100 years, 100 moments: How women shaped a century of music

To commemorate Women’s History Month, World Cafe has been looking back on a century’s worth of music history. Every week in March, we’ve pinpointed distinct moments of every year from the past 100 years, a quarter century at a time.

We started out in the early 20th century (1925-1949), when women like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Maybelle Carter and Marian Anderson opened doors for the future success of women in music.

Then, from 1950 to 1974, we encountered trailblazers like The Shirelles, Dolly Parton and Wendy Carlos. Last week, we looked back at the unprecedented success of musicians like Whitney Houston and Janet Jackson.

Today, we’re wrapping things up with the first stretch of the 21st century, largely defined by the rise of reality television, the internet and the advent of more easily accessible music production technology.

2000: An 18-year-old rising star from Kentwood, La., named Britney Spears wraps up her second tour with a televised set in Hawaii in support of her massively successful debut and sophomore albums. Destiny’s Child, burgeoning teen phenomenons in their own right, will open the show.

2001: Judge Marilyn Hall Patel, of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, rules in favor of A&M Records, in addition to 18 other record companies, against Napster. The injunction would quickly end the peer-to-peer file sharing service, which had become an easy way for people to share MP3 files online. Similar websites will follow.

That same year, Natalie Imbruglia’s White Lilies Island becomes the first major label CD release to have copy protection, which will prevent people from playing the CD on their personal computers.

2002: A 20-year-old singer from Fort Worth, Texas, Kelly Clarkson, wins the inaugural season of a new televised singing competition called American Idol. The show’s unparalleled success will reshape American entertainment: Reality TV will flourish, and a flurry of copycat shows will follow. The televised competition format will produce stars like Jennifer Hudson, Miranda Lambert and Susan Boyle.

2003: The Chicks speak out

Riding a decade-long country music boom led by women like Shania Twain, Faith Hill and LeAnn Rimes, The Chicks are in the midst of their own star turn as the Dallas group is quickly becoming one of the best-selling female bands of all time.

On March 10, 2003, during The Chicks’ first show in London on a blockbuster world tour, lead singer Natalie Maines speaks out against the U.S. invasion of Iraq, expressing shame that President George W. Bush is from the band’s home state of Texas.

The backlash in the U.S. is immediate and fierce: The Chicks will be blacklisted by conservative fans and country radio, and their record sales and radio spins will greatly suffer.

Three years later, in 2006, The Chicks will release a response in the form of a song called “Not Ready to Make Nice” and an album called Taking the Long Way Home. The album will win five Grammy Awards, but it will not be as commercially successful as the work they released before taking a firm, political stance.

The country music sphere’s retribution will seemingly ripple far beyond The Chicks’ career. The number of female-led songs featured on the yearly list of top 100 country songs will drop for many years after Maines spoke her mind, The Guardian reported in 2015.

2004: Disney Channel producers begin the casting search for the lead role in a new TV series about a “pint-sized pop star” who leads a double life as a regular kid. A 13-year-old girl from Tennessee named Miley Cyrus will be cast in the half-hour comedy, Hannah Montana.

Years after becoming one of the network’s biggest franchises, media scholars will write about the show’s impact on young girls and the early proliferation of celebrity culture. Cyrus will become one of the biggest pop stars of the 21st century, according to Billboard.

2005: British rapper and record producer M.I.A. releases her debut album, Arular. The record’s inventive mix of hip-hop, grime and electro-clash — combined with her striking DIY aesthetic — will influence musicians like Nelly Furtado and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke. Songs like “Galang” and “Sunshowers” will be among the first to become popular on a new video-sharing platform called YouTube.

2006: Mary J. Blige‘s “Be Without You” tops Billboard’s R&B chart for 15 straight weeks. They will deem it “the most successful R&B song of all time.”

2007: Marin Alsop begins her tenure as the music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. She is the first woman ever selected to conduct a major American orchestra.

