What was the first rock song by a female artist to reach number one?
While one might want to think that we’ve progressed beyond a point where women are treated as unequal to men in the music industry, we’re often reminded that misogyny is still rife in all art forms, and especially in the world of rock music.
Even though several trailblazers have existed throughout the years, attempting to bring women towards the forefront of public attention for their musical endeavours, it’s often the case that the men in positions of power dictate the styles of music that women are ‘better off’ making, and in the case of rock music, there’s an unfortunately long history of male dominance in a genre that has often cried out for a much fairer representation.
Unfortunately, the majority of rock music throughout the history of the charts, both in the UK and US, has been fuelled by testosterone, bravado and other such decidedly male characteristics, and the supposedly feminine qualities that women would bring to the music that they’d created were deemed to be too soft to exist in the world of rock and roll. Despite her best efforts, rock and roll pioneer Sister Rosetta Tharpe arrived too early to have made an impression on the Billboard Hot 100 charts in the US, and it took until 1960 for a woman to have a solo hit in the US in any genre, with Connie Francis becoming the first to achieve such a feat with ‘Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool’.
Women were sidelined from mainstream rock music on both sides of the Atlantic throughout the 1960s, with only pop, soul and country number ones being achieved by women during this decade, but the 1970s saw a shift begin to take place, with a number of higher-profile female artists beginning to show a defiance in the face of rock machismo and reaching the higher end of the charts.
But who was the first female artist to score a number one hit with what can ostensibly be referred to as a ‘rock’ song, and just how long did it take for women to be seen as equally capable of making rock music as men by the general public? Without giving away answers, the general sentiment taken away from this revelation is that it was, in fact, far too long.
Who was the first woman to have a number one rock single?
Even though it took until the 1970s for a woman or female-fronted act to score a number one hit in either the UK or US, both nations finally made up for their lack of representation in this field with the debut songs to reach the apex of the charts.
The US managed to be first to the plate, with Janis Joplin, one of America’s finest voices in rock music, managing to reach the top spot in 1971 with ‘Me and Bobby McGee’. Despite having a slightly folky lilt to it, the track erupts into life towards the tail end of the song, with Joplin’s vocals being the central point of a spellbinding hit that was worthy of its crown as the first female-led rock song to outsell any other track in a given week.
However, it took until 1973 for the same to be repeated in the UK, with ‘Me and Bobby McGee’ never having charted in the country when it was released two years prior. Despite this, the song that did manage to claim to become the first rock song by a woman to reach number one was the riotously rocky ‘Can The Can’ by Suzi Quatro. Both a formidable vocalist and bassist, much like Joplin, Quatro broke down several barriers for women in music and became a world-renowned figure in the field for her boldness and ability to triumph in a male-dominated genre.
Despite these two being regarded as the first rock songs by women to have reached number one, there are a handful of debatable songs that could also claim to have achieved this before the ‘70s, with Nancy Sinatra’s ‘These Boots Are Made For Walkin’’ existing in a grey area between rock and roll and pop music, and similarly, Kay Starr’s ‘Rock and Roll Waltz’, despite its name, is perhaps considered to be closer to pop music than its namesake genre, leaving Joplin and Quatro to take the plaudits.
