Why women STOPPED LISTENING to new Rock and Heavy Metal? The "Vanilla Sausage" era explained. 

Some bands gave me hope when it comes to rock/metal appealing to women. Respond to this below if you have any young bands that could cross the aisle. Here are my suggestions....even they are getting older.

Shit... you mean we have to write good songs instead of just buy more gear?

The amount of sacrifice it takes to make it in music, it's no surprise they turn out to be terrible people. In the late 2000s, I was on the brink of making it, and it got derailed when my vocalist was murdered, but what you have to do to get ahead in music is pretty rough. You have to leave everyone behind, so wife or significant other, kids, your job, all of that. You basically leave everyone behind with nothing. No money coming in, and nothing to show for it. That kind of shit creates a self loathing which is great for songwriting, but terrible for personal development. People wonder why musicians suck as people. It's kind of a vicious cycle.

I went to Berklee College of Music for 4 years and didn’t hear a single melody.

I wanted to add that metal has always been a predominantly male genera. Young women loved the hair metal guys, for the same reason they loved The Beatles, The Stones, etc: image. Girls yelled so loud during a Beatles concert that they couldn't even hear the band. The same was true for Elvis. Women love Hair Metal because of the image, let's be real here.

You just have to ask yourself: would Kelly Bundy listen to it? If not then it's probably pure vanilla sausage

Chicks respond to melody, not wankery. Knowing how to be melodic without being absurdly technical is arcane as fuck and is the mark of a true master. I used to be a absurdly technical wanker until chicks called my sound gross and then I toned it back. I also learned how to sing and not scream. The underground is legitimately homosexual and Cynic proves it.

bring back colour as well. too many artist wear black.

Imagine that; young rebellious women want bad boys, genre be damned

I've really been enjoying the tone of the circle lately.

Have'nt seen a single female comment in the replies... So maybe someone should post something that women have actually been citing for decades as something that alienates them from these circles: Yeah, I'm sure that we all love production and songwriting... even *gasp* women... But I think they're jumping ship has a lot more to do with the fact that whenever they try to participate in these communities, some asshole feels the need to say they're "good... for a girl" or a soundman treats them like a child that got lost in the mall... if you want women in these circles, just make them feel like normal people and make them feel safe...

In my opinion, flawed songwriting, extreme vocals, and the nerdiness of everything are damaging metal's popularity. Seems like modern bands have a hard time writing a chorus or hook on the level of an 80's stadium rock tune. The vocals are lacking too because of no hooks/choruses and the rise of extreme vocals. Not a lot of rock/metal singers sing like Dio, Bruce Dickinson, Sebastian Bach, Coverdale, etc anymore. While I like extreme metal, you have to admit that extreme vocals are alienating and a turn off to larger audiences. The backlash to hair metal ended up hurting the entire metal and rock genre because everyone tried to act and look tough and sound as heavy as possible (cough cough Pantera). I feel like when the 90's hit everyone tried to get as far away from being glam/hair metal as possible. This meant losing the cool factor and usual looks of rock and metal and also losing any kind of pop music sensibilities (catchy songs, hooks, lyrics a whole crowd could sing to, things that make a song/band actually popular). Meanwhile, guitarists are becoming technical masters while sacrificing good songwriting and sucking the joy out of music. Combine the rejection of pop oriented metal/rock music, like the 80's scene, with the rise of extreme metal, extreme vocals, and the bedroom guitarist/studio generation and it's clearer why this music is unpopular. The fun needs to be brought back.

Women want music that reflects their emotions... like most human beings. Thats why they love bands like Type O Negative or Soundgarden, yes the frontmen are hot guys and all that, but the things they sang about is what keep the women in. This also could explain why girls these days are so obsessed with Deftones. In a way i feel vindicated, i always loved them and now they're popular again. Feels good man.

