GIRLS ROCK!!! The 10 Best Female-Fronted (or all girl) bands ever.

10. The Donnas

Originally a bratty girl-punk band with a Ramones-indebted image (All the girls initially went by the moniker "Donna"), over the course of about a decade together, the Donnas have become a bad-ass cock-rock band without cocks. Their music often flips rock and roll cliches on their heads simply because of the female perspective. Singer Brett Anderson has more balls than most men in the current rock scene, and she's not afraid to get bitchy with horndogs at gigs, or their jealous girlfriends.


9. The Distillers

Although they split up after only three albums, The Distillers, led by Aussie bombshell Brodie Dalle made a huge splash with a grittier take on the early 00's pop-punk explosion. While the boys in bands like New Found Glory, the Ataris and The Starting Line were busy singing about high-school crushes, Dalle and CO penned barn-burners like "City Of Angels" a snarling screed about the dirty underbelly of Los Angeles. The band turned toward a more alt-rock sound on their final album "Coral Fang", earning the band a number of comparisons to popular 90's girl-grunge band Hole.
Dalle currently fronts sleaze-rock band/de-facto solo project, Spinerette.

8. Tsunami Bomb

While they might not be a household name, Tsunami Bomb paved the way for female-fronted punk bands like the Distillers and Tat. The band broke up in 2005, and saw a lot of line-up changes. What never changed was the groups penchant for machine gun drumming and frantic guitars, with firebrand vocals courtesy of long-running vocalist Emily Whitehurst.

7. No Doubt

Survivors of the Orange County Ska scene, No Doubt outlasted their peers with a flair for pop-hooks and an overriding new-wave influence that was more their speed anyway. The band went on hiatus in late 2004, as front-woman Gwen Stefani focused on her solo album and starting a family with (former?)Bush vocalist, Gavin Rossdale. The band played a string of tour dates with Paramore in 2009, and has been hard at work on a new album since May of 2010, the new album is expected sometime late this year or early 2011.

6. The Dresden Dolls


The Dresden Dolls caused a great stir in the indie scene when they debuted in 2001 with a decidedly theatrical and raucous sound the group called "cabaret punk". Made up of vocalist/pianist Amanda Palmer and drummer/multi-instrumentalist Brian Viglione, the group developed a reputation for smart, bawdy lyrics, gender bending and menacing, yet celebratory, live performances. The band flirted with mainstream success on their second album, Yes Virginia, released in 2006. They toured with much-maligned emo-dance-cabaret pretty boys, Panic! at The Disco, earning some backlash from small minded idiots who couldn't see how perfect the bands fit with each other.
The band went on hiatus in 2008, and Palmer released a solo album "Who Killed Amanda Palmer". A reunion tour was announced in September of 2010, but the future of the band is still uncertain.

5. Ladytron


Ladytron debuted at the dawn of the 21st century with an appropriately retro-futuristic, slightly creepy sound. The combination of sci-fi synths, dance beats and eerie female vocals courtesy of two sirens: Helen Marnie and Mira Aroyo was exactly the kind of thing the world of electronic music needed. The band became ragingly popular in England and Europe, but their climb in the states has been considerably slower. The band has toured with Bjork, Nine Inch Nails and Goldfrapp and produced remixes for dozens of popular UK and ¨US artists. The band is currently recording their fifth studio album.

4. Hole

You might not know it to look at her now, but Courtney Love was once grunge's great white hope. Kurt Cobain might have been the poster child for grimy rock with an undeniable pop sensibility, but after his 1994 suicide, Hole was expected to rise to the occasion and fill the shoes of the biggest band in the world.
Love seemed poised to accept the crown when Hole released, "Live through This" it's major label debut, in 1994, months after Cobain's death. Love was a sexy, opinionated rock goddess with a bitchin' back-up band. However, internal issuses and the death of Hole's original bassist nearly derailed the band. By the time they released "Celebrity Skin" ,in 1997, Love was beginning to gain credibility as an actress but Hole was hanging on by a thread. The band broke up in 1999, and Love's professional and personal life went to hell.
Love reformed the band in 2010, but with none of it's original members (save herself). She has been through a maelstrom of bad press, drug relapses and professional disputes, though in recent months she seems to have shaped up a bit. Courtney Love has fallen pretty far, but part of me hopes some of her old genius remains.

3. Garbage

Garbage was inescapable on modern rock stations in the late 90s. The band, made up of mega producers Butch Vig, Duke Erikson and Steve Marker and scottish sex-bomb Shirley Manson took grunge to it's logical pop extreme. The music was a mish-mash of pop, punk, alternative, noise, hip hop and electronica that many bands without Garbage's talent would fail miserably at. The band rode it's self-titled debut and it's follow up, "Version 2.0" to mainstream success even as rock began to get out-shined by pop and rap music. Unfortunately, the band saw a huge drop in it's popularity in the new millennium, thanks to the tepid response to "Beautiful Garbage" the band's third album. After 2005's "Bleed Like Me" the band had seemingly run out of gas, despite that album's focus on a leaner production and a more "authentic" sound that was intended to win back some fans who were turned off by the last album's overly glossy finish. The band went on hiatus in 2006 and Manson focused on a solo album that never materialized. Just a few months ago the band announced it was reuniting with a brand new album in the works. This might actually be the ideal time for a garbage comeback, since their brand of edgy electro-alterna-pop would fit in nicely with what's happening in popular rock right now.

2. Siouxsie and the Banshees


I almost went with Blondie for number 2, but the Banshees have had a much further-reaching influence. The band burst out of the British punk scene around the same time as the Sex Pistols. But Siouxsie and the guys were of a different kind than those infamous, foul-mouthed, rabble rousers. There was something darker and sexier about them, and they soon broke away from the punk scene to plant the seeds of goth and post-punk. Even with shifting lineups, the band came to define the goth sound in the early eighties, inspiring the likes of Sisters of Mercy and The Cure. Even after their heyday the band continued to inspire groups like Portishead and Massive Attack as well as pop-rock groups like Garbage. Even today, Siouxsie and the Banshee's influence can be heard in the music of bands like The Birthday Massacre, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Horrors and pretty much every other run-of-the-mill goth band not terribly interested in vinyl pants and florescent fake dreadlocks.



1. Joan Jett and the Blackhearts


Although the Runaways had more punk cred, Joan Jett's second band was a far more polished and confident sounding rock band. Hits like "Bad Reputation" and "I Love Rock and Roll" are so popular, your grandma probably knows the words. A rotating cast of musicians has backed Joan Jett since the band's inception, but her throaty, sassy vocal style has been a mainstay. Not to mention she's always had an ear for really catchy lyrics. These days Jett still tours and records music both as a solo artist and with the current incarnation of the Blackhearts. She is a breast cancer survivor and thanks to a life free of drugs and hard living, she looks better than some musicians half her age. A stint on the warped tour in 2005 showed she could still command a crowd and introduced a generation of pop punk fangirls to the real deal.
Jett was a trailblazer for women in music (not to discount the contributions of the other Runaways), without her, most of the bands on this list would not be here today.