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Tuned In

On memorizing setlists and the “dude way of thinking”
Does knowing the lyrics really prove my fan status?

It was Feb. 20 and I was on an important search. The big hunt started on setlist.fm, where I typed in “Stand Atlantic,” hoping to find the setlist for the Australian band’s tour with Mod Sun that had started in Sacramento, Calif. the evening before. All I could find were sets from recent tours – many of which I had already studied weeks prior while preparing to see the pop punk group play in Toronto on Mar. 7. I moved to Twitter next, typing in various combinations of “Stand Atlantic setlist,” “STAT set list,” “@standatlantic set.” Nothing turned up beyond other fans tweeting into the void, looking for the same information. As a last resort, I checked the band’s tagged photos on Instagram. I swiped through strangers’ posts, looking for even the shortest video clips that could tell me what songs the band had played. Confirmed: “Lavender Bones,” “Jurassic Park,” “Hair Out,” “Wavelength,” “Pity Party,” and “Blurry.” I added the six songs to a Spotify playlist, which I continued to update as I checked my sources daily. Once the setlist was complete, it was time to rehearse. I began routinely listening to the songs with lyrics open.

This was my usual pre-concert routine.

A week after I began my search, I interviewed Gillian Turnbull, a popular music instructor at Toronto Metropolitan University. We were chatting about fangirls as part of my research for Alternative Motive’s first “Backstage” feature (which is available to read below). Near the end of our interview, we moved away from my pre-planned questions and talked about our own listening habits. I told her about my recent setlist searching as a way to prepare for upcoming concerts.

“That’s such a dude way of thinking,” Turnbull told me.

I had never really thought about my pre-concert behaviour, beyond it being a silly quirk resulting from the crossover between my anxiety and fandom. I started to wonder if there was more to it.

“[Men] grow up and there's a kind of jock and sports culture, and men who don't get to be a part of that will often turn to something considered nerdy – one of which might be music,” explained Turnbull. “So they learn all these facts so that they can come armed with knowledge and that's their way of proving their masculinity.”

Turnbull's statement forced me to think more seriously about the “why” behind my own routine.

I came to realize that when I learn the setlist for a show, it is to prove my knowledge. Through singing (screeching?) the words, I am demonstrating to the fans around me and the artist on stage that I deserve to be at the concert. Perhaps, I am even the biggest fan there.

This need to justify my status comes from my years growing up as a fangirl.

As a woman who is a fan of rock-adjacent genres, I constantly feel the need to show that I really know music. While I’ve never been directly questioned about my choices, I am all too familiar with the “name three songs” trope, where women wearing band tees are asked to list songs by their shirt’s artist. To make sure I’m never in this situation, I only wear merch when I know at least five of the artist’s non-singles plus the lyrics.

But the need to prove my status stems from within fandoms too. You know how people say young girls compare themselves to others on Instagram? This applies to fangirls on stan Twitter too. When I see other women post rare photos of an artist or tweet a reference to something that happened before I joined the fandom, I feel inadequate. So, I have to stock up on knowledge — names, places, facts, lyrics, Easter eggs — to be a “real” fan.

But since talking to Gillian, I have been reflecting on what being a fan truly looks like and means.

Merriam-Webster defines a fan as an “enthusiastic devotee (as of a sport or a performing art) usually as a spectator.” The word that hits me is “enthusiastic.” Regardless of what I do or do not know, I can still keenly enjoy and be excited about music. The words that don’t hit me are “statistics” and “information” — because they aren’t there.

I’ve come to understand that fandom can be expressed in different ways. So long as the methods are healthy and kind, there is no “right,” “wrong,” “better,” or “worse” way to be a fan.

Do I still look up setlists? Of course I do. But maybe I don’t need to study for concerts as intensely as my university exams.

