“A Little Too Ironic”: The Appropriation and Packaging of Riot Grrrl Politics by Mainstream Female Musicians

Female rock musicians have had difficulty making it in the predominantly white male rock world. Joanne Gottlieb and Gayle Wald note that women’s participation in rock music usually consists of bolstering male performance, in the roles of groupie, girlfriend, or back-up singer (257). Even in punk rock, women are often treated as a novelty by the music press and cultural critics. Male bands such as the Sex Pistols and the Damned achieve rock notoriety while their female counterparts, like the Slits and the Raincoats, sink into obscurity. However, 1995 saw an explosion in the music press about a new group of female musicians: the angry women. Hailed in popular magazines for blending feminism and rock music, Alanis Morissette topped the charts in 1995. Affectionately named the “screech queen” by Newsweek, Morissette combined angry, sexually graphic lyrics with catchy pop music (Chang 79). She was quickly followed by Tracy Bonham, Meredith Brooks, and Fiona Apple. Though they differed in musical style, this group of musicians embodied what it meant to be a woman expressing anger through rock music, according to the music press. Popular music magazines argued that musicians like Morissette were creating a whole new genre for female performers, one that allowed them to assert their ideas about feminism and sexuality. However, looking back to 1991, the “angry women in rock” phenomenon appears to be only a commercial version of an earlier group of female musicians associated with Riot Grrrl. In this study, I compare the treatment of Riot Grrrl-associated bands in the popular and musical press and the treatment of the “angry women in rock.” I examine articles about Riot Grrrl and Riot Grrrl-associated bands from 1991 to 1993 that appeared in popular news and music magazines (see Appendix for a complete list). I then examine articles in the same magazines about “angry women in rock,” including Alanis Morissette, Fiona Apple, Tracy Bonham, Meredith Brooks, and