Thursday, September 22, 2011

Being a Chick and Writing About Music


A couple of months ago I had the opportunity to take part in a teleconference with Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLonge of Blink 182. At the time, the band was getting ready to embark on their reunion tour promoting their newest album, which was released earlier this month.

I was a big Blink 182 fan during my late teens and was pretty excited that not only are they back with a new album, but I was going to be a part of the interview.

Teleconferences are my second to least favorite way to interview a musician, my first least favorite are email interviews. The thing that sucks about teleconferences is that you only get to ask one question and if you are lucky, you get two. These type of interviews usually happen with big time musicians. For example, I have done a teleconference with Katy Perry and Kings of Leon. So, you get the idea. Nonetheless, I was more excited to be able to listen to the interview and even ask a question than I was concerned about having to wait my turn while reporters across the nation took theirs.

I decided that I would take this opportunity to listen to how other writers interviewed. While I think I am pretty good at interviewing, I know that there is always room for improvement and being that I am no longer in school, this appeared to be a great way for me to learn.

As I listened in, I began to take notice that there were hardly any women asking questions. In fact, in the hour and a half-ish that I was on the teleconference I could count the number of women reporters on one hand. What?! After that interview I started picking up music magazines and began paying attention to the names of the journalists. I am noticing that similarly to the teleconference, the names of female writers focusing on music are few and far between.

I wonder why that is, exactly? I know some really amazing female writers and a lot of them know their fair share about music. Yet, when you begin to take notice of the journalists writing about music out there the bylines belong to men.

I do not have the answer as to why this is but I hope to be the exception to whatever music writer rule there is out there and be among the women who get their byline next to stories in national music publications. I have done enough articles to know that I can definitely hang with the guys.

I do not think that overall, editors are making their decisions on who writes what based on gender but I do intend to continue proving that chicks can write about music too. And guess what, they can even be smart and attractive too! I'm just sayin'.

In the meantime, check out the article that I did on Blink 182 after that teleconference.

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