2008: English singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse wins big at the Grammy’s, taking home five awards for her sophomore album. One of the best-selling records of all time, Back to Black will popularize the British soul sound of the aughts, creating a blueprint for future acts like Adele and Duffy.

2009: Lady Gaga shocks the crowd at the MTV Video Music Awards when she suddenly starts gushing blood mid-way through her performance of “Paparazzi.”

Later that evening, Beyoncé — winner of the night’s video of the year award — will invite Taylor Swift onstage to reclaim her moment, after the 20-year-old country singer’s own acceptance speech was cut short by Kanye West.

2010: Trinidadian rapper Nicki Minaj releases her debut album, Pink Friday. Minaj will eventually become the best-selling female rapper of all time.

2011: PJ Harvey‘s eighth studio album, Let England Shake, wins the Mercury Prize, making the English singer-songwriter the only artist to win the award twice.

2012: Following their performance of “The Boys” on The Late Show with David Letterman, Girls’ Generation become the first Korean musical act to perform on syndicated television in the U.S. In a decade, K-pop groups like BLACKPINK will not only cross over into the U.S. market but dominate it, in terms of streaming, touring and more.

2013: As part of her senior project at State University of New York at Purchase, Mitski releases Retired from Sad, New Career in Business. The record will feature a 60-piece student orchestra and a music video for every track.

2014: The mysterious English producer SOPHIE makes her live debut in the U.S., performing “Hey QT” at South by Southwest with PC Music founder A.G. Cook and performance artist Hayden Dunham. Sophie’s strange and synthetic take on pop music will pioneer the hyperpop genre that becomes popular in the late 2010s.

2015: Canadian singer Carly Rae Jepsen releases her critically acclaimed third studio album. Emotion will earn Jepsen a fiercely loyal fanbase, and it will spark the creation of one of Reddit’s largest music-themed subreddits.

2016: The Metropolitan Opera in New York presents its production of “L’Amour de loin,” written by acclaimed Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. It is only the second opera composed by a woman to be presented by The Met, following Ethel Smyth‘s “Der Wald” in 1903.

2017: A 16-year-old singer-songwriter from Los Angeles named Billie Eilish releases her debut EP, called dont smile at me. Produced alongside her brother, Finneas, the project will influence legions of bedroom pop producers.

2018: Spanish singer-songwriter Rosalía records tracks for her upcoming sophomore album in producer El Guincho’s apartment in Barcelona. The flamenco-inspired album, which began as a school project, will help Rosalía break through in the U.S. and Latin America, eventually making her one of the most successful Spanish singers of all time.

2019: Megan Thee Stallion releases her second EP, Tina Snow. One of its singles, “Big Ole Freak,” will be the Houston rapper’s first charting song. In a few years, she will become a major streaming force.

2020: New York City-born musician Fiona Apple releases her fifth studio album, Fetch the Bolt Cutters. Created in isolation with homemade percussive instruments, the record will be one of many musical projects emblematic of the COVID-19 pandemic.

2021: Rihanna, the world’s wealthiest woman musician at the time, is bestowed with the highest honor given by her home country of Barbados: the Order of National Heroes.

2022: Five years after releasing her generation-defining debut album, SZA releases SOS. The album will break the record of the largest streaming week for an R&B album, and it will top the charts for several months.

2023: Lana Del Rey, in full uniform, is seen pouring coffee for customers at a Waffle House in Florence, Ala. A few months later, her ninth studio album, Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, will be nominated for album of the year at the Grammy Awards.

2024: The aggressive shade of green on the cover of Charli xcx‘s sixth studio album goes viral over the summer, appearing in countless memes, advertisements and political campaigns.

The popularity of Brat green, with a hex code of #8ACE00, will help the 32-year-old English singer’s album break into the mainstream, garnering acclaim from critics, multiple awards and a remix album featuring Lorde, Robyn, Ariana Grande, Tinashe, Kesha, Caroline Polachek and more.

2025: Finally, Beyoncé wins the Grammy Award for album of the year for her eighth studio album, Cowboy Carter. Doechii, Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan also take home wins.