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Male Music Artists, Rolling Stone's Lists, and Darwin's Theory of Sexual Selection
Every decade, countless new acts emerge, create new genres, and attract legions of youthful diehard followers. Rolling Stone magazine regularly publishes lists of “Greatest Artists of All Time”, "Greatest Guitar Players", etc.
- Who are the judges? Mainly middle-aged male music writers and critics.
- What musical acts do they select? Mainly those who were big during the judges’ youth.
- What is the breakdown by sex of the acts selected? (Have a look at some of the lists.)
Darwin’s theory of sexual selection predicts both the preponderance of male judges and the preponderance of male artists. As people grow up and get married, the music of the present assumes less and less interest and importance, compared with the music of adolescence and young adulthood. For most, by middle age, the music of the present day—“the crappy stuff them young ‘uns are listening to”—sounds weird and definitely inferior to all those “great wonderful songs of my youth.”
Yet new musical genres that emerge every decade or two, seemingly like clockwork, somehow manage to stick around. Generation after generation.