Ray Waddell’s Unconventional Wisdom: Women Headliners Breaking Records – But Still Breaking Into The Boys’ Club

Unconventional Wisdom was created to examine whether some of the prevailing legacy thought around the touring business would hold up under scrutiny backed by the wealth of available data that is the 40-plus year history of the Pollstar charts. In general, some of it bears out and some of it doesn’t.

For this month’s annual Women Of Live issue, we look at the viability of female headliners; while it may seem outdated in 2025, for decades conventional wisdom held that women in general were rarely major, sustainable, consistent factors as arena-level headliners. There’s little doubt that male-

led acts have always dominated the ticket sales charts. The biggest bands in history—The Rolling Stones, U2, Bruce Springsteen, Eagles, Grateful Dead, Dave Matthews Band, Bon Jovi, on and on, were decidedly masculine, in biological terms, anyway. In the 1970s through the turn of this century, major female headliners have existed—Madonna, Tina Turner, Stevie Nicks, Celine Dion, Cher, and more recently Beyoncé, P!NK, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift, among them, but were more of an anomaly than common. Most, but not all, would be considered pop acts, with rock, country and hip-hop being overwhelmingly male-dominated.

So does this conventional wisdom about the consistent viability, or lack thereof, of female headliners bear out in a contemporary concert business?

In short, and resoundingly, “no.”

In the post-shutdown era of 2021-25, a handy, if not totally representative, way to analyze current business trends, women post up well. Five female artists—Taylor Swift, P!NK, Beyoncé, Karol G and Madonna—have posted over $200 million in ticket sales to Pollstar, and an even dozen have checked in at more than $100 million gross.

And one of those artists completely blew up the paradigm of what is possible for a single tour, not just for female artists, but for ALL artists. With her blockbuster “Eras Tour,” Swift set an all-time record gross of more than $2 billion in 2023—24, leaving in her wake such traditionally dominant alpha touring acts as U2, the Stones, Springsteen, Eagles, and more recent additions to the upper echelon like Ed Sheeran and Coldplay.

When we get a bit more granular in terms of genre, some of the traditional boys’ club tendencies do still exist. In country, Shania Twain, Carrie Underwood and Miranda Lambert
are the primary headliners over an extended period, and rock, somewhat harder to define these days, still is dominated by the bros. That may be changing, as some believe the recent rock renaissance may provide opportunities for female-oriented artists as part of an overall injection of energy in the genre.

“Yeah, I would agree that there’s an opportunity here for women in rock, as they are part of a newer generation of rock bands that are emerging and relevant,” said Ken Fermaglich, UTA agent for Guns N’ Roses and Paramore, the latter an arena-level headliner fronted by Hayley Williams.

“Their voices and songwriting fit in perfectly now more than ever with the rock ecosystem,” Fermaglich, who will take part in a “Rock Is Back!” panel at Pollstar Live! on April 16 in L.A., said of the current state of women in rock.

It’s not like rock has been devoid of women. The Runaways, for all the scandal, including serious criminal accusations against their late manager, were both groundbreaking and radical. The reverberation of the explosion of the Runaways, formed in 1975 at a time with girls with guitars were never seen, has been even more impactful. Singer Cherie Currie found success in film and TV and briefly continued in music, while guitarist Lita Ford evolved into a metal queen and Joan Jett became an arena headliner and, with her band The Blackhearts, was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame in 2015.

Before the Runaways, there was the OG of women in rock, Detroit’s own Suzi Quatro, who started out playing bass in an all-female group the Pleasure Seekers, formed by her older sister Patti in the mid-‘60s. Now probably best known to Boomers as Leather Tuscadero on “Happy Days,” Quatro had a string of hits, mostly in foreign markets, in the early ‘70s, and still tours today as a revered “founding mother” in rock.

These days, several women are kicking up dust in rock, including Lzzy Hale, who fronts Halestorm and rocks as brutally hard as any male counterpart today or previous. Emily Armstrong is mightily fronting Linkin Park in the wake of the tragic 2017 passing of Chester Bennington and they’ll play Dodger Stadium and Wembley Stadium this summer. And Nirvana, in many people’s estimation, never sounded better than they did at FireAid with Jett, Kim Gordon, St. Vincent and Violet Grohl fronting the band.

Some of today’s most compelling young artists, who speak volumes about the state of artist discovery in today’s digital universe, are young women. Last year was a banner year with a bumper crop of young female talent who seemed to become cultural icons overnight: Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, Charli xcx, Tate McRae and Doechii among others breaking through in spectacular fashion and rendering tours and festival slots as underplays. And there’s sure be more this year with artists like Gracie Abrams, Lola Young, Raye, Tyla, Celeste and Lucy Dacus tapped for big things ahead.

UTA’s Fermaglich added that this opportunity transcends the artists onstage and is even more evident in the actual business of live, where women are everywhere and more are poised to enter the arena, so to speak.

“Having just spoken to a music business class at University of Texas, Austin, I can tell you, females want into the business and are eager to be occupying jobs in all aspects of the concert world,” he said. “Nobody cares if it’s a male or a female. We just want people who do the work well.”

I can speak personally about the rise of women among the ranks of influential live music business professionals. When I first started programming the Billboard Touring Conference in 2003, nearly every panel would mostly be made up of six white dudes pontificating on ticket prices and the impact of industry consolidation on the business. These days, as chief content director for Pollstar Live!, the largest gathering of live entertainment professionals in the world, I am happy to report that women make up half or more of speakers, and when a panel populated completely with women is presented–not an unheard of occurrence–no one bats an eye, and that’s panels to discuss overall industry topics, not “women in live” topics.

While we still have a lot of ground to make up in overall diversity in the live biz, it is safe to say that women in live have definitely arrived and are in many ways dominating. Cool.