FEATURE:
Hail to the Queens!
IN THIS PHOTO: Hayley Williams/PHOTO CREDIT: Jacob Moscovitch
2025: Another Year Where Women Are Dominating
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I am going to come to…
PHOTO CREDIT: Blaz Erzetic/Pexels
some live and album reviews. An illustration of why women have been dominating music this year. I am going to mention specific artists, though I feel most of the best albums of this year have been from women. Most of the promising artists of 2025 I feel are women. It is not to sideline men or disregard their work. The music industry is still misogynist and sexist. Women still have to fight for equality, and there is imbalance through out the industry. What galls me is how slow it is seeing any progress. Some truly huge live gigs and festival appearances, together with remarkable albums and stunning songs, means that women are ruling right now. It has been this way for years now. However, this year especially, there have been some truly outstanding albums from women. I will bring in a few of those. However, more than simply celebrating women in music and how much they are adding in terms of value and legacy, it is worth looking at the industry as a whole and how far we have come. I think that, in terms of radio airplay and festival slots, there is still a gender divide. Progress slow in that regard. So many of the best newcomers are women. You do wonder how they will fare in years to come. Will they struggle to get booked as headliners or find it harder to get their music played? In terms of studios, there are small steps regarding women as producers. Even though there are still vastly more men in professional studios, incredible women like Catherine Marks are inspiring women coming through. However, taken as a whole, there has not been a vast move forward. In terms of opportunities and women in positions of power. Sexism and inequality still very much prevalent. Given the dominance that is coming from women, why is this not being translated into opportunity and parity?! It is something I write about a lot. With every slight improvement here, there is a step back there.
In terms of the best live performances of the year, there have been so many highlights to choose from. I think a few from Glastonbury stand out. CMAT arguably was the highlight of the festival. Rolling Stone UK were among those who awarded CMAT’s Pyramid Stage set a five-star rave. Her new album, EURO-COUNTRY, is among the best of the year. In terms of future festival headliners and icons, CMAT is on the precipice of superstardom:
“She tells the crowd that this is the scariest moment of her life, but commands the enormous field with apparent ease, making the crowd laugh, sing and do the Dunboyne, County Meath Two-Step with pure delight. Her songs come from a base of country music but are also packed with hooks, performed impeccably by The Very Sexy CMAT Band.
Before new song ‘The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station’, she commands the attention of the camera as she explains that the song isn’t actually a diss track about the TV chef, but a meditation on her own ability to hate. It’s one of countless songs in her catalogue to bring poignancy and laughs together in a way that dilutes neither.
Many might have been drawn to this set via the viral TikTok dance to ‘Take a Sexy Picture of Me’ – the ‘woke macarena’ as it’s been dubbed – but it takes more than that to become a true star with longevity.
Luckily, CMAT has it all. Her songs are catchy, poignant and well-crafted; on stage, she’s a powerhouse of performance, cracking gags and diving into the crowd, but not forgetting to make her final statement a call for a free Palestine. Come the end of 2025, she’ll be the artist that defines the year”.
There are a couple more live reviews I want to spotlight. Little Simz curated this year’s Meltdown Festival. She performed a great set with the Chineke! Orchestra. DIY heralded her captivating stage presence and prowess. Even though they called it a ‘return’ – which is a word applied to every artist at some point, and drives me nuts! -, this was not someone who has ever been away or anything less that at the forefront. Anyone who thinks Simz was returning has clearly not been following her career! She proved why she is one of the world’s best artists:
“New material from ‘Lotus’ - the latest addition to her already sparkling canon of work - chronicles Simz finding light in the dark after a dispute with close collaborator Inflo; Simz sued the producer back in January after he failed to repay a loan of £1.7m. Imagery of sharks and snakes stalk the songs, which manifest in the venom charging through Simz’s flow on ‘Thief’, bleeding directly into the thrilling industrial warble of ‘Flood’.
