and
Kathy Valentine of
The Go-Gos. The 1980s, for the first time, saw long-sought chart success from all-female bands and female-fronted rock bands. On the
Billboard Hot 100 year-end chart for 1982
Joan Jett's "
I Love Rock 'n' Roll" at No. 3 and the Go-Go's' "
We Got the Beat" at No. 2 sent a strong message out to many industry heads that females who could play could bring in money. While
Joan Jett played "no-frills, glam-rock anthems, sung with her tough-as-nails snarl and sneer", the Go-Go's were seen as playful girls, an image that even
Rolling Stone magazine poked fun at when they put the band on their cover in their underwear along with the caption "Go-Go's Put out!". However musician magazines were starting to show respect to female musicians, putting
Bonnie Raitt and
Tina Weymouth on their covers. While the Go-Go's and
the Bangles, both from the L.A. club scene, were the first all-female rock bands to find sustained success, individual musicians paved the way for the industry to seek out bands that had female musicians and allow them to be part of the recording process. While the 1980s helped pave the way for female musicians to get taken more seriously it was still considered a novelty of sorts for several years, and it was very much a male-dominated world. In 1984, when film maker
Dave Markey, along with Jeff and Steve McDonald from
Redd Kross, put together the mockumentary
Desperate Teenage Lovedolls, a comically punky version of
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, it also spawned a real band. While the Lovedolls could barely play at first, because of the film, and because they were an "all-female band", they received press and gigs.
Klymaxx became the first self-produced all-female band in the R&B/pop style of music to play all instruments; several of their singles - including "
Meeting in the Ladies Room" and "
I Miss You" charted in both R&B and pop countdowns. Leading into the 1990s, the surge of
heavy metal in the 1980s helped to shed another light on the role of females in music. Because of the success of the Go-Go's and the Bangles many females were frustrated at not being taken seriously or only thought of as "cute chicks playing music" and either joined rock bands or formed all-female metal bands. One such band that was playing harder music in San Francisco was Rude Girl. Originally signed to
CBS Records, the band splintered before an album would be released and the remaining members released a 12-inch single in 1987 under the name Malibu Barbi. When Cara Crash and Wanda Day left
4 Non Blondes and joined Malibu Barbi their sound shifted from heavy metal to a sound described as combining a "driving beat with
Johnny Rottenesque vocal and
post-punk riffs". Around the same time in the Midwest,
Madam X was signed to an offshoot of
Columbia Records,
Jet Records. In 1984, the
Rick Derringer-produced album
We Reserve the Right was released along with the single "High in High School". The Petrucci sisters were a focal point of the band – Maxine, the lead guitarist, and
Roxy, the drummer. However, based on management decisions, it was decided that it would be better if only one of the sisters was in the band and Roxy was placed in another band, the all-female,
Los Angeles–based
Vixen. Vixen was founded also in the Midwest, but in
St. Paul,
Minnesota, by
Jan Kuehnemund during the mid-1970s. Kuehnemund folded the band a few months later, when her bandmates either dropped out or joined other bands, and she reformed it after moving to L.A. at the start of the 1980s. Vixen was sometimes described as "the female
Bon Jovi", eventually becoming commercially successful due largely to the band's signature hit "
Edge of a Broken Heart" from
their self-titled debut album, making Vixen erroneously a one-hit wonder, although their next hit, a cover of
Jeff Paris's "Cryin'", charted even higher in both Britain and the US. The band folded again in the early 1990s following musical differences, but reformed twice more in their history. Maxine Petrucci also joined Vixen, albeit as a touring bass guitarist, after her sister invited her in 1998 until the Petruccis and their fellow band members were forced to disperse when Kuehnemund, feeling left out and her lead in representing Vixen being usurped, successfully sued to keep the rights to her band's name. She reunited Vixen in 2001, with a new bassist in tow, until disagreements with the band's management caused Kuehnemund's bandmates to leave, driving her to search for and hire new members. In 2004, Vixen's line-up from the
Vixen and
Rev It Up era made a one-time appearance on
VH1's
Bands Reunited, as its Canadian host has been a fan of the band. The line-up from 2001 recorded a fourth album,
Live & Learn, released between 2006 and 2007. Kuehnemund died in 2013 and Vixen was reformed with three-quarters of the "classic" line-up plus
Gina Stile, the lead guitarist from the
Tangerine period, to honor her legacy. Both Stile and long-time frontwoman/rhythm guitarist
Janet Gardner have left the band by the end of the 2010s. . With the resurgence of interest in pop-punk bands in the US in the early 1990s, along with the sunset strip "hair metal" scene becoming extremely crowded, bands who combined a "non-image" with loud raw music started were gigging at clubs like Rajis in Hollywood. Bands such as
Hole,
Super Heroines, the Lovedolls, and
L7 became popular, while demonstrating on stage, and in interviews, a self-confident "bad girl" attitude at times, always willing to challenge assumptions about how an all-female band should behave.
Courtney Love described the other females in Hole as using a more "lunar viewpoint" in their roles as musicians. In the 1990s,
riot grrrl became the genre associated with bands such as
Bratmobile and
Bikini Kill. Other punk bands, such as
Spitboy, have been less comfortable with the childhood-centered issues of much of the riot grrrl aesthetic, but nonetheless also have dealt explicitly with feminist and related issues. All-female
Queercore bands, such as
Fifth Column,
Tribe 8, and
Team Dresch, also write songs dealing with matters specific to women and their position in society. A film put together by a San Diego psychiatrist, Dr.
Lisa Rose Apramian, along with the former drummer from
the Motels and
the Droogs, Kyle C. Kyle, the documentary
Not Bad for a Girl explored some of these issues with interviews from many of the female musicians on the riot grrrl scene at the time. Even though Rachel Rachel's success was short lived when they folded due to "creative differences" and too great a geographic distance, future rock bands or non-rock musical groups in the Christian genre that have only women as members followed their lead in the next decades to come. Many female musicians from all-female bands in the 1980s and 1990s have gone on to more high-profile gigs.
The Pandoras' former members include members of
the Muffs;
Leather Leone, the singer from Rude Girl and Malibu Barbi, went on to sing for
Chastain; Warbride's founder and lead guitarist,
Lori Linstruth joined
Arjen Lucassen;
Abby Travis from the Lovedolls has played with
Beck,
Elastica, and
Bangles;
Meredith Brooks, from
the Graces, went on to solo success and
Janet Robin, from Precious Metal, was the touring guitarist for Brooks as well as
Lindsey Buckingham and
Air Supply. Sweet Jayne's Cris Bonacci became Girlschool's lead guitarist in 1985 and stayed with the band for fewer than 10 years.
Girlschool, despite numerous line-up changes, have never broken up despite a brief hiatus and celebrated their 40th anniversary in 2018. ==2000s and 2010s==