Last year, Kenya Grace began documenting her music production on TikTok. Her pairing of pop songwriting with dance instrumentals, performed from her bedroom with a simple mic and Midi-controller setup, soon attracted thousands of followers, and the comment sections were inundated with requests for covers, collaborations and official releases.
But some – generally male – viewers were unconvinced, littering her posts with variously sexist, patronising and mansplaining comments. “I’ve had people ask if someone else made the tracks for me,” she says, sighing. “I’m like: you can see me doing it.” It’s just one in a collection of microaggressions Grace can recall from her relatively new career, from paternalistic peers in early studio sessions to passive aggressive comments at live shows. “There’s a lot of stigma that women can’t produce.”
As well as being named in the BBC’s success-predicting Sound of 2024 poll, the ultimate accolade came in October when the self-taught producer, singer and songwriter spent three weeks at No 1 with her incredibly catchy drum’n’bass song Strangers, which spent a subsequent month in the Top 10. This career-changing moment still feels like a dream, she says. “There’s no way this would have happened 20 years ago.”
Electronic music has a long history of sidelining women. Credits on dance tracks have been dominated by male producers, while women have too often been confined to providing faceless and nameless vocals. A 2022 report by the Jaguar Foundation found that less than 1% of the dance music played on UK radio was made by a female solo artist or all-female band; Grace is only the second woman to top the UK chart with a track she wrote, produced and performed herself – and the only one making dance music – after Kate Bush’s resurgent Running Up That Hill reached the top in 2022.
But a new vanguard of female producers is beginning to redefine what dance music looks and sounds like. With their snappy, pop-informed takes on drum’n’bass, garage and EDM, Grace, PinkPantheress and Becky Hill are all chart mainstays; Ireland’s Jazzy reached No 3 and spent 31 weeks in the chart with Giving Me, a euphoric but steely house track she co-wrote; Scotland’s Hannah Laing is getting tens of millions of streams for her self-produced, old-school-leaning rave tracks. Pursuing dance music – and crucially, on their own terms – is now a viable career path.
“Us girlies are taking over!” says Venbee, who claims to have written a song a day since she was 10 – one of them, Messy in Heaven, became a Top 10 hit last year, prompting collaborations with chart regulars Rudimental and Chase & Status. “Women are putting their foot down,” she says. “They’re able to film themselves and [show] what they can do.”
Producer and vocalist Piri grew up writing songs and playing the guitar, but production wasn’t something she felt was possible for a girl. Her reference points for women in dance were a handful of well-known tracks from the 2000s and early 2010s, such as Sweet Female Attitude’s Flowers and Shy FX’s Gold Dust – both of which were, in fact, written and produced by men. It was only after seeing the rise of experimental electronic acts such as Yunè Pinku and Nia Archives that she started to reconsider. “It’s this domino effect of having more women to look up to,” she says.
In 2020, with the help of her soon-to-be musical partner Tommy Villiers, she began getting to grips with music software, inspired by the new cohort of women around her. “Obviously, watching Tommy produce was very inspiring but just seeing these sick people producing hardcore music, not just soft or ‘feminine’ music, makes you think you really can do anything.”
The duo released a string of DIY, algorithm-friendly earworms that drew on garage, house and hyperpop, landing them a record deal before Piri embarked on a solo career. Yet even though 1.3 million people now listen to her each month on Spotify, she is still patronised. “I’ve had people assume that Tommy’s doing the writing and I’m literally just singing,” she says. “I think a lot of women get looked over [and seen as] just a voice, there’s no actual creativity coming from them.”
Piri has also faced sexist questions on her understanding of dance music and comments on what she wears, but overall she says her experience in the industry has been positive. “I feel I’m kinda lucky to be in a duo with [Tommy] because having a man there has probably sheltered me from a lot of treatment that women doing it on their own get. It’s lucky for me, but it shouldn’t have to be that way.”