“I’m so pleased we can play this album for you tonight,” Simz says. “But first of all, let’s throw it back.” On her cue, the strings strike-up the doe-eyed ‘Two Worlds Apart’ which holds the audience accountable to some thrilling call and response; then, 'Marijuana' and 'Kendrick Lamar' are both belted out without restraint. The set shimmies between the light and dark at an expert pace. Pure joy erupts throughout the cathartic ‘I Love You, I Hate You’ and the double dose of guest Obongjayar on ‘Lion’ and ‘Point & Kill’. ‘Free’ and the hypnotic Latin shuffle of newbie ‘Only’ offers oxygen to the lighter moments, bobbing atop the orchestral flourishes rising behind her. These songs feel elegant, floaty and weightless in the live setting; it’s pure bliss.
The Queen Elizabeth Hall is a seated auditorium in practice, but the logic of a Simz show defies its purpose. As the band reset after a fierce rendition of ‘Venom’ - which starts off with Simz in the conductor box - a ripple of people start to nestle back into their seats. “What are you sitting down for?” she laughs, shaking her head as the groovy bars of fun throwaway ‘Young’ spark up. “Na na na, you’re not allowed to do that.” Simz is gifted at riffing with the audience, flitting between humorous and charming asides like these, to open-hearted vulnerability. “This song makes me uncomfortable,” she says ahead of the delicate ‘Lonely’. “Sort of like opening a letter in front of somebody it’s addressed to - but I think I can trust you guys,” she adds.
You catch the feeling that much of Simz’s catalogue is built for this specific grandiose set-up; a touch of theatrics always underpins her work, as is evidenced on the back and forth of ‘Blood’. Wretch 32 emerges from the corner of the amphitheatre as the pair play out a phone conversation between two siblings. They end up back-to-back, centre stage, as Cashh sings out the song’s hook and entrances the crowd into a sea of arm waving.
Judging by the darkness surrounding the new material (which drips with a loss in confidence, pain, and betrayal), it’s a wonderful thing to see Simz claw back what’s rightfully hers. The set caps off with the confessional lullaby ‘Selfish’, the anthemic ‘Woman’, and a thunderous rendition of ‘Gorilla’ - a triple threat if there ever was one. The latter sparks pandemonium, and in referencing one of her earliest bars penned aged 11 - “Sim, simmer, who’s got the keys…” - it marks a real full circle moment. Each thread loops back to the start of her career, sees her back in the city she has conquered, and finds her back at the top where she belongs. It's a spellbinding return”.
I do want to talk about rising artists. Women as solo artists and in bands. However, when it comes to highlighting the best of the best, you often have to go to mainstream artists. Sabrina Carpenter played some sold-out shows at Hyde Park in London in July. Playing at BST Hyde Park, NME heralded the command of a Pop giant who is at the top of her game. If modern Pop is dominated by Taylor Swift, there are other titans like Sabrina Carpenter, Charli xcx and Dua Lipa. Billie Eilish. So many compelling artists who will endure for decades:
“The announcement of her upcoming album, ‘Man’s Best Friend’, due out on August 29, whipped up a storm of controversy thanks to its cover, which sees Carpenter on her knees at the feet of a man while he pulls her hair. Discourse questioned whether her horny schtick had officially run out of road, but ‘Manchild’, the recently-released first single from the upcoming record, elicitsed one of the biggest responses of the night. Fans know every word and throw their arms in the air as they scream along with lyrics that lament the state of modern dating, proving that internet drama has no real sticking power in a field of powder-blue babydoll dresses.
From there, Carpenter cycles through a tight setlist that’s as much a showcase of her back catalogue as it is the kind of genre gymnastics she can do. She performs songs like ‘Coincidence’ and ‘Sharpest Tool’ from ‘Short n’ Sweet’ semi-acoustically, giving space to her trilling country-tinged vocals and quippy songwriting, while performances of ‘Because I Liked A Boy’ and ‘Couldn’t Make It Any Harder’ provide moments of belting catharsis.
But all of that feels like edging before the big release, which no doubt Carpenter could write an expertly cheeky lyric about. A ‘Parental Advisory’ warning emblazons the screen before ‘Bed Chem’, which Carpenter sings to a top-down camera as she lies on a bed. It’s the moment in her tour where she’s joined by a male dancer and some Austin Powers-esque shadow work with a screen that shows them enacting a sex position. This time, she invites two male dancers who kiss each other before they all fall into bed together. As the lights dim, a chorus of “Happy Pride!” breaks out in the crowd.
