Posted January 1Jan 1 I think it's great that the ladies have had a stellar 2024 in the UK charts. The media's excitement is justified for the Singles chart but for the Albums, the 2020's still have a way to go to catch up the fairer species from the 1980's. Here are the percentages for each decade. I have split up mixed groups according to how many boys and girls were in each ensemble. Solo, all male and all female are self-explanatory. Albums: 1950's M 80 F 20 1960's M 75 F 25 1970's M 78 F 22 1980's M 70 F 30 1990's M 78 F 22 2000's M 76 F 24 2010's M 77 F 23 2020's M 76 F 24 All time: M 73 F 27 Singles: 1950's M 78 F 22 1960's M 81 F 19 1970's M 79 F 21 1980's M 73 F 27 1990's M 74 F 26 2000's M 74 F 26 2010's M 72 F 28 2020's M 68 F 32 All time: M 74 F 26 (Numeric totals are available).
January 1Jan 1 Is this one based on top 20 appearances too? 2020s being the biggest decade for females in singles isn't surprising and nice to see, would've thought the ratio would be much bigger though. Another interesting list, thanks! Edited January 1Jan 1 by gasman449
January 1Jan 1 Author What exactly are these numbers based on? The gender of the artists who reach the Top 20 charts for singles and albums in the UK. An artist who has one hit is treated the same as another who has had, for example, 50 hits. The Singles Top 20 has seen 4,785 different acts up to the end of 2024; the Albums 2,762. An artist who reaches the Top 20 album chart has an average career of 3 years 8 months and 3 days. An artist who reaches the Top 20 singles chart has an average career of 2 years 2 months and 28 days. The singles hitmakers can expect an average of 3.01 Top 20 hits. For the albums, the average is 3.60 hits.
January 2Jan 2 Author Does for example Just Dance count as female single or both female and male? That's a good question: if a song is registered to an artist "featuring" another artist, I only give the credit to the first artist - Lady Gaga - and not to the featured artist - Colby O'Donis. For a song to be credited with all mentioned artists, the performers have to be joined by "and" or "with" or "X". I recognise that this is simply my interpretation of linguistic semantics and I have no problem with others crediting everybody associated with a song, named or not, even to the extent of someone like George Martin who played the piano on several Beatles' tracks without getting performing credits. I just like to draw the line somewhere and to be consistent. It's worked for me for 56 years and counting... sorry 57 years now!! Edited January 2Jan 2 by Tuttavilla
January 2Jan 2 do bands like Abba count as male or female then, I presume in those such cases you've gone on based on who the lead singer is?
January 2Jan 2 Author do bands like Abba count as male or female then, I presume in those such cases you've gone on based on who the lead singer is? No: Abba is 50% male and 50% female. If a mixed band has, say, 3 men and 1 woman, that's 75% male and 25% female. As an extreme example, 6 of the 29 performers on Band Aid 40 were ladies, so 21% and 23 were gentlemen 79%. I do the same for nationalities: on Band Aid 40 25 (86%) were English, 3 (10%) were Irish and 1 (4%) was from Kosovo (where she was born).
January 2Jan 2 I tend to judge music on the quality of the song! Whether the artist has a c*ck & b*lls or not makes no difference.
January 2Jan 2 Author I tend to judge music on the quality of the song! Whether the artist has a c*ck & b*lls or not makes no difference. An opinion with much merit... Statistics are just the bonus after the song.
January 2Jan 2 Assuming I understand your methodology correctly, one big factor would be that you used to get a lot of bands in the chart but you don't get many these days. Bands tend to be more male generally speaking meaning you'd need more female artists to even it out. For example, UB40 had a hit every year in the 80s and they had 8 male members so you'd need 8 female singers to even that out alone. There's loads of other factors at play, for example Texas would be 4 or 5 males (depending on era) and 1 female, but the female member is the only member the general public know and they're a band that's helped raise the profile of women in music. If we look at 1952, the first year of the charts, there were a total of 19 artists, 12 male and 7 female so 63% male and 37% female. There were duets, but all were solo artists so no bands skewing the figures. There's no real accurate way of measuring, any methodology would raise question marks but fair play for doing it.
January 2Jan 2 Author Assuming I understand your methodology correctly, one big factor would be that you used to get a lot of bands in the chart but you don't get many these days. Bands tend to be more male generally speaking meaning you'd need more female artists to even it out. For example, UB40 had a hit every year in the 80s and they had 8 male members so you'd need 8 female singers to even that out alone. There's loads of other factors at play, for example Texas would be 4 or 5 males (depending on era) and 1 female, but the female member is the only member the general public know and they're a band that's helped raise the profile of women in music. If we look at 1952, the first year of the charts, there were a total of 19 artists, 12 male and 7 female so 63% male and 37% female. There were duets, but all were solo artists so no bands skewing the figures. There's no real accurate way of measuring, any methodology would raise question marks but fair play for doing it. Good commentary. The only correction is that I do not count the actual number of performers in a group - each act has a value of 1 - so that Sharleen Spiteri (good lady) represented 25% of the four-piece Texas at the time they had their first hit single in 1989. The 29 performers on Band Aid 40 have a total value of 1, just the same as Elvis Presley has a value of 1.
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