That thumbnail 😂😂😂

As a fan of stoner and doom, I've noticed at shows and festivals there is a significant female presence. I remember seeing Sleep's first show in the Bay Area since their breakup in the 90's and there were a lot of women there when in Sleep's initial run you might see one or two girls in an audience of about twenty. It's the groove, methinks.

reminds me of the whole debacle about Steel Panther with the P-Melter preset for a delay pedal and eventually a distortion pedal, which completely missed the point about Steel Panther playing into Hedonism that came with Glam. And the funnier thing is that the person who tried to boycott Steel Panther found out to be hypocritical about the whole thing (having a "sex scene" for a music video)

I broke up with my last girlfriend because she got butthurt that I didnt want to waste 3 hours of my life at a MOE show. I'll take a Mastodon sausage fest anyday, thanks...

great vid !!

Awesome video! I think as the economy has tightened more up and coming musicians have probably tried to play it safe to try and break into the scene. With recording being cheaper than ever, there's so many people doing art wrong. I love what you do on this channel bro.

Its like a modern college student writing that generic essay... "God forbid" an original thought / expression / argument 😂🤘🍻

Thank For Sharing🌎🎶

Nu Metal kid here. Girls liked some of that. Green Day and pop punk, girls liked that.

The same thing happened with Jazz, Although I wasn't there at the time, Jazz was the party music in the roaring 20s, but by the 50s it was all egg head hipsters snapping their fingers and babbling about flat 9 chords.

Fun fact: if a guitarist can explain the tone intricacies between TS-9 and TS-808 overdrive to a girl, her knickers will immediately fall off.

Women who want to listen to metal will always listen to it. It doesn’t have mainstream appeal anymore and it’s been done to death as is. The same goes for any other non-radio friendly genre, be it prog, jazz, fusion, whatever. And the same goes for men. Men who are metal heads are metal heads because they chose to be, but there are more of the guys like Post Malone who probably listened to metal at one point and then decided to forget about it because rap and hip hop have more sex appeal and are better generic mood music than rock or metal. Hell you can make this argument for any guitar driven music

who write ballads and power ballads in rock / metal these days? bring it back.

You're missing the point about why "my lady" and "white knights" are a turnoff. It's because it's coming from men who don't go out, don't interact with women, and yet feel entitled to them. That's a turn off. I think you could summarize the whole modern music isn't sexy thing by people not going out, not partying, not sharing experiences with people socially in real life. The metal band with the most femme fanbase is Type O Negative, and Peter Steele's entire schtick, other than being huge ;), was combining dark and sexy lyrics with being very sensitive in real life. It's not people acting too sensitive or going to far "in the other direction" that makes the music not sexy, it's their failure to touch grass. Also, prog has never been sexy, that's just the way it always was.

billy corgan years ago talked about the deadwood needs chopping out. new growth needs to happen. young band don't get a push much these days. rock needs to be reborn in a new image.

I've said it before myself. Nerds and nerd culture are ruining Metal. Wind Rose is the best example of this ruination.

Just remember people: Lemmy wanted to do rock because he wanted to get chicks. You can make great music and have a soul AND want to do all that for women too. A lot of men try to lie to themselves and say "I only got into the guitar/bass/keyboards/etc. just for the music!" but lets all be honest, we all love it when people (especially women) take notice of us when we play. It's natural. It's not creepy.

Fucking great video my man. This is my fav guitar channel and I barely remember the old days from Harmony Central... but I remember.

I went to support my buddy since his band was opening up for King’s X. He was playing a Kemper. It was flat and 2nd - Ty Tabor STOMPED the room after that. Absolutely massive tone. It was eye opening.

Love how real you are, you earned a subscriber.

we need a glam metal revival minus the debauchery part. This would be a great era. If no one does it, I'll start it

Bang on point. I remember the girls going wild for Axl Rose, Sebastaian Bach & even Mike Patton. Rock & metal is on life support.

Spot on mate. Thanks.

Brother, as much as i love Guthrie (One my favorites ever), looking for a woman at a fusion gig is the most insane thing ever ahahah btw nice video as always.

Loved the final comments at the end, made me guffaw!

