In this paper, we examine the gender-related trends on the Billboard Top 40 charts between 1997 and 2007. Building on similar statistical studies (Wells, "Women in Popular Music," "Women on the Pop Charts," "Nationality") our study aims to answer two questions: first, does the number of hit songs by male artists continue to exceed the number of hit songs by female artists as we move from the late 1990s into the early postmillennium; and, second, are women's chart success rates in the late 1990s and the early post-millennium as precarious as they were in the 1980s and the early to mid-1990s? 1 Taking frequency and success score distributions as our indicators, we conclude that the Top 40 charts continue to be characterized by considerable gender inequality.

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Alternative female artists PJ Harvey and Björk negotiate themes of embodied female subjectivity not only as cultural concepts, but also as musical forms; their lyrical themes are crafted within a comprehensive network of creative textual and musical expression. This music challenges the analyst to explore systematically and describe coherently the links between the lived and embodied experiences developed in the song lyrics and the sonic and expressive elements in the music, in other words to explore the links between social and musical practice. This paper develops a music-analytic method for the interpretation of the dynamic musical processes that are engaged in a socially constituted artistic expression. Our objective is to illuminate embodied dimensions of meaning through the interpretation of the materials and strategies of lyrics and music.

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