Backstage

At the barricade: The survival of fangirls
Fangirls continue to outlast criticisms faced since their inception

Hannah Aviv’s very first concert was Gipsy Kings in Toronto. It was the late ‘90s and the band was performing at the then-named Molson Amphitheatre (now Budweiser Stage). Aviv attended the show with her mom, Jenni Aviv, a longtime fan of the rumba-flamenco group. When they played, the younger Aviv was calm and still, seemingly captured by the melodies that flowed through the amphitheatre. But any time the music stopped, she was restless. She kicked, squirmed, and moved around in her mom’s belly until Gipsy Kings played another song. Hannah Aviv was a fangirl before she was born.

“The fact that she was responding to something that was an external stimulus was just fantastic,” said Jenni Aviv. “It really set a precedent for the rest of her life because she has always been a person who has gravitated towards music.”

Hearing the word “fangirl” post-aughts conjures images of young women camping outside of music venues, concert “fancam” videos circulating on Twitter, and detailed works of fanfiction on Wattpad. But the “fangirl” is nowhere near a new concept. Women have been fans of culture and its significant figures for years, under different terminology.

In her book, Fangirls: Scenes from Modern Music Culture, writer and journalist Hannah Ewens traces fangirling back to the 1800s with heartthrob poet, Lord Byron. The ways women sent him letters, lined up to see him in-person, and fainted upon meeting him was replicated among fandoms in future. After “Byromania,” there was “Lisztomania” for pianist Franz Listz, and “Beatlemania” for The Beatles. There have been frenzies over Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and boy bands of the 1990s, paving the way for today’s Beliebers, Directioners, and BTS Army.

Fangirls are women who are active in their passion for music, books, movies, or celebrities. The internet is often their semi-private gathering place, where they interact with fellow fans, share information, and create content of their own.

Amplify Her Voice, an organization that advocates for gender equality in the music industry, shared an infographic on Feb. 15 that highlighted the power of fangirls. Discussing the ways fans generate revenue for their favourite artists and collectively mobilize to support other causes (recall when K-Pop fans hijacked anti-Black hashtags with fancams in 2020), the organization showcases how fangirls have made economic and social impacts.

“We understand how important fandom can be, especially for a young girl, who is trying to find her passions and identity through how she discovers and falls in love with music,” said Erica Garcia, editorial director at Amplify Her Voice.

Before Matty Healy took over TikTok in late 2022 – ultra zoomed-in videos of him unbuttoning his pants on stage – The 1975’s frontman belonged to Tumblr. Any of last year’s discourse around Healy kissing fans during the At Their Very Best tour was old news to 2014 Tumblr-era fans who had seen the “‘Robbers’ kiss” play out before.

For fans of The 1975, to meet Healy would be a big deal. Evie Maynes did just that.

After The 1975 played a show at Toronto’s now-defunct Kool Haus in 2014, Maynes did something they had never done before: they waited after the concert to meet the band. Maynes’ more experienced friend led the friend group to the venue’s back door, where a crowd of fans were already waiting. They stood outside for an hour before their friend’s dad called to say they had to start their two-hour drive home. As the three started walking away, they heard screaming behind them. They turned on their heels and ran back.

“[Healy] got to me and my friends and one of my friends had absolutely nothing to say, she just started sobbing,” recounts Maynes.

When Healy got to Maynes, they had a physical ticket that they asked the frontman to sign. Healy hugged Maynes and the pair exchanged some quick words.

“My friend continued crying in the car because she was just so shocked that she met him,” said Maynes. “For me, the whole experience of that night – including meeting him – ignited a passion for music.”

While emotional moments like these are important to fans, they are sometimes points of judgment or criticism for those outside of fan spaces.

In Ewens’ history of fangirls, she begins with diagnoses of female “hysteria.” Starting in the 18th C., doctors considered nervousness, shortness of breath, and being promiscuous to be signs of the so-called condition. If it was unfavourable to society, it was hysteria. Ewens says that these and other similar “symptoms” – from crying to screaming – can be categorized as stereotypical fangirl behaviours.

