A Finely Tuned Machine

By Joe Kavanagh

An increasingly lively debate has developed in recent times regarding the position of women in music, with each side taking up progressively more polarized positions.

On the side of the optimists lie those who point to the huge surge of female songwriters and artists populating the charts in modern times, destroying any last vestiges of the male dominated landscape, which is now all but a memory.

A quick comparison between today's UK top 40 singles chart and one from 20 years ago would appear to bear their logic out.

In the chart for this week in 1989, there were precisely four females to be found, two of which appear opposite males in duets, with absolutely no female bands, while this week's chart contains ten female acts, with only one in a mixed gender duet.

In fact, the top three spots are all occupied by females and the overall trend represents an increase of some 300%, which would appear to show remarkable progress.

To those in the opposite camp, such figures are somewhat misleading when one looks a little closer at the acts themselves, with many of them pandering to outdated male perceptions every bit as odious as the cutesey female stereotypes of yesteryear.

Proponents of this point of view claim that many of these female acts fall into two equally distasteful categories; the sex kitten or the quirky unhinged type (or in the case of Britney Spears and others, a mix of both).

This school of thought holds that men are rarely hammered into such convenient categories and that, far from progressing the ideals of feminism, such acts are merely empty manifestations of a male-inspired archetype.

Occasionally, an act comes along that truly sets the cat amongst the pigeons, with each camp claiming her as their own but rarely does such a thing happen a full six months before her debut album even emerges.

Florence Welch, lead singer and inspiration behind Florence and the Machines, confirmed her status as one of the hottest tickets in music, when she walked away with the Critics Choice award at last week's Brit Awards.

In only it's second year, the award was won last year by Adele, who subsequently went on to sell over a million records and pick up a pair of Grammy Awards, making her a tough act to follow.

Although Welsh might not quite have the vocal talent of the previous winner, she has the kind of back story and intangibles that journalists and music aficionados adore, and as one of the more loquacious pop stars on the UK landscape, she offers the kind of color that is often lacking in the gray personalities that often lie behind many modern artists.

Born and raised in London, she enjoyed a somewhat bohemian upbringing, introduced to classic singers like Billie Halliday and Nina Simone at a young age, while at other times she and her English father could often be found dancing frantically to music by The Incredible String Band, the Rolling Stones, Love and The Smiths.

As a New Yorker who was part of the famed Studio 54 set, her mother preferred the likes of Tom Jones and the Monkees, but as an art historian, passed on a distinctly creative streak to her daughter.

Despite helping to form a punk "music collective" as a teen, it was art that proved the strongest pull in her early life as Florence attended art college upon finishing high school, pursuing a particular interest in illustration and floral installation.

Her zeal for the arts was driven by an idiosyncratic personality, which often manifested itself in the most peculiar and zany fashion, such as her 16th birthday, when she spent the entire day jumping out of trees just for the experience of hitting the ground, or the time she stood in a room under a lampshade for two hours, or even her propensity for escaping her night terrors by going out and rooting through dumpsters for artistic curiosities.

Throughout this time, however, she enjoyed singing at virtually every opportunity and frequently penned down lyrics to songs, often in a rather morbid fashion, as she once related in an interview: "I wrote imaginary break-up songs before I had a boyfriend. I skipped the love bit and went straight to the sad break-up bit. The Rose was one of them. It would be desolate lyrics like, 'The last thing you gave me a rose and it's on the table but now it's dead.' Or I would write, 'All the raindrops fell from the trees and they were like diamonds but you were dead so it doesn't matter.' "The songs were a bit morose. Even though I didn't have a boyfriend I was already imagining breaking up with him."

All of these talents might have remained anonymous, were it not for the drunken night she began belting out Motown numbers while in the toilet of a London club, only to be overheard by BBC deejay, Mairead Nash, who was so taken by the 'performance' that she signed on to be Welch's manager and immediately set about blooding her on the London scene.

Welch steadfastly denies the latter charge, pointing out that the song is, like most of her material, a metaphorical exercise.

This hard-edged, skiffle-folk was followed up by December's Dog Days Are Forever, which reinforced the notion the notion of an emerging national talent and the final pieces were assembled in the form of a backup band named The Machine.

Seen by many as a departure from the Lily Allen type, one hack memorably described her as "a posho art school bohemian whose pulverizing blues-pop contains no trace of a chirpy 'innit', more visceral Grimms' Fairy Tales set in a Twilight Zone troubled by donkeys, birds and coffins."

As the year drew to an end, her life had changed immeasurably from that of unknown art student, to darling of the blogosphere, who had even shared a personal moment with Jay-Z and Beyoncé, at a party hosted by Donatella Versace. Driven by glowing reviews from the BBC and NME, Welch hit 2009 with the force of a rocket, seemingly destined for the stars.

Her rise is the stuff of a Hollywood movie, which cynics claim is precisely because virtually every part of it has been scripted by her management and canny record executives at Island Records, where she now calls home.

Far from the organic rise to stardom that her press clippings would have you believe, some assert that she is just another manufactured pop star posing under phony indie credentials.

They point to her transformation from rough-hewn blues singer of a year ago to what Luke Turner termed: "a sound so clean and shiny and eager to capture the zeitgeist it might as well be a chrome timepiece in bright American Apparel tights."

Referencing original stars such as Madonna, Kate Bush and Annie Lennox, Jude Rogers of The Guardian lamented the lack of innovation and imagination in emerging female talent, pointing out that "too many budding female pop stars rely on old tricks, rather than trying their damnedest to do something new... why are we pretending Lady GaGa and Florence Welch are a step forward for women in pop rather than a glittering parade of cheap imitations."

Although it might be more apparent in the world of female pop music, in the interest of balance, it should be pointed out that this willingness to acquiesce to image makers and publicists is also becoming increasingly apparent in the male music world, with major labels seemingly hell-bent on delivering us to a world typified by bland homogeneity for reasons of commerce, in an ever-shrinking global music market.

Whichever side of the fence you stand on, there can be little doubt that Florence Welch will likely only generate more headlines in the run up to the release of her as-yet untitled debut album, which is due to hit shelves this July.

Perhaps then we will truly be able to tell who the title of "The Machine" more aptly fits; the group of musicians charged with providing her live accompaniment, or the marketing team that has so adroitly steered her career to this point.