Gender Roles In Popular Music

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Popular music in the United States throughout the decades have always consisted of different genres of music and during the late 70’s and early 80’s, many of the popular bands consisted of only male artists and members. In an era dominated by male artists, Fleetwood Mac featured their lead female singer Stevie Nicks, who went on to transcend the gender expectations of the time and pursue a solo career in the midst of heavy adversity. Fleetwood Mac’s lead singer, Stevie Nicks, is a prime example of the evolution female artists have endured as they struggled to gain equal footing in this male dominated industry. This essay will examine the different factors contributing to Stevie Nicks’s popularity, along with her breaking these normative masculine roles and the way she combined different genres and personal …show more content…

This is the song that gave her hope in her musical career and essentially what shaped her image when it came to her personal style and look. Stevie Nicks was known for her long dresses and wing-like sleeves, which is probably why many people thought she was a witch like the one she sang about in Rhiannon (Crowe). She transcends the female stereotype Wald discusses in the Just a Girl article, and it’s Nicks’s differences that cause people to see that she’s singing about something more than just being an innocent girl, even if they think it’s about her being a witch. Stevie Nicks sang about her heartbreaks and life experiences, and it led to her becoming one of the most iconic artists of her generation and later generations to come. There weren’t many women during the time that transgressed this male dominated industry, but she did so by not only creating her own music about her emotions and her life, but also creating a solo career after a successful career with Fleetwood

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