Now let me clarify who I'm talking about. I'm not talking about female singer/songwriters or female acoustic guitar players. It's strictly female electric guitar players. I've written about four of these girls in total. The first I wrote about was Kelly Rosenthal, who can play the socks off most guitar players on Youtube. It's not so much how she plays but the tone she gets for each song. She's truly incredible. If you haven't checked her out already, you really should! In any case, in a matter of a couple days she became my most popular post, something that's true to this day, nearly a year after writing about her. At first I thought "Well, I must have written that post better than I wrote the rest." But that egotistical self-pat on the back soon dissolved when I realised that more people tuned in whenever I wrote about a female "guitar hero". For those of you who haven't listened to Kelly Rosenthal, here's her face-melting cover of "Killing In The Name" by Rage Against The Machine.
Killing In The Name - Rage Against The Machine Cover
She's just fantastic, as is the second most read about "guitar goddess" on my blog. Juliette Valduriez crept into my life on April 21st, 2013 with her cover of "Search And Destroy" by the Stooges. Once again, I was blown away by the tone more than the playing itself. The thing I loved about Juliette was the fact that she seemed to become one with the guitar and moved to its intensity. She too, has accumulated an incredible amount of page views on my blog. Here's her cover.
Search And Destroy - The Stooges (cover by Juliette Valduriez)
Raw energy. Gotta love her. Now, following her is the acclaimed "Gimour girl", Sylwia Urban. This guitar is so controlled and so talented, I can't handle it. I remember when I first listened to her cover of David Gilmour's solo in Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb", I must have clicked "repeat" about 10 times before I could get enough. I just had to write about her. Have a listen for yourself.
Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb solo cover
Her fingers just melt along the fretboard don't they? Okay, so the fourth most popular post on my blog is about another guitar playing girl called Laura Cox. Now, this is no joke. The top four posts on my blog comprise of the four posts I've written about guitar rocking girls. Laura rocks pretty hard with some beautiful guitars, my favourite of which is her blue SG. A couple weeks of she recorded a great "little" cover of AC/DC's "Back In Black. Check it out.
Laura Cox - Back In Black - AC/DC Cover
Love the sound. She definitely turned me on to thinking about getting an Orange amplifier myself. Not sure how it would sound against my '62 Fender Strat. Reissue though. In any case, those are the top four most popular musicians on my blog. Together, the page views they've accumulated make up a quarter of the views my blog has had in total. Pretty incredible if I may say so myself. So, what is it that makes these girls & guitars more popular than the rest? I welcome your thoughts. Could any girl pick up a guitar and achieve Youtube "superstardom"? I think not, but I dare you to prove me wrong.
I do feel however that after decades of innumerable males holding electric guitars, it's a refreshing change to see females proving that the guitar is not a "phallic symbol". There can be something so raw and sexual about a guitar, but that's up to the player tuning into the likes of the instrument.
I've had several arguments/discussions with fellow musicians about girls playing guitar including one where the fellow musician claimed that females (overall) cannot play guitar as well as males. Even after attempting to blow his mind with the likes of Kelly Rosenthal, Juliette Valduriez, Sylwia Urban, Laura Cox and even Alysha Moore, who can slap the hell out of a bass, he said and I quote "It's like they're too gentle with it." Well, in all due respect, I think any of them could hold up their axe against anyone, male or female. And in any case, if they can't play as well as guys, why have they accumulated millions upon millions of hits on Youtube? Yes, there are those who say "It's because they're pretty." In response to that cliche statement, if it didn't sound good, you wouldn't be sticking around buddy.
Well, that's what I've got to say for now and feel free to shoot any comments/suggestions/thoughts my way. I'd be glad to hear them. I'm looking forward to writing a little more this month. It's good to be back.
© Alex Hamel
I know those are examples of harder (and comparatively newer) rock music that you like to hear those girls play, but I believe that (even though her influences are from older rock and rock'n'roll music) young Lisa Wagner is not too shabby either. ;) Check out how she (the red-headed lady) does the solos on this one:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1lT9jF7HSU
Hi Christomir,
DeleteActually, this has nothing to do with preference. It's merely the statistics. Having written about the the MonaLisa twins I can tell you that they haven't achieved even 10% of the views (both on this blog as well as Youtube) that the above guitar girls achieved. Additionally, I don't think you should disregard the above guitarists as mere "hard" and "comparatively new" since their roots are well planted in rock & roll. I've seen Kelly Rosenthal do a clip of Johnny B. Goode by the way. I love playing that tune myself.
Of course, you are right - and I definitely didn't mean to disregard any of them, sorry if I sounded like that - I like all 4 of them. :) And I knew you wrote about them because of the view count - I always read the posts carefully. ;) I just couldn't help but remind you that Lisa is kinda good at playing guitar too; you know what a crazy fan of the twins I am...LOL
DeleteWhat I was trying to say was that part of the reason for the popularity of those 4 ladies is exactly the fact that they play mostly (though not only) newer and harder rock music - and that's the music much more people tend to look for on YouTube, compared to the '50s and '60s stuff that less and less people like and it gets more and more forgotten, as the original fans get old and die and not too many new fans are attracted to music from a time before they were born... But there's nothing wrong with that - we can't all have the same taste :)
Hi again Christomir,
DeleteI see where you're coming from though I personally doubt that it's what songs they play. I think they'd achieve the same popularity whether they were playing Link Wray's "Rumble" or Guns n' Roses "Sweet Child O' Mine". From my personal Youtube experience I've found that the covers of "older" material tends to gain more views due to the fact that there's less people covering it. If I were to upload a guitar cover of "Sweet Child O' Mine" for example, it would just get "sucked up" into cyberspace, never to be found by anyone. But if I covered something like "Shaking All Over" by Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, I would certainly gain more popularity due to less competition.