Teenage Girls Made Rock n’ Roll

How teenage girls were leaders in the popularization of Rock n’ Roll.

Robina Nguyen Contributor

Igot my first ear punch of live rock music in a cramped, dimly-lit concert venue on Queen Street. A wailing four-piece band showering eyebrow-melting screeches over a sea of moshing bodies was the energetic release I never knew I needed. Rock is a genre that has always been seen as more egalitarian than the others – it’s a world filled with tons of subgenres, each with their own distinct fanbase.

Rock’s all about self-expression, rebellion, and radical dissent. But for one of the most diverse music genres out there, it’s plagued with gatekeeping and elitism. Gatekeeping isn’t new. Back in the ‘90s, “poseur” was one of the worst insults you could throw at someone. It meant that you were a liar. A thief. An amateur who wasn’t cool enough to actually be part of the community. When Lars Ulrich threw darts at Kip Winger’s photo in Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” video, the message was clear – you’re either with us or against us.

And usually, it’s the teenage girls who get shut out. “75% of our lives is proving we’re a real band,” said Ashton Irwin, the drummer in pop-rock band 5 Seconds of Summer. “We’re getting good at it now. We don’t want to just be, like, for girls.” According to Irwin, you aren’t a “real band” until you’ve gained approval from the ol’ boys

SHOW REVIEW club. Seeing a man among a sea of female superficiality must be an incredible turning point in their careers, guiding them closer to success and credibility. But hold on to your cap, Ashton – this one might be a hard pill to swallow. Teen girls were the first Beatles fans, long before Beatlemania took the world by storm. They fell in love with the group of grinning, floppy-haired Brits crooning about soulmates and hand-holding before the rest of the world caught on.

Initially, the older generation saw their music as cheap commercial trash. As Paul Johnson said in his infamous New Statesman article (1963), “those who flock round the Beatles, who scream themselves into hysteria, are the least fortunate of their generation, the dull, the idle, the failures.” And yet the Beatles went on to become one of the most revered and influential rock bands in history. In 1992, Kurt Cobain was featured on the cover of Sassy Magazine. “Hysterical” teenage girls screamed to Elvis Presley’s live “I Got a Woman,” and even after his stardom exploded, they continued to flock to his side. Teen girls were David Bowie’s first fans too, back when he was deemed a “bizarre self-constructed freak” according to one 1972 BBC episode. They took one look at his outrageousness, his flamboyance, his splashy makeup and Kansai Yamamoto suits, and said yes. “Who’s to say that young girls who like pop music – short for popular, right? – have worse musical taste than a 30-year-old hipster guy?” English pop singer Harry Styles said in a

Rolling Stone interview. “That’s not up to you to say. Music is something that’s always changing. There’s no goal posts. Young girls like the Beatles. You gonna tell me they’re not serious?”

The same young women who were treated like the punchline of a tired joke ended up driving mainstream music. Big Mama Thornton first sang “Hound Dog’’ in 1952, which later put Elvis on the radio. With her raw voice and boundary-pushing artistry, she paved the way for other Black singer-songwriters like Aretha Franklin and Tina Turner. Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a Black pioneer in gospel music and singer-songer accredited as the “godmother of rock and roll,” was known for her picking and degree of emotional athleticism. When I pressed play on Tharpe’s live “Didn’t It Rain,” I saw her for the first time: a young, vibrant woman of colour who swept the ‘60s stage with her gritty singing and fearless guitar solos. In 1975, The Runaways became the first teen-girl punk band – to this day, we still scream “Cherry Bomb” every time it comes on the stereo. The members, who were all talented and precocious musicians in their own right, were only 15 or 16 years old when they formed the band. Since then, they’ve planted their own cherry bomb in music history. In 1991, L7, the all-female band that redefined punk feminism and inspired Nirvana, founded Rock for Choice. It was a series of pro-choice benefit concerts that turned musicians into abortion rights activists. Years later, Chris- sy Hyde led Pretenders to triumph and vocal powerhouse Hayley Williams fronted Paramore in the early aughts.

Courtney Love, the grunge trailblazer who wrote a scathing op-ed about the Rock Hall’s “sexist gatekeeping,” says that this year’s nominations are “the annual reminder of just how extraordinary a woman must be to make it into the ol’ boys club.” The first inductees of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame were all men and since then, just 8.48% of them have been women. “If the Rock Hall is not willing to look at the ways it is replicating the violence of structural racism and sexism that artists face in the music industry, if it cannot properly honour what visionary women artists have created, innovated, revolutionised and contributed to popular music – well, then let it go to hell in a handbag.”

You heard me. Teen girls were the founding mothers of rock ‘n’ roll. Your favourite legacy bands are still remembered today because teen girls bought their records en masse and created an atmosphere of fanaticism that could not be ignored. Keyboard warriors love to one-up cover bands on the internet and metalheads have this kneejerk tendency to ask female fans to name five songs by that band. But leather-clad men with expensive vinyl collections are not the only bearers of good taste. The tastes of teen girls are not one single monolith, but an eclectic mosaic that makes pop culture so colourful.