veterans such as Mary J. Blige and Sheryl Crow.
“We're doing it again for the same reasons we did it originally: to create a sense of community,” says McLachlan, 42. “We can do that even more in this age of technology.”
Keith Caulfield, senior chart manager at Billboard, says audiences finally accept women as superstars. “The Madonnas and Janet Jacksons of the '80s and the Mariah Careys and Celines of the '90s led to a pattern of embracing divas,” Caulfield says. Plus, says Liz Rosenberg, Madonna's publicist, “media is so much about the visual. If you watch ET or Access Hollywood covering a red-carpet event, they mostly cover the women.”
Hudson, Beyoncé and Carey have garnered attention, praise or both for movie turns. And Hudson's full plate includes, in addition to motherhood, newfound ubiquity as Weight Watchers' celebrity spokeswoman and shooting a movie in South Africa this summer in which she'll star as Winnie Mandela.
Says Hudson, 29: “Women are more criticized and scrutinized than men, but to whom much is given, much is required. Men get away with everything, but we get to be the star presence and have the whole package. So, ha!”
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