Am I sexist?

[switch842]

Story time....

Hubby and I have very different musical tastes. He mostly listens to the local Top 40 Pop type station (The Mix) and similar stations. I listen to the rock/alternative station (Q101). As you can imagine, when we are in the car, there is a lot of station flipping going on. He noticed a trend a while back that pretty much whenever there was a female singer on, I would change the station, so one day he asked what I had against female singers. I thought about it for a moment cos I didn't think I had anything against female singers. After a little consideration, I came to the point that it wasn't that the singers were necessarily female, just that females are most likely to make the sort of bubble gum electro-pop that I basically despise. Hubby accepted this and we moved on.

Fast forward a few weeks and here come Glee. Specifically, here come The Warblers with their cover of Teenage Dream. Now, Katy Perry is basically in my Top 5 of "Oh, dear God, please go away and stop existing" musical artists. However, I CANNOT GET ENOUGH of Darren and The Warblers and their cover of this song.

For some reason, I am greatly disturbed by this. Am I sexist? Do I just dislike all female singers? A friend asked me who my favorite female singer was, and I pretty much couldn't answer.

I am so confused by this for most likely no reason at all and I should just stop thinking and enjoy whatever music I enjoy. But this is disturbing me....

Comments

[littleheaven70.livejournal.com]

I also prefer male artists. It's not a conscious thing, I've just discovered that the majority of what I listen to is by guys - I think to an extent it's due to what you grew up with. When I first got into music, in my teens (the mid 80's) there were very very few female artists and bands that were really big. I'm not sure if my ear got attuned to male voices or whether I just prefer the energy of a guy singing. Some of my favourite songs are by women, but my iTunes library is at least 70% male. You're right in that, generally, men sing a different style of music than women, though of course there is crossover.

There have been some favourite females. I was hugely into Madonna, and Sarah McLachlan. And we won't talk about that period in the 90's where I was obsessed with The Spice Girls. *cough*

With regards to different versions of songs, I've loved some remakes of songs I previously disliked. Alient Ant Farm's version of Michael Jackson's Smooth Criminal is a standout. And just to prove it works the other way to your Katy Perry example, there's an artist called Jenny Owen Youngs who did a fantastic indie-folk version of Nelly's Hot In Herre which I just adore.

In summary, I don't think you are sexist. You're not saying "I won't give this artist a chance because they're female." You just prefer the kind of music that isn't necessarily predominantly made by women.

[switch842.livejournal.com]

That makes sense. I grew up mostly in the 80s, too, and mostly with the hair metal music my brothers listened to. So, yeah. I totally get what you're saying.