3 Little Pieces

Photo by Ben Mullins on Unsplash

It's a day for publishing little pieces.

After a bit of a flurry of longer length articles a couple of weeks ago, today has seen me writing about individual tracks and compiling this month's F-Word music blog post and playlist.

Writing about women and music around the same time as International Women's Day is always a bit weird.

It's as though all the PR companies and record companies wake up to the fact they've got some women on their rosters and, for one day only, start promoting the hell out of them.

OK, some of them remember to promote their female artists the rest of the year as well, but it's frustrating when you spend 364 days of the year receiving largely irrelevant promo (all of which I listen to, by the way) and then one day a year where pretty much 100% of it is relevant and useful.

It isn't great for a writer to receive a press release that contains a lot of stats, data and musical content that would be best served by an in depth piece... on the day that the PR wants the story written about and promoted. It's especially unhelpful when you've received about seven other equally interesting, in depth and complex press releases of equal interest on the same day.

I like writing women and music stories. I'm the music editor at a feminist website, I have licence to write those kind of stories, and commission them, 365 days of the year. As such, it would be better for me if I was given tip offs on interesting stories across the full 365 days, not all at once on one day in March.

Some PR's are very good and do pitch stuff to me with the feminist angle in mind, but most PR's don't. In a way, this is good because it means I have to actively seek out artists and music myself, which stops me getting lazy and complacent, but it's also bad because it means I get sent a lot of highly irrelevant music and music based press releases, that I still feel compelled to waste time listening to.

Long time readers will also be aware that another thing that annoys me is the lack of women headlining music festivals in the UK. I wrote about this two years ago, and it is touched on in this month's F-Word Music blog post, but I don't think I'll be leaving it at that. I think I'll be revisiting the issue before the summer is out. Watch this space.

Siobhan Wilson by Emma Dagger

Today I've also published a review of Siobhan Wilson's video 'Marry You' and the new Chromatic's song 'Time Rider'. Both of which are well worth checking out.

Earlier in the week, I also published another of my whimsical pieces for Medium, this time about possible historical predecessors to the podcast. As per usual, I had a lot of fun writing the piece, though I'm not massively convinced that a lot of people will read it. If you do take the time though, I hope you like it.