Van Halen, Motley Crue..etc all had songs for guys & gals on their albums.. in the 70s girls would follow Led Zep, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath..etc around the world.. Greta Van Fleet has a lot of women following them, I don't know if the mess around with them.. because they seem to nice..lol

We've always called Dream Theatre "bird repellent"

TLDR; I’ve wanted to post this idea I’ve had on one of your ‘why rock has vanished’ type videos for a while. As someone who worked for a very, very large musical instrument/pro audio retailer for years, and a recording engineer before/after that, I’ve gotten to hear first hand from literally 10s/100’s of people on a daily basis, on what they’re doing musically, what they were listening to, ect. and one conversation that always keeps coming up is how rock and metal (and their subgenres) aren’t relevant anymore. I don’t think any of your videos on this have been wrong, but (and I say this in all good faith) I also think there is more nuance than the absence of sex, drugs and danger - or a lot of what you’ve presented. Women were into rock during its most misogynistic period because guitar driven rock music was still the primarily type of music in the mainstream, for instance. That’s not, and hasn’t been the case in a long time. I don’t think it’s nerds, or the prog guys, or the guys always talking about gear or DAWs. I don’t think it’s the ‘everything snapped to grid and autotuned’ excuse either, because if that were the case, almost no one music would be popular anymore, nor would that type of music have gotten popular to begin with. If anything, those types of bands are the casting the biggest nets in terms of fans, based on the numbers. Those things certainly /could/ be an issue. But I sincerely believe it’s because the sound of guitar in most rock contexts, to people, sounds like ‘old music’. Big, loud, distorted guitar sounds to people now, like what recordings of swing, jazz and big band sounded like to people in the late 50’s and early 60’s. There are bands that are outliers of course, as is always the case, but that’s something I hear time and time again from people. Most things don’t actually get a nostalgic revival, or get to come back after they’ve vanished from the mainstream. 80’s synthwave in 2010’s, pop-punk today, ska and swing in the 90’s - Those movements had moments of being relevant again, but it was never long term. It’s just a thought, but I think the reality here is that if rock has truly been on the decline in relevance for at least 20 years, it’s probably not going to come back - And that’s okay.

Excellent video. Yoko deserved it.

This is funny because it's true. I'd say the other reason women don't like metal much is you can't dance and shake your ass to breakneck tempos and a bunch of weird time signature changes... which is really just more nerdy stuff. This is probably another reason that they gravitate more to hip-hop and EDM, and also probably why more aspiring young music makers buy a laptop instead of a guitar these days.

Nerds really have ruined everything…

I thought you were pretty rough on modern rock but then I looked at everyone that I was watching who played a seven or eight-string. I was baffled by how few of these players exuded manliness in the classic sense. I thought of what RU-vid is pushing in my feeds as in Polyphia, Steve Vai, Agufish, Kmac2021, Rob Scallion, Bernth, Gear Gods...none of them seem to have that extra something, other than fast hands, a secret pact with the illuminati or gear reviews. My dead father's CD collection is antiquated but I might fire up some Bobby BlueBalls and the Gator Chasers greatest hits collection to see what 60s and 70s blues might have to offer in the way of inspiration. They had 2x4s with pickups and made it happen. I don't need more gear, more AXE-FX plugins, I need more practice. Happy President's Day 2023.

Interesting that "nerds" like Devin Townsend and Steven Wilson (which btw had Mr Guthrie Govan on his band ;) have a huge female audience compared to other rock/metal bands. Another band on the prog side of things that have a lot of female audience is Opeth (they recently played in my city, Santiago, they shared a video of the concert and it's almost funny how the audience screams is almost completely female, rare to see I know), I think there are aspects beyond just nerdiness. Of course there's the point of girls being attracted to the "bad boy" image , bands like Watain and Shining also have lots of girls in the audience

Haha what a brilliant video. Luckily I played in bands in the 80s and 90s.....good times indeed!