Then comes ‘Juno’, the big crescendo, where Carpenter does her usual bit of ‘arresting’ a hot person in the crowd. On tour, this slot is usually given to her celebrity friends and admirers, but this time, she chooses a fan who’s been warming the barricade all day. It’s a nice reminder that, though celebrity cameos make for good TikTok viral moments, there’s something much more genuinely heartwarming about seeing someone get noticed by their favourite artist.
Talking of viral stunts, Carpenter has been making waves on tour for picking new sex positions to act out as part of ‘Juno’ each night to the lyric “Have you ever tried this one?”, including a much-discussed Eiffel Tower in Paris. This time, she forgoes the bit to let off two t-shirt guns into the crowd, which is the same move she did at her most recent headline slot at Primavera Sound in Barcelona. Still, she’s far from censoring herself, as she corrals the crowd to sing “I’m so fucking horny” along with the lyrics at the top of their lungs, which may be one of the more joyful things you can experience in a field.
Finally comes ‘Espresso’, the moment even the slightly concerned dads in the crowd who are mentally figuring out how to explain the concept of bed chem to their 10-year-old daughters on the way home can’t help but bop along to. Fireworks shoot out of the stage as Carpenter sings the biggest song of her career, which is only a year old, but somehow feels like the only song ever made. It’s catapulted the singer from an artist orbiting the pop girl league tables to one of its reigning champs, but her command of this space is a testament to the years of graft it took to get there. All she needed was time”.
So many album of the year contenders are going to come from incredible women. Hayley Williams’s Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party is one of 2025’s best albums. Previously having released a surprise song cycle, it was made official with this album released last month. This is what KERRANG! wrote in their review. Whether you know her only from her work as leads of Paramore or are a fan of all of her music, there is no denying how brilliant and important Hayley Williams is. LOUDER recently wrote how Williams is slaying in an industry still dogged by misogyny and sexism:
“It’s been a perplexing summer so far for Hayley Williams fans, feeling like a whiplash of violent yellow aesthetics and sorrow-driven songs. The first glimpse of this new era came in July, arriving like sprawled out puzzle pieces on a ’00s-inspired website, which would ultimately become the Paramore vocalist's third full-length, Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party. Building the jigsaw, though, was a task awarded to us, and while the vision is near complete, she's already teasing there are two more songs to come.
It’s hard to think what else could be missing from this body of work; the most beastly out of all of Hayley's solo records, EDAABP is somewhat of an enigma given she has remained relatively tight-lipped on the inspirations behind it, and the lack of order disrupting any straight narrative to begin with. The first chunk of the album nails her tactic of making high-impact, fizzing tracks that sound so incredibly alive, as an undercurrent of depression runs beneath if you listen closely enough – while the chorus of Glum ascends heavenly, Hayley quizzes, ‘Do you ever feel so alone / That you could implode / And no one would know?’
In this way, this album harks back to Paramore’s After Laughter. There’s a climbing synth motif on Love Me Different that feels familiar with this in mind, and many tracks feature the recurring theme of water – a metaphor Hayley uses to describe love and her views on relationships that she’s ran with across all of her solo records, but notably on After Laughter’s Pool.
While she excavates even deeper into herself on this release, Hayley also casts her net far and wide lyrically: True Believer, an examination of religious hypocrisy and racism, is bold, brilliant, and quietly scathing. Accompanied by dystopian, spaced-out piano, Hayley draws on how these themes play out across America: ‘They pose in Christmas cards with guns as big as all their children / They say that Jesus is the way / But then they gave him a white face.’
Marking her first release outside of Atlantic Records, Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party is the most vast summation of Hayley’s story so far. A musical purge of trauma patterns, depression, love, loss, and of course, ego, the wit and honesty of Hayley’s lyricism is the shining star of this work. It’s an unboundless exploration of a life lived under the scrutiny of misogyny and in the public eye from one of our time’s most creative and fearless artists”.
