Looking at the year-to-date singles charts for 2024, the term “boys’ club” comes to mind, with all the Zachs and Bensons and Teddys and Shaboozeys and Postys and Morgans.
But the past summer was a very different story at Universal Music Publishing, whose female writers and artists carried the season: Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” and “Please, Please Please,” Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” and “Lunch,” Taylor Swift’s “Fortnight” and “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” SZA’s “Saturn,” Ariana Grande’s “We Can’t Be Friends” and “That Boy Is Mine,” Ice Spice’s “Phat Butt,” Lorde’s feature on Charli XCX’s “Girl, So Confusing” remix, Megan Thee Stallion’s Mamushi” and critical favorites like Clairo, Gracie Abrams and even the most female adjacent writer-producer in the game, Jack Antonoff. Along with hits from Kendrick Lamar, Eminem, Feid and writers on Post Malone’s “I Had Some Help,” Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song” and Hozier’s “Too Sweet,” it’s helped UMPG to top the second quarter of 2024 in Billboard’s Publisher’s Quarterly.
“I do think we’ve had a female-driven summer, there’s a lot going on societally,” says UMPG executive VP and co-head of U.S. A&R Jennifer Knoepfle (pronounced “K’nopefull,” rhyming with “hopeful”), who joined the company in 2022 after working with UMPG chairman-CEO Jody Gerson for nearly half of her 13 years at Sony, and brought Antonoff with her.
“Nobody really knows what’s going on [in society and the world], but also there’s this beautiful freedom in the business right now that’s allowing people to just be who they want to be, and that empowerment is spreading. I think that might be one reason why we’re seeing so many female artists explode at the same time. It’s like the door is open to new ideas, new artists, to new stars — who’s going to do it? [The above artists] are all powerful, but in different ways. Like Billie’s on her third album, she’s discovering and exploring who she is, and she’s airing it publicly. People are deeply interested and invested in that.”
Some of that spirit also found an embodiment in Charli XCX’s Lorde-featuring remix of “Girl, So Confusing,” where they basically hashed out some shared misperceptions and misconceptions in real time — which is nothing new on social media and reality TV, but relatively uncommon on a remix.
“I signed Lorde earlier this year and that was our first release with her, which is obviously incredibly exciting,” says Knoepfle, who has also signed or works closely with Gracie Abrams, Clairo, Lucy Dacus, Maggie Rogers, Danny L. Harle, Dan Wilson and others.
“That remix sort of kicked off ‘Brat Summer’ in earnest: It might have been the first time you saw two women airing their concerns and questions and doubts together in a song — I think it was quite revolutionary and a very real exploration of what was going on in their minds, and how they interpreted a situation.
As a woman, I’ve been in that position with my friends over the years, and I think women do have a wonderful ability to have those conversations, sharing the thoughts instead of holding them in, like ‘I have your side of story, I’m going to tell you my side, let’s clear the air and set the record straight,’ and it’s kind of happening for all of us to see. I think that’s why people really related to it — especially, maybe, from Ella, because we hadn’t necessarily seen her be vulnerable like that.
“Hopefully we’ll see more of that — like, ‘Let’s work it out on the remix.’”
An equally empowered but very different perspective comes from Sabrina Carpenter, whose album is filled with the kind of sassy, sexy and strong perspectives from her “Espresso” and “Please Please Please” that are also at times vulnerable and insecure — her “Short n’ Sweet” album is a definitive coming-of-age statement for the 25-year-old former Disney star.
