The last couple of years have seen the worldwide music scene introduced to a bevy of new female artists. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t an issue. I love a lot of interesting female artists and don’t have any opposition to more making their way onto my iPod. There’s no doubt that compared to, say, 5 years ago, there are a lot more promising women putting records out. Thing is, it’s starting to become a little difficult to differentiate all of the ‘quirky’ women that are dominating the charts – lets not forget the saying “too much of a good thing can be bad”. One thing that seems to be common to these artists though is the amount of pre-release hype that surrounds them, which isn’t always for the best.

Take Ellie Goulding as an example. I only listened to Ellie’s debut ‘Lights’ (2010) a couple of days ago, but had known of her name for a couple of months.

Can you see the lights? They're so preeety...

Ellie was hyped as being the ‘next big thing’ to hit 2010, even before she put out an album! Now… well the critics have been lukewarm on her debut effort (at best), and while I’m certainly not disliking ‘Lights’ it’s certainly not as earth-shattering as BBC’s polls would have had people believe last year. So was it really worth all the hype then?

Florence Welch (she of the Machine) got similar hype before the release of ‘Lungs’ (2009), but in her case, she’s more than lived up to the expectations. However, Bat For Lashes, yet another female singer-songwriter ingenue who captured the attention of critics, didn’t get such a overwhelming response, despite being on the same artistic wavelength of Florence. Siobhan Donaghy, more than capable of holding up the “new Kate Bush” mantle that all female artists must receive without exception, completely flopped…twice. So obviously, commercial success hasn’t been guaranteed for all of these women. A shame, since Ms. Donaghy’s ‘Ghosts’ (2007) is much more interesting than Ms. Goulding’s ‘Lights’. Right time, right place perhaps?

Apparently there's honey in that teacup. Honey for the bees...(Siobhan Donaghy 'Ghosts')

So, to sum up so far, a) alternative-pop by chicks is cool again for the first time in about 15 years, b) the numerous ‘quirky’ women that have been hitting the music scene in recent years  have done so with mostly varying degrees of commercial success, but usually unanimous critical success, c) not all of the artists truly live up to their hype, and d) every new female artist MUST be compared to Kate Bush, despite often only having a passing resemblance and never having heard anything other than ‘Wuthering Heights’.  There’s no doubt that all music goes through these ‘phases’; remember the indie band explosion a couple of years ago that gave us the likes of Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand? Thing is, when so many similar artists start to hit the scene at the same time it becomes hard to know which are actually worth the grandiose hype, especially when someone arguably more talented may get overlooked in the process.

Did someone say my name? (Kate Bush)

I think our age of instant musical gratification and Lady Gaga it’s easy for people to go nuts as soon as they hear someone making music that a) uses synths b) has interesting lyrics (Gaga doesn’t fit here very often at the moment) and c) involves the person wearing odd clothing for videos, but seriously what kind of critics harp on about an artist without having heard their album first?! I suppose my point at the end of all this is that, like all other trends, this current one will end too. I’ll be interested to see which of the artists actually last and those that haven’t been successful might eventually get the attention of the public.