Andy Mooney, the CEO of Fender guitars has spoken out about the increase in young girls learning guitar.
Earlier this year, Fender revealed that 50% of new guitar players in the US and UK are females. He has now revealed that this isn’t just a passing phase, but the interest from girls in playing guitar has actually continued to grow.
“Women’s interest in the guitar has sustained and has actually grown,” Mooney revealed to NME. “A lot of those women who first picked up the acoustic guitar and mastered it then went ‘OK, now I want an electric guitar’. The first couple of years I was here, the acoustic guitar was growing quicker but now it’s flipped.”
He later went on to credit the growing interest in guitar from young women to an increase in female role models in the music industry.
“I was reading a great article earlier this year where they interviewed Liz Phair,” said Mooney. “Back in the day, her label was telling her to wear less clothes, look cute, and it was more about the female form than the music. There were very few female artists that she could share a stage with. Now she says that she can go to so many more major festivals and see female artists headlining, and in some cases showcases of all female artists.
He continued: “It’s even more in South East Asia. We haven’t conducted the research but anecdotally we think that as many as 70% of all new guitar-buyers are women. That’s because of things like K-Pop and J-Pop. When you listen to bands like Scandal, they’re not unaccomplished musicians and they’re playing a really broad range of genres to a really high standard.”
So basically, and we knew this already… girls rock too.
