Beyond Riot Grrrl, these are the music artists you should be head banging to this year
BY ASH MANGANARO, IMAGE BY WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
The holiday season is over, Mariah Carey has frosted over and mistletoe is no longer an excuse to kiss our girlfriends. But rest assured we’ll be sleighing to the Mean Girls movie in cinemas soon. Now it’s time to turn up the amps and shred some riffs for our favourite riot grrrls and queer rockers!
First is Joan Jett, who totally stole my heart which was ticking like a Cherry Bomb. In 1975, at age 16, Joan co-founded one of the first commercially successful all-girl rock bands alongside drummer Sandy West – The Runaways. Please, do yourself a favour and go watch the band’s 2010 biopic, starring DIVA’s favourite Kristen Stewart. After the band broke up in 1979, Joan continued to make music with her new band, Joan Jett And The Blackhearts.
After a rocky start of 23 rejections by major record labels, she formed her own, Blackheart Records! While she loves keeping the press on their toes and never explicitly coming out, she’s told The Guardian in a 2022 interview: “If I answer this question, then every question will be about sex, and they’ll never talk about the music. It’s all there in the lyrics.”
Joan has also always been a major supporter of other LGBTQIA music artists, including Laura Jane Grace, the trans lead singer of Against Me! They even teamed up and wrote a kick-ass song together, Soulmates To Strangers. Laura formed her band in 1997 and has been an absolute powerhouse in punk, especially since coming out in 2012. In 2016, she released her memoir Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout! She uses her voice to talk about her experience of being trans (listen to Transgender Dysphoria Blues) and received the key to the city of Gainesville for her activism and music.
I need to give an honourable mention to Poly Styrene of the 1976 band X-Ray Spex. Growing up in England, half British half Somali, she was the first woman of colour to front a punk band and often wrote about how dystopian the world felt and her identity. Although she was never confirmed to be queer, she was often welcomed into queer spaces due to her untraditional feminine fashion and lack of conformity – a total icon.
The band was on and off for a time until the 90s and gigged in 2008. Poly released her solo album Translucence in 1980. She lived a phenomenal life which even included setting up her own boutique. She sadly died in 2011 of breast cancer. Learn more about her from her 2021 documentary, Poly Styrene: I am a Cliche.
While the bigger names are definitely worth celebrating we can’t forget those doing the grassroots work locally to keep the queer punk spirit alive! Like the trans and non-binary band Nervous Rex from Bristol! I saw them live in Moles, Bath, about a year ago and they were an absolute delight – their set will always weave in some random dino facts!
And drawing this headbanging list to a close is Sister Ghost from Derry/London Derry, Northern Ireland. Led by Shannon Delores O’Neill, you need to listen to their cover of Season Of The Witch! Shannon has done a phenomenal amount of work with girls rock schools in Northern Ireland, the UK, and The States which is all about empowering young girls and non-binary musicians! Sister Ghost has also been involved with Outburst, Northern Ireland’s annual queer arts festival.
Please make sure you add some of these riot grrrls to your playlist and rock on!
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