Female Artists On Top | Women In Music
In honor of International Women’s Day, March 8, Qello Concerts is proud to present three curated collections celebrating girl power in all of its musical glory! Check them out to take note of female artists who have shaped musical landscapes around the globe, while inspiring millions to dance like no one cares, or pick up a microphone, guitar, turntable (or any other instrument for that matter), and kick some ass! These collections feature some of the most talented, ferocious, and strongest women to ever rock a stage!
Qello Concerts celebrates International Women’s Day
From The Ronettes and The Supremes to riot grrrls and Spice Girls, that extra X chromosome has always been a key factor in defining the attitude and the creative energy that puts some artists at the top of the heap. Here’s a list of some of the most famous female artists of all time.
WOMEN WHO ROCK
Women Who Rock features some of the top female artists of all time, doing their thing, owning the stage with the prowess of lioness! The collection includes Sheryl Crow’s Miles From Memphis Live at the Pantages Theater, filmed in November 2010 at the iconic Hollywood theater. By the time she filmed this collection, Crow, a backup singer for Michael Jackson early in her career, had become a seasoned professional, delivering the goods at every tour stop.
This concert film features songs like “Soak Up The Sun,” “My Favourite Mistake,” “All I Want To Do Is Have Some Fun,” and “If It Makes You Happy,” a song inspired by one of Sheryl’s heroes, Tom Petty, that won her Best Female Rock Vocal Performance at the 1997 Grammy Awards. The song also inspired Crow to team up with chef Chuck White in 2011 to write a cookbook called If It Makes You Healthy.
The Women Who Rock collection also features Heart’s Fanatic Live From Caesar’s Colosseum, recorded in Windsor, Ontario in 2012. Heart’s founding members, sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson, are the quintessential rockin’ women, doing more than just holding their own among their testosterone-fueled peers like Zeppelin, Journey, Aerosmith, AC/DC, in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
Even today, they have outlasted most of their fellow rockers and continue to kick butt. Originally from Seattle, Ann and Nancy Wilson moved to Canada early in their career, becoming one of the pioneering bands from Vancouver’s rock scene in the ’70s. Heart had massive success with songs like “Crazy On You,” “Heartless,” and “Barracuda,” (all of which are featured live in this concert film), the latter having been written as a reaction to the kind of discrimination they faced from men over the years. The song was about Heart’s anger towards their record label for an ad placed in trade publications that seemed to imply that Ann and Nancy were lesbian lovers.
They subsequently left that label and went on to achieve unheard-of success.
A collection of Women Who Rock wouldn’t be complete without Debbie Harry. The Blondie singer, and cultural icon, embodied the new wave ethos, ruling the stage at CBGB’s and helping to shape the sound of punk to come. Blondie’s Live at The Enmore Theatre was recorded in 2010 and shows the band in top shape (35 years after their first formed), performing hits like “Atomic,” “Call Me” and “Rapture,” often considered the first “rap” song to hit number 1 on the charts.
POP QUEENS
The charts have long been ruled by divas who have distinguished themselves as the best of the best, and our Pop Queens collection is packed with pop perfection. The Queen, herself, Madonna, who this year is celebrating 40 years in the industry, figures prominently in the collection. Watch her Confessions Tour concert video, filmed at the Wembley Arena (the top grossing tour of 2006); Music in Review, a documentary delving deep into Madge’s psyche, with interviews, rare footage, and some gems from the archives of her career; and the Sticky And Sweet Tour, which at the time, (2008/2009) became the #1 largest grossing tour in history by a solo artist, where she played for a mind-blowing 2,350,282 fans, selling over $280,000,000 in tickets!
There are few pop queens who can give Madonna a run for her money in terms of mass appeal, but Beyonce is a juggernaut all unto herself, and when she asks the question, Who runs the world?” we all know the answer! Queen Bey has two concert films in our Pop Queens collection, including Live at Roseland: Elements of 4, recorded during the 4 Intimate Nights with Beyoncé revue in NYC in august 2011 - a much more intimate concert experience, where Ms Knowles waxes poetic about her careers highs and lows between blistering renditions of her hits.
You can also catch her uber-famous I Am...World Tour concert film, featuring 32 of her biggest hits from the oughts, including a few bootylicious numbers from her Destiny’s Child days as well, and a red hot version of “Crazy In Love,” the song that took her beyond the stratosphere as a solo artist.
The collection also showcases today’s It Girl when ruling the charts: the one and only Dua Lipa. The British-born Albanian singer has been a mainstay on the charts since first coming onto the scene, but back in 2017 when she played Live at Glastonbury, she was certainly less well known and claims she was concerned that she would be singing to an empty tent. Luckily, that was not the case, and she went on to own the stage at the prestigious festival, belting out songs like “Hotter Than Hell,” “IDGAF,” and “New Rules,” a song co-written with Chainsmokers collaborator, Emily Warren, who told Billboard the song’s success was despite the advice she’d been given at the start of her songwriting career, saying, “When I first moved to LA, I was told to never write a song in which the guy wasn’t gonna get it. Times have changed.”
WOMEN IN COUNTRY
Country music has experienced a massive rebirth in recent years, with Hot Country being one of the top radio formats in North America, and women have always been at the heart of country music. Take, for example, Dolly Parton - the legend, who has her very own amusement park in Nashville called Dollywood, wrote “I Will Always Love You” AND “Jolene” on the same day in 1972. Talk about real girl power! With a career spanning from 1956 to today, she has seen it all and remains one of the most beloved female artists of all time.
Queen of Country is a documentary about the reigning monarch of country music and tells the story of her incredible career that saw her launch 25 songs to the number one spot on the Billboard Country charts. A can’t miss for Dolly fans.
The Women in Country collection also features Canada’s most famous country export, and still one of the most important recording artists in the genre (male or female), Timmins, Ontario’s Shania Twain. With Still the One: Live from Vegas, fans are offered a glimpse into the amazing production that went into Shania’s first career residency at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Vegas, 2012/2013. During the residency, Shania performed over 100 shows with a huge band and an elaborate stage setup - it was like a high-intensity hoedown for the country-pop crowd, and featured all the bells and whistles we’ve come to expect from a Vegas show.
If Dolly and Shania represent the history of women in country music, no one quite embodies the modern female country ideal more than Taylor Swift. Tay Tay started very much in the country music mold, but as time went on, she has branched out to appeal to a much wider audience, although that country twang is still perceptible underneath the pop sheen. Taylor Swift’s Americas Sweetheart is an hour-long documentary that charts her career from the moment she arrived in Nashville at age 11 to becoming one of the most impactful artists of her generation; while her 2016 documentary, Superstar, takes a more in-depth look at how Swift successfully transitioned from vulnerable country singer to bonafide pop star, and the implications for her career.
Our three collections feature a host of other artist concerts and documentaries that demonstrate the power of women in music as well. Check them out here!
