Last week, we (and the rest of the music industry) were shocked and disgusted by sexist comments made by Apple Music’s Jimmy Iovine, regarding women, about how they don’t know how to discover music, and why they need men – or Apple-curated mixtapes in this instance – to do it for them. As the female owner of this website, myself, my female co-owner and my predominantly female writing team didn’t exactly take too kindly to it. This week, Iovine, uh, “apologised” for his comments. Okay then.
NME interviewed Spanish all-girl garage band Hinds, during which they react to Iovine’s remarks, discuss his statement and going on to talk about their own experiences as females in the music industry.
“Fuck… Fuck this,” laugh Carlotta and Ana, singer and guitarist on Hinds. “I’m so pissed off right now!”
Read their comments:
“We didn’t realise, we never made this band to change the world or fight for women’s rights,” Carlotta says. “But we are realising now that this is the only place we’ve felt like less, just because we’re girls.
“I was perfectly okay with being a girl and being a student, I was perfectly okay with being a video maker… I felt perfect in the world being a girl. And suddenly in music, you are supposed to be more judged about everything you do, how you sing, how you pose, how you dress, how you write songs.
“There’s so many more women in pop music than in garage or rock ‘n roll. Pop music… every detail has to be perfection. In rock ‘n roll it’s mainly boys, and they scream and sing out of tune, and they put out all their clothes on stage and do anything they want, because art is free to express yourself. And being girls in rock ‘n roll, it’s like ‘Woah, woah, why do you do that? Why do you sing like that?'”
Ana goes on to talk about how they were given low-cut outfits to wear on stage, and how they had to anticipate the difference in perception that an all-girl band might receive for wearing “revealing” clothes at a show. “I don’t wanna think about that!” she says. “I just wanna think about the gig and the music.”
“We have to fight a lot,” Carlotta says, holding up Iovine’s statement. “At the same time, it gives me so much power,” Ana adds. “Showing people that it’s not that weird to be a woman on stage, it’s not weird. You can do it, you can make music.”
Much like other females who have come forward, like Grimes, Chvrches‘ Lauren Mayberry, Sleater-Kinney‘s Corin Tucker, Montaigne, Best Coast‘s Bethany Cosentino, Ariana Grande and plenty more, these stories are not only despicable and repeatedly proved to be true, but sadly unsurprising.
Hinds, we salute you.
Watch the video for Hinds’ recent single, Garden:
Hinds will be dropping their debut album Leave Me Alone on January 8 2016 on Pod via Inertia.