When Kaitlyn Tiffany set out to find the origin of the screaming fangirl trope for her book, Everything I Need I Get From You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It, she spoke to Allison McCracken, an expert on crooners. McCracken said fans are associated with “feminine excess,” the working class, people of colour, and those whose emotions appear unmanageable. It is “set up against the idea of white straight masculinity, where the emotions are in control and the body is in control.”

A common counterpoint to these stereotypes argued by fangirls is the way they are perceived as opposed to male sports fans.

“It’s the same thing as a guy cheering for his favourite sports team, wearing a jersey to the game. And you see videos of men punching their T.V. screens when their team loses. That is no different than a girl wearing Harry Styles merch at a show, crying, because her favourite song is being performed,” said Hannah Aviv.

“Sports fans aren’t ever ashamed of being a sports fan, so why are fangirls ever ashamed of being a fangirl?” said another fan, Roshni Khatri.

Even within music spheres, there is skepticism about how and why women are engaged in the culture. Gillian Turnbull, a popular music instructor at Toronto Metropolitan University, notes that “there’s still a male-dominant way of thinking about music that makes it hard for women – especially young women – to articulate their tastes.”

Turnbull draws from her own experiences discussing music with her male partner and his friends: “They have a particular way of talking about music that’s kind of rooted in the record collector mindset of knowing statistics, facts, and details about the music they’re listening to,” said Turnbull. “I don’t care about having that catalog of information, but I’m able to talk very thoroughly about songs and why I like them.”

Women are also questioned about their motives as a fan. Even Jenni Aviv was once skeptical about her daughter’s engagement as a fangirl.

“From somebody who’s never been a fangirl, I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is what a groupie is,’” said Jenni Aviv, who grew up as a music fan but never had the same access to artists like her daughter.

While Jenni Aviv chuckles as she recalls thinking her daughter was a “groupie,” the word is sometimes used by others with a heavier, derogatory connotation.

A research article on touring “merch girls,” written by John Vilanova and Kyle Cassidy for the Journal of Popular Music Studies, explains that the common definition of a groupie is a “young woman whose affiliation with musical acts stems from a desire for sex.”

But Turnbull said many definitions do not acknowledge that “it often wasn’t about sex for them, but about being close to the music they adored.”

This dismissal has now extended into fangirl designations. Turnbull said it’s exasperated by social media, which puts fangirls’ most extreme identities on display.

“The internet and social media kind of enable this obsessive behaviour that we see manifest very badly in some cases – to the point of obsession and invasiveness – but for the most part, I think [fangirls have] genuine love and enthusiasm for the music.”

For many fangirls, their lifestyle is also about the communities that they create.

“Connection is something that I’ve always valued… And that is something that is rooted and ingrained so deeply in fandom,” said Khatri.

Fan communities gather online, building dedicated circles on sites like Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram. Connections go beyond “likes” and “comments” when women begin direct messaging or creating group chats with one another, sometimes even meeting in-person at concerts.

“Having this love for a certain person, band, or thing creates a sense of community and self-identity that nothing else can match,” she continued.

Khatri is proud of her fangirl status. She hangs music-related photos in her bedroom,

creates school projects about One Direction, and interns at a fan engagement company.

“If you ever want to remove a stigma around something, conversation is needed,” said Khatri. “There’s no real reason to be ashamed.”

A second part to this story, titled “Crossing the barricade: Following the fangirl to music industry pipeline,” will be published in the May edition of Alternative Motive. To be sure you don’t miss it, subscribe now.

Alt New Monthly

April 2023’s Alt New Monthly features brand new music from Waterparks, a recent discovery by Seaway, and an old classic from the Jonas Brothers (you can’t tell me they aren’t a little pop punk).

Thank you for reading the first edition of Alternative Motive. Be sure to subscribe if you haven’t already and follow Alternative Motive on Instagram and TikTok.

Until next time,
Kendra