Thinking about pop music in its totality, women have led the genre for as long as it has been around. Icons such as Madonna, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, and countless other artists have blazed the trail for pop girls today. Now, artists like Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Dean, Chappel Roan, PinkPantheress, and Zara Larsson are taking up the mantle in a new era of pop. 

After a brief period of pop music that lacked expression, individuality, and effort, these girls are truly creating a vision and brand for themselves. For example, PinkPantheress has created a unique image that blends Y2K fashion and aesthetics with a bedroom pop sound that her young audience loves. Her latest album, Fancy That, has solidified the sound that she has experimented with for a couple of years, and her performances of songs from the album have proved that PinkPantheress has incredible stage presence.

Each of these girls performs in unique ways, creating an important individuality that makes them the standout artists they are. However, no matter how great your music is or how well you perform, you can never win over every fan. There will always be critics or downright haters as an artist, and it is important to continue putting your best foot forward despite that. However, women do seem to take a larger portion of this hate.

Any time women take up space in any form of media, there will be backlash. In music, being a woman often means you have to be perfect. You have to speak up about the right thing, but you can not be too outspoken, or that means you’re rude. You have to put yourself out there with your image and be unique, but if you’re too unique, that means you’re weird. You need to continue creating music that can climb the charts, but you can not focus too much on charts, or you are “chart-obsessed”.

Misogyny in music is not new, as misogyny in any form of media (or just society in general) has existed for as long as these art forms have existed. Recently, there has been a lot of discourse surrounding Coachella. The festival is no doubt one of the most attended– if not the most attended– modern music festivals. Artists, big and small, come out to the desert and perform, with headliners notably giving more produced performances.

This year, the headliners for the festival were Sabrina Carpenter, Justin Bieber, and Karol G. Sabrina Carpenter and Karol G gave incredible performances with lots of production, including dancers, detailed set designs, great stage presence, and iconic visuals from their latest albums. Sabrina made a point to make her performance cinematic and created short video interludes where she acts. The effort put into her set was undeniable.

Karol G made history as the first Latina headliner of the festival and made a beautiful tribute to her culture through the performance. The set was full of color, and the dancers had amazing costumes with unique fabrics and fluid shapes. The choreography was invigorating, and the set was “electrifying”, as this review by The Guardian states. Together, the women gave two performances that will linger on as iconic Coachella sets for many years to come. 

Then, we have Justin Bieber. His set, especially compared to Carpenter and Karol G, was very minimal effort. Now, simple sets are not the problem here. Artists like Searows or Ethel Cain make music that does not require a full production with backup dancers and full-fledged choreography. Fans of artists like this do not expect these kinds of performances.

However, Justin Bieber is a very well-established artist. He has made all kinds of music in his career, including pop, dance, and mixes of R&B and rap. A Justin Bieber Coachella set should be easy to pull off. He has had many great performances in the past, and he is a talented performer. However, his laid-back performance did not sit well and left many fans divided, as this article by Forbes writes. While others praised his performance, saying it was healing his inner child, others called it lazy.

Interpretations of Bieber’s performance are subjective — I personally did not find it entertaining while watching the livestream and turned it off. But, it shows the stark difference between women and men in music. TikTok user @ariannakyanne posted, “Women always have to be exceptional, and even then, it’s not enough. Men get away with far too much, and I’ll never pretend to be impressed by obvious mediocrity and low effort. No thanks.” The post was reposted by the likes of actor Julia Fox and gained over 250,000 views.

This is just one way women are held to a higher standard in music. Lately, pop fans have been quite demanding of pop girls. Fans want a pop girl who is indiscriminately herself and cheeky. They get an artist like Sabrina Carpenter who uses promiscuity to her advantage and is not afraid to use sexuality in her art. Now, she’s oversexualizing herself and setting back the feminist movement by centuries. Fans want a pop girl with sultriness who can bring classiness and soft femininity to pop. We get Olivia Dean, who does exactly that while also preaching independence. All of a sudden, she is boring and somehow still bringing back feminism. Fans want an artist that’s a dancing machine reincarnation of Britany Spears. They get a talented dancer and performer like Tate McRae, and suddenly she is untalented and trying too hard to be like Britany.

It seems to never be enough when you are a woman in music. From country to R&B, rap, dance, or pop, there will always be something that someone can take and put under a microscope to pick apart. Literal abusers can get away with horrible crimes and statements, then turn around to go on tour and make millions of dollars (looking at you, Chris Brown). Yet somehow, a woman could be vaguely related to someone controversial, and she is suddenly a mastermind pulling all the strings in the industry. Yet artists continue to be outspoken and unafraid.

Despite the backlash these women get for simply being themselves and expressing their art the way they want, it does not look like these girls are going anywhere.