The Five Percent Rule is a podcast and blog about pop culture and music from the perspective of a music educator and a singer songwriter.
Why “The 5% Rule” ?.
- Whether you’re a promoter or a band, when it comes to booking, you can only believe about 5% of what people tell you.
- Only a small percentage of starving artists reach some form of pop stardom. The rest of us just have to like where we are and enjoy the ride!
- When judging the quality of music, most people don’t know why they like what they like. Their stated preferences are merely the tip of an iceberg! (and we intend to dive for the bottom of that glacier.)
- Because Emma J is a fan of non-associative titles
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Hot Girls They are inevitable. With a pretty voice and a prettier body, they can swoop in and effortlessly steal a show from any hard working mortal. The ape brain is still attracted to these quite basic things and even now, selection pressure still does not favor integrity over physical fitness. (Well, there are exceptions.)
Our band sometimes has acoustic and solo acts that hang out with us and play the opening slot or the set breaks at bar gigs or at our own events. As such, my precious summer, where I get to play music every weekend and feel good about myself among friends who appreciate me for what I can do rather than what I look like, might be ruined by a Hot Girl.
Nothing more than a great voice and a stripper body, The Hot Girl will have audiences fawning over her even though she can’t play guitar worth shit and her crowning achievement is a song called “No Bra” about, surprise, smoking weed and not wearing a bra. The hoots and hollars and slack-jawed admiration by the audience is evidence that there are still far more boners in this world than brains.
I’ve written over a hundred songs. I’ve spent 20+ years practicing the piano and trying to make myself a better person on the inside. I’ll never be able to wear a bare midriff top with a belly button ring and a lower back tattoo because of my surgery scars. Due to the circumstances of my life, I never learned how to move my body the way that girls in bars are wont to do. Due to my extensive dating history, I am inclined to believe I am not unattractive to men, but I am definitely not any of the Accepted Female Archetypes.
More importantly, I have never correlated “ability to play music well” and “attractiveness to men.” These are completely separate things. I suppose my biggest mistake was working on the first thing more.
I feel like my non-hotness is the elephant in the room. Every guy I’m around in the music scene knows it and nobody ever says anything about it. They all know when No Bra Girl shows up that she’s the special treat. Everyone is relieved because, at last, there is a girl musician in the room being a proper girl musician: sexy. I am depressed because I want my beautiful summer, where I am free to be the nerdy oaf that I am, with my fat thighs and mediocre voice. I’m a good songwriter. I spend a great deal of time crafting lyrics and chord progressions that evoke emotion and philosophical thought only to be met by society’s collective yawn. They demand the tits and ass. Thinking is for squares and old people.
Maybe I’m just jealous because this girl could make Row Row Row Your Boat sound impressive. She could poke around on the open guitar chords and rhyme the words “love” and “above” and it would sound like masterpiece.
The indie music scene is really no help. On the OTHER end of the spectrum, opposite the girls with stripper bodies and glorious sinuses, you’ve got the waiflike scarf headed Manic Pixie Dream Girls in their Tina Fey glasses showing off their breathy vibrato and pronouncing words strangely. Don’t be fooled by Fiona Apple’s new single. It’s boring as fuck. I listened to the first twenty seconds of it, and really wanted to like it, but ended up wandering off to go do my laundry. The indie genre mistakes minimalism for boldness, mistakes lack of structure for uniqueness, and still pretty much centers the success of it’s females around a voice type and a look.
Women like me end up hiding behind the scenes, which is unfortunate. We become songwriters and producers for the Hot Girls because nobody cares what we have to say. I guess all I have left is the smug joy of knowing that my very presence on stage is offensive and confusing to people. Oh yeah, and that pesky satisfaction of having actual skills.
