Amanda Palmer

Amanda MacKinnon Gaiman Palmer (born 30 April 1976) is an American performer who first rose to prominence as the lead singer, pianist, and lyricist/composer of the duo The Dresden Dolls. She has since started a successful solo career, and is also one half of the Evelyn Evelyn duo.

Palmer was born in New York City’s Mount Sinai Hospital, and grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts. She attended Lexington High School, where she was involved in the drama department, and attended Wesleyan University where she was a member of the Eclectic Society. She staged performances based on work by the Legendary Pink Dots, an early influence. She then formed the Shadowbox Collective, devoted to street theatre and putting on theatrical shows. Palmer is married to writer Neil Gaiman.

At a Halloween party in 2000, Palmer met drummer Brian Viglione and together they formed The Dresden Dolls. In an effort to expand the performance experience and interactivity, Palmer began inviting Lexington High School students to perform drama pieces at her live shows. The Dirty Business Brigade, a troupe of seasoned and new artists, performs at many gigs. The invited costumed characters mingle with the crowd before and during the show, and veteran groups sometimes join in with a choreographed stage act. Life-sized marionettes, coin-operated boys, living statues, and other undergroundlings greet fans while circus and burlesque draw the audience into the Dolls’ music, creating a participatory atmosphere that allows the audience to experience numerous types of art simultaneously.After developing a cult following, the band recorded their eponymous debut album, The Dresden Dolls in 2002 with producer Martin Bisi (of Indie, Brooklyn, New York fame). They produced the album before being picked up by Roadrunner Records.

After the release of her music video for the song “Leeds United,” Palmer sparked controversy with a post in her blog. She claimed Roadrunner Records had wanted to pull certain shots from the video that exposed her stomach, because “…they thought I looked fat.” After her fans read about this, they posted pictures of their stomachs online with messages to Roadrunner, lyrics, and words of comfort. They then sent their pictures to the record label, and started a web site. The fans coined a term for the movement: The ReBellyon, and put together a book, “The Belly Book,” of over 600 pictures and stories from fans. The book was sold over the internet to fans all over the world.

Palmer has been awarded Artist of the Year by The Boston Music Awards, 13th in Paste’s 20 Best Covers of All Time, Sixth best solo act in a Guardian’s reader poll, Sixth best Women Who Rock Right Now by spinner.com, and Who Killed Amanda Palmer cracked the top 100 in US charts.

Palmer’s most recent work has been the 8 in 8 project where Damian Kulash, Ben Folds, herself, and her husband got together and wrote 6 songs in 12 hours. They donated most of their profits to organizations dedicated to saving music.

via Wikipedia

Nikola Tesla

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Oasis (BONUS: previously submitted by Rihannon W)

Amanda Palmer on iTunes: 

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Sexism in the music industry can be seen in a lot of ways—lyrics that objectify women, women being seen as sluts if they sing about being promiscuous while men are seen as “just doing what guys do”, female musicians being held to higher standards of male musicians, etc. Amanda Palmer, for instance, is an artist who has faced the beast we call sexism with Roadrunner Records, the label she was signed to. When the video for her “Leeds United” video was being made, Roadrunner told her that they thought she looked too fat in the video and that they wanted to cut out shots of her belly so that the video would be more likeable. As she said on her blog, Amanda thought that she looked hot in the video, so she wouldn’t budge and change the video just because her record company thought that she couldn’t look “hot” if she looked a smidgen chubby.

the fab Amanda Palmer

The sexism in the music industry can also be seen in who is popular and who isn’t. Amanda Palmer has a lot less fans than, say, Katy Perry. While Miss Palmer has 18,993 fans on Facebook at the time of writing this article, Katy Perry easily trumps her with the 1,960,536 fans that she has. Amanda Palmer comfortably sings feminist-sounding lyrics that denounce such things as feeling like you need to have a significant other in order to be happy (in the song “Ampersand” she proudly proclaims, “I’m not gonna live my life on one side of an ampersand), Katy Perry sings things that are definitely far-off from being feminist, including her conclusion that women aren’t good if they’re attracted to other women (this is pretty obvious in “I Kissed a Girl” when she sings that “it’s not what good girls do”).

Katy Perry

Now, I will admit that I do enjoy Katy Perry’s music sometimes. However, that doesn’t change how depressing it is that the music industry will do all they can to promote a musician who has lyrics that are demeaning to women, while a musician who has feminist lyrics is often given the shaft (Amanda Palmer’s record label has done more to be unsupportive of her than just what happened with the “Leeds United” video—for one example, they did very little to support her tour to promote her Who Killed Amanda Palmer album, which you can read about in old entries on her blog).

Is it because a woman is seen as threatening if she has feminist lyrics in her songs? Is it just easier to market a song that has sexist or misogynistic lyrics than it is to promote a song that doesn’t? Judging from the kind of music that is popular nowadays, it seems that these are the opinions of most people in the music industry. Also judging by the artists in mainstream music who seem to hold feminist opinions but do not publically identify as being feminists—Lily Allen, anyone?—you could come to the conclusion that, if their record labels do have these opinions about feminism, the artists simply don’t publically identify as feminists because their record labels recommend against it.

Readers, our lesson about the music industry today can be summed up easily with three words: It. Is. Dumb. Let’s hope the future of music shines a lot brighter than this.