As representation grows on stage and on the airwaves, Piri is also pushing for more diversity behind the scenes, hiring a crew made up exclusively of women, non-binary and LGBTQ+ people, and urging other artists to do the same. “It’s a boys club. The reason more men get these jobs is because a man has the opportunity to hire people and then will just automatically pick their friends. So we’ve gotta push outwards. You are the artist, you [have] the power to choose who’s on your team – make the most of that.”
Aside from visibility, the changing demographics in dance music are down to the wider availability of resources democratising production, from YouTube and TikTok tutorials to cheaper software, and grants such as the PRS Foundation Women Make Music fund. Collectives such as Loud LDN use group chats and events to build support networks for early-career women and gender-nonconforming artists. Among its members are Piri, Venbee and fellow pop-dance rising stars Issey Cross and Charlotte Plank. “It can be intimidating having to go and ask men for help,” says Piri. “It’s nice to know that you as a community of marginalised people can just figure it out together and accomplish your goals.”
Grace believes social media platforms such as TikTok have been instrumental in breaking down the barriers around dance music, including its complex hardware. “So many people have messaged me to say they’ve bought a beat pad because of me, which makes me happy,” she says. Bedroom producers can now lay the foundations of a career by using relatively cheap gear, such as that in Grace’s videos, and a nifty online presence, thereby reducing the decision-making power of industry gatekeepers. “The music industry has completely changed,” she says, citing her career as an example. The public “are choosing who they like” via streaming and social media, “and that’s making loads of underdogs come up. It’s such an exciting time.”
Manchester-based producer Anz says the recent shift in mainstream music culture has its roots in the underground. When she started releasing music online in 2015, she kept her identity hidden for fear of not being taken seriously; she had to rely on male friends to vouch for her to play at house parties. But over the past decade, many local underground scenes have developed their own ecosystems to support women and marginalised genders through mentorship and training, such as Bristol’s Saffron Music, or All Hands on Deck in Manchester. “I’d be hard pressed to find a fellow female producer who hasn’t led a workshop or taught in some way,” Anz says. “You hold your hand out to whoever’s coming next. There’s no pulling the ladder up behind you.”
Within these grassroots settings, many producers and vocalists – such as Anz, Sherelle and another UK chart-topper, Eliza Rose – have been encouraged to flourish regardless of their gender. Anz says it is now a case of the major labels finally “picking up on the fact that there has been this wave of female producers, women who are just doing everything and making things happen for themselves”, albeit on a time lag. “It’s really, really delayed compared with how long the underground has been doing it. People have been working overtime to put right wrongs and those at the top are like: ‘Yeah, it’ll get here when it gets here.’”
So why now? “My more cynical take is that they recognise that there’s a product to be sold,” Anz suggests. This is backed up by Piri, who says some people are suspicious of her success: “She only got this because she’s a girl.” And the progress should not be overstated. Just last year, DJ Mag’s canonical Top 100 DJs poll featured only 14 women – just three of whom reached the top 30 – and gender discrepancies in songwriting credits also continue. “Even now, when you’re getting writing splits or negotiating things, women typically have to put their foot down a bit more to get their fair share,” Venbee says.
It is a hangover from years of inequality, says Anz. “In history there are so many examples of people not being paid their dues, or getting the respect or attention that they deserve, and I feel like dance music is the ultimate example of that. So many people have been trampled over, so many marginalised voices have been co-opted. But we’re here, we’ve always been here, and I think it’s always heartening to be seen.”
Hopefully, there will be permanent change in the mainstream and at major labels, and the current moment isn’t just a marketable craze, as Anz fears. But she is still optimistic that, whatever happens, the generation of women will get heard because of the quality of their work. “Kate Bush is a great example of someone who did the damn thing and is being recontextualised and re-appreciated so many years later,” she says. “That’s a nice bit of hope to hold on to: at some point, someone will appreciate it. And even if you never see it in your lifetime, it was worth doing.”
