In the seventeen years that The X Factor and its forerunner Pop Idol dominated the national psyche, they bore very few moments of true musical distinction. Indeed, I can think of only two: an indignant Will Young disabusing Simon Cowell of the notion that his excellent performance of The Doors’ Light My Fire had been merely “average”. And then the first audition of Rebecca Ferguson, eyes cast downwards, toes turned in, delivering a rendition of Sam Cooke’s A Change is Gonna Come that was so tender, so subtle, it seemed to hail from a world far away from the brashness of television talent shows.
I loved Rebecca Ferguson that year. I voted for her to win and, when it came, I bought her album. A seasoned music critic forking out for an album is a rare occurrence, but there was something about Ferguson that made me want her to succeed, as if something half-crushed was finally being given space to bloom.
At the end of January, Ferguson was among several music industry figures whose experiences were published in a parliamentary report that found misogyny and racism to be “endemic” in the music industry. Ferguson’s testimony told of how her former management company spoke openly of the need to break her spirit, claiming she was only booked because she was black and admitting they’d ignored calls from her children.
It’s clear why so many women bow out of this industry early
Alongside her, evidence from radio DJs to music journalists recounted tale after tale of sexual harassment, abuses of power, wrongful dismissals. The report’s conclusion was to recommend a Creative Industries Independent Standards Authority to safeguard women against predatory and abusive practices. I’m not sure we really needed a report to tell us of the music industry’s failings. One might only survey the charts, read the press cuttings, or attend an industry awards ceremony to have an inkling that there’s something rotten in the state of musical Denmark.
Still, en masse, these testimonies made for depressing reading. I felt tired and hopeless and exasperated. I thought of all of my own experiences in music journalism and A&R over the past twenty years. I thought of the stories shared by female colleagues: the men we avoid, the situations we sidestep, the painful lack of simplicity in just going to work and doing our jobs – all the terrible things about powerful men I would tell you if I didn’t want to get sued or blacklisted.
And I thought of Ferguson starting to unfurl her wings up on that X Factor stage, only to be crushed all over again.
When female artists step away from the spotlight – when they stop touring or refuse to give interviews or decide only to release new music in their own sweet time, we label them strange recluses or contrary divas or madwomen in the music industry attic. If they’re established enough – Kate Bush, say – we will allow them a little oddity. If they’re young and inexperienced we’ll deem them petulant and ungrateful.
Increasingly, it’s clear why so many women bow out of this industry early. Even before we start to address the issues of pay imbalance and glass ceilings, women’s path through the music landscape, whether as engineers or music supervisors or performers, is never easy terrain.
Last autumn, Tracy Chapman became the first black woman ever to win Song of the Year by the Country Music Association. The song in question was Fast Car, which Chapman first released back in 1988 and last year was covered by a white male country star named Luke Combs, reaching number one on the Billboard Country Airplay charts.
Back in 1988, Fast Car and Chapman’s career went into ascendency when she was asked to step in last-minute for Stevie Wonder at the 70th Birthday Concert for Nelson Mandela – performed live at Wembley Stadium and beamed around the world on TV. Her debut album sold twenty million copies and scored her a Grammy.
Chapman’s success continued over the years, but her last album release was 2008’s Our Bright Future, and her live performances have tended to be for activist causes or one-off appearances – playing Talkin’ Bout a Revolution on Late Night with Seth Myers ahead of the 2020 US election, for instance. Meanwhile she rarely spoke to the media and, last time I checked, her website didn’t even appear to be operational.
Chapman’s retreat from the limelight was wholly understandable: as a young, black, female and rumoured lesbian artist, one shudders to think how she was treated by this industry. At some point it must have felt more powerful to step back entirely. When the singer appeared alongside Combs to perform Fast Car at this year’s Grammys, it was a dazzling return, of course, but also an opportunity to consider how much and how little has changed in the years since the song’s release.
Fast Car was a song that told of the restrictions imposed by class and socio-economic circumstances, and of the freedoms promised by a simple car ride. It’s an image often used in popular song, from Chuck Berry to Bruce Springsteen via Wilson Pickett, and part of its power lies in the fact that, for many songwriters, music has offered a similar mode of escape, a sense of possibility, the feeling that, as Chapman put it: “I could be someone.”
For Rebecca Ferguson, queueing up for that X Factor audition all those years ago, music must have seemed a fast car; a way to reach the life she’d dreamed of. Last year, Ferguson announced her new album would be her last; at just 37, she was retiring from the music industry. It was, she said, the only way she could “have a relationship with music that was positive”.
Laura Barton is a writer and broadcaster. Her book “Sad Songs” is out now
