Meet The Female Songwriters Who Are Changing The Face Of Pop Music

Tayla reveals: “[There are times when] I’m like, ‘yo, this singer must have some old asses writing their stuff, because I would never say this’. 

“The art of songwriting is the ability to take this artist’s emotions and identity, and most songwriters, I don’t think that they do that. I think that most songwriters are just giving away little pieces of themselves, rather than taking these pieces that an artist has given them and making it great.” 

However, although this increase in women becoming involved in songwriting might make it look like the music industry is becoming more inclusive, there’s still a huge gender imbalance, with roles in technical areas still largely falling to men.

Emily explains: “We’re always talking about why there aren’t more female producers and engineers, and the only thing I can come up with is that it’s a boys’ club, and there’s no examples of females, so you don’t even think about getting into production because who are you looking towards?”

One of the women hoping to change this is Kamille, who earned her first credit as a producer on the most recent Little Mix album, LM5. 

“Honestly, there’s so much testosterone in a studio session, it’s crazy,” Kamille says. “You’ll have a male producer, a male engineer, and that’s one of the reasons that I started learning how to produce myself.”

In fact, Kamille says that she’d already been producing for some time before she even realised that what she was contributing was actually production, admitting she hadn’t initially been confident enough to speak out about it because of the lack of women in that role.

“Unfortunately, I do think [producing is considered a man’s role],” she laments. “And that’s just because of the way it’s been.

“It’s not men’s fault. I don’t think they’re doing it on purpose and making us feel like we can’t be producers, I just think it’s what everyone is used to, and over time things can change, if enough women stand up and start learning how to produce, it’ll change.

“It’s not even a financial thing… some of the things I’m producing now, I don’t even want the financial credit, I don’t want it for that, I want to be proud to say, when I look at the credits, it says ‘Kamille was a producer’.”

“A lot of people just don’t do things because they don’t know that it can be done,” Tayla states. “Or they hear that it’s too hard to do. But the more that we allow these stories to come to the front, the more you will find the next Dianne Warren, the faster you’ll find the next great songwriters of our generation.

“Once you’ve been told that something is impossible, you’re a lot less likely to [try it], right? So now it’s our duty to affect the next 20 or 40 or 50 years of music, by telling people ‘hey this is what’s going on behind the scenes, and it’s possible for you to be a part of that change’.”