An Army of She

The lineage of fiercely independent solo females that leads to Natasha Khan is a long one, but here are a few of our favourites.

-

KATE BUSH

Disenchanted with safe female artists like Carole King, Kate Bush wanted to push the bar without sacrificing her music’s mainstream appeal. This approach bore fruit when in 1978, aged just 19, Bush became the first woman to reach number one in the UK chart with a self-written song, Wuthering Heights. Although that is still her signature track, she continued to make challenging music and remains a huge influence on successive waves of female performers.

BJORK

Despite making music throughout the 1980s in an assortment of Icelandic bands, it was when Björk Guðmundsdóttir moved to London and teamed up with Massive Attack producer Nellee Hooper that she scored her breakthrough with Debut. Since then she has turned her utterly unique soprano to countless styles and sounds, from the chilly electronica of Homogenic to the a capella tapestry of Medúlla, while being an outspoken critic of American foreign policy and China’s treatment of Tibet.

PJ HARVEY

Polly Jean Harvey can quite easily be described as England’s most important female solo artist of the past two decades. From her 1992 debut Dry onwards, she has been responsible for a series of critically acclaimed LPs, without a trace of compromise. A serial collaborator with the likes of Mick Harvey, Thom Yorke and Mark Lanegan, Harvey recently scored another success in A Woman A Man Walked By, in tandem with long-term cohort John Parish.

M.I.A.

The music of Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam mirrors her displaced, cross-cultural background. Son of a Tamil activist, the girl who would become M.I.A. moved between England, Sri Lanka and India in her early years, before studying art in London and eventually settling in Brooklyn. Her 2005 debut Arular is a potent mix of hip-hop, punk and politics, and she followed that with the musical melting pot that is Kala two years later. M.I.A. recently hit the mainstream with her work on the soundtrack to the Oscar-laden Slumdog Millionaire.