emergence of women in rock during the 1980’s represented
an age-old pattern of how women often achieve gender eq-
uity in popular culture. In doing so, they also influenced
the demographics of rock in regard to age.
Two women from the 1960’s, one a holdover and
one a crossover, provided two of the biggest surprises
of the decade. Grace Slick, vocalist for the band Jef-
ferson Airplane, continued to write songs and sing
with that group’s descendant, Jefferson Starship,
through most of the 1980’s; in 1985, for example,
she issued the massive hit “We Built This City,” a
paean to San Francisco pop music. Tina Turner, a
veteran of her husband Ike’s rhythm-and-blues re-
vues for twenty years, embarked on a solo career by
reinventing herself as a full-throated rock “belter,”
beginning with her 1984 hit, “What’s Love Got to Do
with It.” Three newcomers during the 1980’s who re-
flected the back-to-basics approach to rock music
led by Turner were Laura Branigan, Pat Benatar,
and Chrissie Hynde.
Expanding the Audience of Rock Some of the new
women in rock expedited their success by appealing
to an audience hitherto unexploited by music pro-
moters: girls in their preteens and early teens. The
early 1980’s saw the simultaneous appearance of two
of the most talented performers of the decade,
Cyndi Lauper and Madonna. Although they pro-
jected highly sexualized images, both women’s play-
ful, extravagant fashion styles caught on with young
girls across North America, inspiring millions of
them to parade through schoolyards and shopping
malls costumed as their idols. Almost overnight,
rock, which for thirty years had been largely the
provenance of high school and college students, en-
listed legions of fans of elementary and middle-
school age. This trend was cannily imitated by two
other young women toward the end of the decade,
Debbie Gibson and Tiffany, who formed fan bases by
performing in malls frequented by young girls.
More Women, More Rock The sheer number of
bands that included female members or were all-
female in the 1980’s is staggering, as is the breadth of
styles these women reflected. Two California bands
solely comprising women, the Bangles and the Go-
Go’s, specialized in cheery pop music suggestive of
the Beach Boys and the early Beatles. The Pixies,
from Boston, with bassist Kim Deal, performed seri-
ous, sophisticated music of the sort that came to be
called college rock. Throwing Muses and ’Til Tues-
day, led by Kristin Hersh and Aimee Mann, respec-
tively, were characterized by straightforward, “no-
frills” rock, while Siouxsie and the Banshees, led by
Susan Dallion, helped pioneer gothic rock, a somber
subgenre employing gothic imagery. Edie Brickell
and the New Bohemians, from Texas, performed
gentle folk/jazz tunes, while the Plasmatics was a vio-
lent punk band whose lead singer, Wendy O. Wil-
liams, sometimes demolished cars on stage with a
blowtorch.
What did female artists do with their expanding
presence in rock? Benatar’s work exemplifies the
themes that women explored in the 1980’s. Like
Turner, she established that women could have a
tough-minded approach to romance (as expressed
in songs such as “Love Is a Battlefield” and “Sex as a
Weapon”), and she also expressed female assertive-
The Eighties in America Women in rock music 1051
Madonna performs at an AIDS benefit concert in New York’s
Madison Square Garden in 1987.(AP/Wide World Photos)