“Ladies over 40 are still in the game. We will decide when it is time for us to stop.”
And with that music queen Tina Arena had her audience at the ARIAs in the palm of her jazz hands.
After absolutely killing it in a live performance of her smash hit ‘Chains’, Arena then went on to be inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame by her friend and fellow music legend, Kylie Minogue.
You can watch the amazing performance featuring The Veronicas and Jess Mauboy here:
“What a woman, what a voice,” Minogue said after the performance which had the whole audience dancing on their feet.
“Wow, oh my goodness, surely I’m not the only person who had goosebumps,” she said.
But it was Arena’s speech afterwards that really had the audience jumping up and down.
“I want to acknowledge the women in their 40s still in the game in a big way…We will decide when it’s time for us to stop.”
She called on commercial radio to “continue to support Australian music on the quality of the song and not the age of artist” and “don’t meet your Australian quotas because you have to. Exceed them because you want to.”
She also hit out at the ageism which greets female pop artists, calling out Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, Annie Lennox and Kylie for their continued excellence in the face of discrimination.
She pleaded with her audience to ‘respect the arts’. “Because without the music we are really all screwed,” she said to rapturous applause.
Top Comments
The speech was simply nauseating - in my view. She is a talented (not great) singer, but when you look at the list of women inducted into the Hall of Fame, there aren't many Australian women who have been omitted who, arguably, should be included. Perhaps (the late) Kerrie Biddell (arguably way more talented than Arena and one of Australia's finest female jazz singers - IMHO), maybe Julie Anthony, but those who have enjoyed and deserved great success are there - Renee Geyer, Marcia Hines, Helen Reddy, Judith Durham (as a member of the Seekers). Arena is rather pretentiously playing the gender discrimination card. The reality is that the music business is a nasty place and discrimination takes many forms - against women, men and bands, all of whom just fall out of favour for whatever reason. The current trend is for women vocalists who sound like whining 12-year olds, or for Maria Cary "wannabes" - that is appalling, but it is the fleeting nature of the business. For every women who feels aggrieved by the treatment doled out by the music business, there are thousands of male artists and bands who have been utterly ripped off or cast aside by the music business (Robert Fripp, Frank Marino, Goo Goo Dolls, Camel, Tommy James, Wishbone Ash, Creedence Clearwater Revival to name but a few - to the tune of tens of millions of dollars). In fact, even the notion that talent alone is enough to succeed in music is farcical - it should be enough, but the correlation between talent and success was never strong. It irritates me when instead of taking the opportunity to say "thanks for recognising my talent", arguably an act of humility, she chose pompously to use the opportunity to pontificate.
Hey Oldgrumpy, do you remember her singing on YTT? She could belt it out like that when she was 9! And that's not a great singer??
Yeah well ok, but isn't it the same in every industry? We all get chewed up and spat out at some stage, and not everyone succeeds on merit, the music industry is no different to any other industry in that regard.
as you have
I think it's a shame that we even need to have a speech about women being relevant over 40. What does age have to do with anything? If you've it, you've got it. Well done ladies 💗