{shortcode-34ee4b4dd08010af3a45f7b7fbc607f273a6e8af}

In March of 1999, the classic teen romcom “10 Things I Hate About You” burst into theaters, grossing over $50 million in revenue. The movie was a success, touching a generation of teens, and solidifying itself into the cultural zeitgeist of the ’90s. It was a time capsule of sorts, capturing a teenage spirit unique to the decade. Kat Stratford (Julia Stiles), a central character of the film, is painted as the ultimate angsty teenage daughter. She is described as only liking three things: Thai food, feminist prose, and “angry girl music of the Indie Rock persuasion.”

With this description, an entire world comes into focus. What is “angry girl music,” and why is it significant enough to have received such a shoutout in an extremely popular film? More importantly, where has all this music gone? When did music lose an entire subculture? Where are all the angry girls?

The deep roots of angry girl music can be found across decades — clearly, there has always been a lot to be angry about. The female rockers of the ’70s made strong statements of their own, as did the female rappers of the ’80s, but it wasn’t truly until the early ’90s that a cultural, political, and musical movement was crafted. Girls began to say what they felt, both loudly and clearly.

The “Riot grrrl” movement, heavily associated with the early 1990s rise of third-wave feminism, was born out of a growing punk feminist culture in the Pacific Northwest. The culture was rooted in the sentiment that women were being pushed out of the punk scene — their voices suppressed. They took to the medium of “zines,” self-published pieces of mostly feminist writings that they could circulate among the community. Across the region, young women were coming together to politically organize, hold discussions, write manifestos, and fight their way into the exclusive, misogynistic punk scene. They were on a mission to include themselves, and by 1992, they were beginning to succeed.

Prominent names in the movement, including the bands Bikini Kill and Bratmobile, saw their fan bases grow in the early-to-mid ’90s, never wavering in their feminist message, even as they broke into a new audience. Their lyrics captured domestic abuse, racism, sexism, rape, and their continued exclusion from the music scene. They never held back, and continued to reach a large number of young women despite critics labeling them as crude misandrists. Riot grrrls were swiftly making their way into the mainstream, as shocking as their message may have been to the average listener.

Their breakthrough to the mainstream marked the beginning of the end for the Riot grrrl movement. By the mid ’90s, many in the community were feeling that their message and beliefs were being misconstrued by mainstream listeners, and that their more radical ideas were being censored and forcibly mellowed out. Bands were breaking up, and Riot grrrl was being sterilized into something incongruous with its original intent.

Though the message was becoming blurred out, some of the spirit of the angry girl continued to live on. Artists like Fiona Apple, PJ Harvey, Hole, Tori Amos, and Liz Phair continued to sing about the anger of the female experience, while finding success and receiving critical acclaim. In 1995, No Doubt released “Just a Girl,” which became a charting single, although being criticized for its feminist message. In comparison with the more blunt lyrics of the Riot grrrl epoch, “Just a Girl” stood steadfast in the pop music sphere that was quickly losing a tolerance for overt political messaging in music. The angry, Riot grrrl feminist values of the early ’90s fell back to the audiences they started with as they lost their place in the mainstream music scene.

The more “feminist” artists of the late ’90s achieved success while still being isolated to a niche culture of young women considered to be taboo. This exclusion of the subculture from the mainstream turned Riot grrrl into a genre categorized as “strange” and “unreasonably angry.” The political sentiments at the foundation of the genre were lost on the general public, and Riot grrrl was quickly being forgotten.

Since the ’90s, no feminist musical movement has rivaled the scale of Riot grrrl. In 2025, the list of popular female artists that fit the angry girl music description could potentially be counted on two hands. Have young women on a large scale lost their anger?

The late 2010’s and early 2020’s have seen political threats to young women everywhere, with reproductive rights on the line and the woman’s place in the workforce and higher education called into question. The war on young women’s freedoms has not ceased, yet a movement of the Riot grrrl scale — a mixture of artistry, political organizing, and instant action — cannot be found in today’s culture. Can we attribute this to the exact cause that broke the initial movement down? It could be said that it is the conservatism of mainstream media that explains the missing Riot grrrl spirit, but it could also potentially be due to a lack of fighting back.

Today, there are young women on all social platforms saying “I’m just a girl,” in the face of world issues, work, and even math — a trend that accepts stereotypes of young women being too dumb, too frail, and too precious to do uncomfortable things. This devaluation of the young woman, reducing her to nothing but a child, almost hilariously opposes the original mission of Riot grrrl and even the message of No Doubt’s “Just a Girl,” that both sought to reclaim the term “girl” from its derogatory uses. No Doubt’s leading woman Gwen Stefani sang, “I’m just a girl in the world / That’s all that you’ll let me be.” Why, in 2025, are women letting themselves be just that, just a girl?

While hints of the Riot grrrl influence can be seen in tunes like Olivia Rodrigo’s “brutal,” there’s a severe lack in current music of the angry girl spirit, of girls fighting back through their sound. While feminist organizing and political action are alive and well, the loud, feminist voice, or at least an attempt at one, is missing from the mainstream music scene. In a time of so many attacks on young women, now seems like a better time than ever to revive angry girl music and to treat it with the respect it initially deserved.