There is one more album I want to quote a review of. Or a mixtape, I guess. PinkPantheress released Fancy That earlier in the year. It is one of the best releases of the year. Pitchfork provide a positive take on the rise of a terrific British artist that has a distinct sound and is in her own lane. Someone that deserves a lot more attention and praise:
“Fancy That is a portal into an alternate universe where UK garage successfully crossed the Atlantic and fashion froze in 2006. But apart from the more superficial choices (the cover’s Lily Allen–inspired graphic collage, the decision to shoot the music video for “Stateside” in a JCPenney parking lot), Pink’s world-building plays out most vividly in her music. After largely forgoing samples on Heaven Knows, Fancy That is an encyclopedia of references that far exceeds stale Y2K cosplay. Subtle clues like the Panic! at the Disco strings that segue into “Tonight” or the hilarious, stoned call-and-response with a Nardo Wick sample on “Noises” are juxtaposed against some thrilling acts of appropriation. “Illegal” blazes into the mix by isolating and supercharging the synths from Underworld’s “Dark & Long (Dark Train Mix),” while “Girl Like Me” takes a Basement Jaxx sample and spins it out into a roaring speed garage banger. British dance music has caught a second life across Gen Z pop; PinkPantheress’ tour through the hardcore continuum is lived-in and substantial, bringing the legacies of producers like Sunship, Adam F, and MJ Cole into the present while strutting her own glittering new path.
Apart from garage and jungle, PinkPantheress is deeply inspired by emo, an influence heard most clearly in the bleeding-edge intensity of her songwriting. Vulnerable motifs repeat throughout her early music, like the humiliation of being caught emoting in public (“Pain,” “Just for me”), or death as a marker for a relationship’s furthest limits (“Nice to Meet You,” “Ophelia,” “Mosquito”). Though she colored in these feelings with a degree of subtlety, the metaphorical extremes exposed the youthfulness of her perspective. What’s wonderful about Fancy That is how bold and funny it is: This Pink won’t buckle under pressure or spiral when left alone. She takes romantic and everyday disappointment in glorious stride. “Stars” pulls double duty: offering a sympathetic ear to a friend who’s unlucky in love, while soundtracking her own frustration with an unreliable plug. The romantic-sounding “Romeo” is a thoroughly modern kiss-off that delivers the fatal blow with a couplet as withering as it is inclusive: “You can fall in love with boys and girls and in between/So I promise that you shouldn’t waste your time on all of me.”
Pink is equally forthright about sex and desire. It’s thrilling to hear her put Abercrombie & Fitch hotties through their paces on “Stateside,” paying her respects to Estelle and putting a sexy spin on the “special relationship” all in one go. But “Tonight” is even more impressive: a song-length come-on where the fast-paced thump mirrors a dawning sense of romantic urgency. Even if she plays the directness of a hook like “You want sex with me?/Come talk to me” for giggles, there’s an overriding sweetness that kicks the song into a higher level of feeling. She occupies the space between the bouncing, full-bodied bassline and plaintive keyboards with a plainly stated want that would be unthinkable on her introverted early releases. Having come so fully into her own, PinkPantheress still aspires to reach out to you”.
These are just a few examples of women dominating on the stage and in the studio. I do hope that the next few years sees some balance occurring. So many incredible women reshaping genres. From Pop acts like JADE to great young bands coming through that are shaking up Alternative and R&B, it is a realty exciting time for music. There is a lot of emphasis on Pop. Women dominating. Last year was one where women made a huge contribution. Albums from Beyoncé and Chappell Roan among those released in a landmark year for women. Alternative Pop and Rock seeing women on top. Women also very much at the centre of the GRAMMYs earlier this year and showing why the tide should turn. The same story at the BRITs. If last year was seen as a hopeful new era for women, there have been steps back. Multiple male artists accused of sexual abuse and crimes. Airplay for women not where it should be. The majority of festival headliners at major events being men. If the music press is dedicating column inches and time highlighting wonderful upcoming artists and established queens alike, there is still a way to go. We can see future icons like Doechii. Brilliant bands like Die Spitz. Pop being dominated by women. They are adding so much to the industry but there is still a lot of darkness and imbalance. Showing them proper respect and ensuring that their phenomenal talent is recognised and true equality happens…
IS long overdue.