I think as a collective, we are all segmented and divided on every aspect of everything at this time....Music was a kind of glue for my generation being born in 1969. So the 80's and 90's was my time. We had radio, Boom boxes, land lines and magazines. No internet. People were in sync. Society was in sync. At least it felt that way to me. There was a feeling of understanding each other that is gone today. We had a sense of common ground. Music is a human expression that kind of exposes this unity or division over a time frame. Music is a sign post of where we are at as a culture. So where are we now.....just look around.

Right on bro..

SPOT ON!

thank god you have this channel. cause you would be a pissed of rapper instead of a really passionate musician, as another musicians i grew up with my guitar hero's" like di meola Ron Jarzombek" watch tower ciraca 1989 ,"bill white" as my hero's and others from my neighborhood autin tx. myself it was Jeff beck, fusion/classical country jazz AND my generations goth/ metalish. loud and all, but the way older i'm 60, and don't take that as a weakness I've been shredding for a while and producing, and back when the P.M.R.C. YOU were not even around . but thank for bringing it up because it did happen and if the ruling would have turned out different music listening may be altered and LARS might even be not happy circa

The internet and nerds have ruined it. Nerds worrying about what boutique gear to buy and the "mix". Making plastic for other nerds, filming themselves rocking out their plastic riffs with an over the top stank face for the clicks.... it's the guitar nerd equivalent of an Instagram model pretending to have fun at a night club. The internet has also ruined regional sounds in music.

This is my new favorite vid of youtube.

My mom showed me a picture of her backstage with Mötorhead, she also got on stage and sang with Celtic Frost.

"Crabs in a Barrel" - and there's the album name right there. :D

What do you think of guitars being neutered on stage by sound technicians? Playing electric guitar live has become sort of annoying in that you're being scoffed at for bringing an amp at all, because 'you should be playing a modeller through headphones'. And it completely sucks to play rock guitar through headphones/at fingerstyle acoustic volume level; yeah the sound technically is there, but with no feedback happening there exactly is no chance to a have wild, uncontrollable feeling of playing that instrument. I have been part of a sound engineering crew, and the hate hurled towards any act with a guitar amp was immense, even when the guitarist was playing clean sounds at sensible volumes. It's as if it was now part of their curriculum. With no ally on the technical side of live playing, you get a lot of bummed out musicians every time they go play a gig. And that in turn makes for uninspired performances, and eventually guys (and girls) just sort of lose interest in holding up the project. I'm not talking cranking three 100W full stacks, but usually a drummer in rock bands will require at least 30-50W through a 2x12 to keep up, yet while the drummer is being handled with no complaints, the first thing guitar players are told is turn it down until you can hear strings vibrating. Isn't that part of the puzzle of why rock is boring nowadays? Meanwhile, DJ's are allowed to crank the subs up to the point you hear walls creaking.

sup, besides the fact of the lack of the real scene and people (like me) who dont go to the metal events, what your thoughts about the lack of money in the metal, because almost no one buy cds/vinyl anymore, myself included, last cd bought about 10-11 years ago, how the economic failure of the fonographic industry affected metal in your opinion, greets from Brazil

Lmao that information about Chuck Berry is insane.

Also the metoo movement played a huge part in scaring guys away because nobody wanted to get fired from their jobs or labeled as a predator for simply complementing a woman or randomly asking one out on a date. The mobile app dating thing also doent help matters much either, because it gives almost all of the power dynamic directly to women, where they swipe 99% of guys away until landing on the best looking/most succesful one, further constricting any incentive for the remaining 1% avarage guys, even confident ones, to engage. So what do they do? They retire to their labs/DAWs/mancaves/laptop screens what have you, plinking and tinkering away, chasing some legendary tonal fantasy that only exists in their minds. Pure madness. Or some of them actually went ahead and reinvented themselves AS women, the very obsession they could not conquer. "If I cant have what I desire, I will BECOME what I desire!"

Loved this!!!! So fucking true!

I went to Obscene Extreme (a festival for grindcore/death metal) expecting it to be a major sausage fest but there were plenty of women at it...although Meshuggah was a massive sausage party, but that was in Ireland where they aren't all that popular.

100% agree also awesome shirt lol!

