ABSTRACT
Far from the ‘Perfect Duet’ sung by Beyoncé and Ed Sheeran in 2017, a quantification of gender on the annual Billboard charts from 1955 to 2017 shows that the 21st century has seens a reversal of the gains made by women in the latter decades of the 20th century. However, the figures also show that in periods when female acts have declined, mixed-gender acts have risen in number. A social exploration of male-female groupings over the same period shows a shift away from ‘family’ groups to a kaleidoscope of ‘collaborations’ between individuals in recent years. This process also involves the increased prominence of the producer of a song as a named performer, with singers being reduced to ‘featured’ vocalists. This shift in song attribution is related to the way in which men form ‘fratriarchal’ networks around song composition and production, leaving women as outsiders to be invited in.
