Do you know Becky? If you are a Christian woman in your 30s or 40s and married with kids, you are Becky. Becky, I was fascinated to learn, is what Christian radio stations have named their ideal listener, and most everything you hear on K-LOVE, WORD FM, or your local Christian radio station is chosen to appeal to her.
Becky doesn’t seem to like other women very much, at least not when they sing. “[Women] feel threatened by and possibly jealous of a female artist,” says one Christian radio executive. “My guess is that they can’t even put it into words. My joke is: If the artist’s name is Becky, then ‘Becky’ does not want to hear her on the air!”
According to Mark Geil’s article for Christianity Today on the gender balance in contemporary Christian music (CCM), exactly zero women made Billboard‘s lists of the past decade’s top 10 Christian songs and top 10 Christian artists. (Billboard compiles their lists based on record sales.) Only two women made the top 50, at numbers 40 (Francesca Battistelli) and 50 (Stacie Orrico). The surprising statistics highlight how difficult it can be for women in today’s Christian music industry.
That women in CCM are outnumbered 2:1, possibly even 3:1, certainly doesn’t help. But this has not always been a problem. In the late 1990s and early ’00s, the time I was most in tune with CCM, I listened to a good number of female artists, many of whom I still enjoy: Sara Groves, Jennifer Knapp, Rebecca St. James, Jaci Velasquez, Kendall Payne, Sixpence None the Richer, Plumb, Point of Grace, Avalon, Amy Grant. It’s not an issue of talent; these women are not only great singers and songwriters but also genuine rockers, folk artists, and worshipers.
So why does Becky no longer want to hear women sing? Is she really just jealous, as the anonymous radio exec suggests? Geil’s article notes as a contributing factor the shift toward worship music as the dominant CCM genre. Jenny Simmons, lead singer of the otherwise all-male worship band Addison Road, says,
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people come up to me after a performance and say, “I was very, very uncomfortable having a female onstage when we worshiped. I’ve never seen that before.” There is a fear of sensuality and sexuality within the church. We don’t know how to handle it. I don’t think there is any way to extricate what is raw and passionate about creating music and being on stage. At least for me, there’s a huge vulnerability being up there.
The most successful women of secular pop music have built their personas around their sexuality. As Lady Gaga, Beyonce, and even Miley Cyrus make up the current pop template, we have been trained to see female performers as primarily sexual creatures, and that framework influences the way we think about all of our music choices. We can enjoy these singers’ catchy hooks, but we hold them at a distance, because we can’t identify too closely without endorsing or adopting their image of femininity. It was easier to embrace female artists in the earnest years of the singer-songwriter or the raw era of alternative rock, when the aforementioned female musicians made their mark on CCM.
Or so the thinking goes. Personally, I don’t feel threatened by the sexuality of Christian female singers, at least not consciously (which may be the point). I’m hungry for more female performers creating quality Christian music. The music industry’s cyclical nature offers hope that better days are ahead for Christian female musicians, for a generation of young women who grew up on the powerful female performers of the ’90s, just waiting for a chance to take the stage. And I hope we are ready to let them.
Who are some female artists you listen to now? Do you think a fear of feminine sexuality on display during worship is sidelining women in the Christian music industry?