I think women love to sing along with the songs ... if they can sing along, they will go to the show is my hypothesis.

Steel Panther!

Guthrie's extra tooth was the source of his "powers". I honestly never cared for his playing despite him being incredible, I just don't like what he chooses to play most of the time. In all seriousness though I totally agree about the homogenized, boring state of modern rock and metal- there's no danger or edge to anything, and no originality. I'm glad someone out there still keeps it real, brother

My Mom born in 1950. Didn't like screaming. Even when I watched dbz. My wife loves Symbolic from Death, I think sexy and dance ability would help. I will write Dance Thrash riffs and get a turbo Era Rob style singer

You're right again.

I've just read through all the comments, and I don't think a single woman has posted (or if they did, they didn't specify), but as a woman who loves metal, I'm not sure you have the right end of the stick here. Or - possibly - your priorities about which women are missing from the metal fanbase are different than mine. You criticize modern metal musicians for being overly-technical nerds, which is somehow driving away women - but women can be nerds, too. Yes, there are fewer women who fit this profile than men (because - contrary to the popular "wisdom" of the day, men and women are different), but the women who enjoy the music the way it is are the women who *belong* in the audience - and the women who aren't in the audience aren't there because this is simply not their music. And. That's. Okay. Metal doesn't have to try to be something it isn't just to bring in people (male or female) that don't truly love the music at its core. That kind of shallow audience engagement is fickle and fleeting, and ultimately unfulfilling to the musician who's changed who he is, musically, just to try to grab the momentary attention of an audience that, in the end, isn't really there for the music anyway. It's a little like a guy who feels like he has to pretend to be someone he's not in order to get the girl; he can't pretend forever (or if he does, he'll live a pretty miserable, unfulfilled life), and if she's not actually all that into who he really is, then maybe - just maybe - she's not his person after all. That's what purposefully altering metal in order to attract a larger female audience would be like - and in the end, if that larger female audience doesn't genuinely enjoy the music for what it is, then maybe they're just not the audience for metal. And they don't have to be. Let metal be whatever it wants to be, and the women who connect with it will be here.

Was watching some Priest and Ozzy stuff from the Eighties today and there were loads of girls going mental in the audience...without phones too !

When has this ever not been the case? Shocking truth: men and women are different.

At the moment there's quite a healthy upswell of female involvement in the hardcore/punk scene you should check out if your not already aware. Bands like Brutus, Blood Command, Outright, Venom Prison, Escuela Grind, Spiritbox, Otoboke Beaver.... etc. Girls are coming back and their going hard. Keep making posts like this. I love hearing differences of opinion about music. Cheers!

What you mean chicks don't like it when you play lydian scales up and down through the laptop while staring at the guitar and being still on stage?

This man speaks the truth! NUUUURDZZ!!

Yep. Rap and Country have been sanitized too. Rap for over a decade. It seems it's what the establishment is very adept with lately. Horses for courses.

I use "so smooth and vanilla it resembles the vanilla paste fed to people with catastrophic jawbone injuries"

This video says more about manosphere internet culture than music.

I don't think you're wrong necessarily from a generic mass appeal standpoint, (although it's like Peter Griffin wearing a "No Fat Chicks" t-shirt) but this doesn't account for why there are so many ladies playing Metal these days. And a lot of them are really damn good like Nervosa and Crypta from Brazil, Lovebites and Nemophila spearheading a Metal movement in Japan, (NWOJHM?) tons of extreme bands in Europe like Konvent and Sisters of Suffocation making waves in Europe, many talented ladies playing indie death metal in the States like Suspended and Harlequin, and I haven't even touched on hundreds of female fronted bands, or female hard rock and punk bands everywhere. If the music is getting stale from dudes, maybe a change of management is in order. I'd rather hang out with those women at shows than the skanky groupies who don't give a damn about music.

Lol women seem to be loving nickleback again.

Oh Yeah Sheena Easton! Yummy!

Jam scene... Girls like to dance and dudes still get to be guitar nerds. Gotta get a groove and get those hips shaking. "If the dance floor aint packed, the check don't get cashed." - David Lee Roth.

i'd be interested to hear what women have to say about this

🍿

I'll also add musician-core, wankery guitar masturbation, djent riffs (equivalent of wankery guitar) like Dream Theater, Buckethead, Michael Angelo Batio, Animals As Leaders, Unprocessed is another thing women aren't into. Unfortunately this is a problem with modern metal & many of new modern metal bands think technical will impress people.

No groove. No girls.

My theory on why modern metal sucks is simple: Over technical solos with zero groove that don’t serve the song ❌ Cookie Monster vocals that sound the same for every song ❌ 8 string and up tuned down chug riffs that sound the same for every song ❌ Fix it with: Diverse vocals that are across the verbal spectrum ✅ Six string super strats that sound more like a brown appealing sound where maybe the gain is down a bit with proper tuning like drop D or half step down ✅ Riffs with some melody, grooves, and funk to them ✅ This gets fixed it would go a LONG way. Also maybe replace the breakdown with solos for some songs.

Now that Owen has a body like Adonis he shits on the rest of us obscure metal loving beta trolls😢.

Vagine and vanilla sausage pie is juxtaposition I could do without but made me laugh anyway. Now I want some sausages.

That’s why Danko Jones is such a ladies man. He just turns his amp on and turns it up, doesn’t care about much else.

Guthrie Govan, lack of musicality? What?

In the 90s the chicks in Porthcawl loved a bit of grunge. I really don't think its the "sensitivity" I think its that its just too fucking easy to record music over the last 15 to 20 years. Bands don't spend a few years rehearsing and playing shit gigs, before they get in the studio. So they've no idea what actually excites their audience and haven't realised that no one gives a fuck about the speaker in your cab or the year your Tubescreamer was made. Take a band like Brutus, they played Refused covers for years before they started really working on their own stuff. I've seen them live twice, they're fucking great. I've hung out with them and they're cool people, they talk a bit about gear but mainly about songs and bands. These days you'll have the lead guitarist who's nerded the fuck out learning to record well (nothing wrong with that) and will have written all the songs and recorded the album before he starts teaching his mates to play so he can form a band.

Wait technology is NOT the same as song writing? Holy sht!

Yo you in the wrong part of the world or something. Here in Boston Grrls rule this shit. My sister is a beast. She sings for D-Sagawa (raw fucking cannibalism) and the Lousy (thrash) I definitely see your points tho. I fucking love Yoko. She invented Noise core way before 7mon did

Quite possibly the most based video ever made

Did the one female at rock shows leave? Damn the shows that are all sausage no taco lol.

We still got Steel Panther

CRABS IN A BARREL! HAHAH PERFECT

5:26 Cute how Rock even now gets a bad wrap for adopting a certain look and image rather than the actual misogynists that you just mentioned. Personally I never enjoyed Rap, for example, because of the way they treat women. Rock is more about harmless fun as to where Rap is about owning the "bitches".

Billy Strings is a better rock star than any current nerd rock/metal coming from a parents basement near me you. I automatically didn’t like Post Malone whenever my daughter got into him and then when I saw him with a guitar I hated it even more, but I found out he’s more authentic and he “qualifies” more than people in the rock genre. Lady Gaga is a better rock star than most as well. The best rock stars we have today aren’t playing rock but they grew up on rock and it’s influences leak into their style and sound. Women loved hair metal because it acknowledged them they were the subject and it was sexy and had swagger.

Good video, always enjoy your vids. Disagree with your premise in this video, the reason why women (& men) don't like modern metal/rock is because most of it sounds like rubbish. Sure lots of talent but can't write a good song to save their life. Also the industry just doesn't care after Napster, they're just scooping up artists who have the biggest social media following, couldn't care less about the actual music they're writing.

i think bands in general are a thing of the past. it's all about personalities now, like post malone and some depressed teenage rappers. and like what some other guy said, to the youth, rock music sounds dated "what my dad likes", so they are put off by it.