Basses

How Women Are Giving Metal Guitars A Mainstream Moment

December 16, 2025

There are some rules of guitar that most of us stick to. Rock bands play Les Pauls, Jazzmasters and Telecasters are for indie kids (and country stars). Strats are for everything. And pointy guitars? Well… they’re just for metal, right?

READ MORE: The Guitar Influences of Eddie Van Halen

Well, if you cast your eye across the biggest festival stages over the last few years, however, you’d have noticed something rather unprecedented happening. From Glastonbury to Coachella and beyond, a new generation of guitar-playing women have reclaimed the most aggressive and angry looking guitar shapes for a new generation. And for styles of music that have never seen such pointy and angular instruments before.
We can probably trace this back to Phoebe Bridgers. The Grammy-winning guitarist triggered an entire generation of angry guitarists when she smashed a BC Rich Warlock – a model more associated with Mötley Crüe, Slayer, and Guns N’ Roses than with indie’s resident sad-girl laureate – at the end of a Saturday Night Live performance in 2021, but it was clearly more than a stunt.
The guitarist began using Warlocks almost exclusively in the coming years, including as part of the cultural phenomenon that was Boygenius, but she would by no means be the last.
Phoebe Bridgers performing with Boygenius at Oyafestivalen in 2023. Image: Per Ole Hagen/Redferns via Getty Images
At Glastonbury this year, Wet Leg ditched the prairie dresses and neutral-toned Fenders for a new and more confrontational stage presence. This shift was epitomised by frontwoman Rhian Teasdale, who ditched her trusty Telecaster for an even weirder BC Rich curio – a lime green transparent acrylic-bodied Warlock.
And that wasn’t the only pointy guitar around the neck of a guitarist at Worthy Farm that weekend. Fellow Wet Leg guitarist Hester Chambers was rocking the pointy headstock of the none-more-80s Kramer Jersey Star.
Elsewhere, Turnstile’s Meg Mills was helping reinvent hardcore for a mainstream audience with her trusty pink Jackson Soloist in hand, while over on the Pyramid Stage, Olivia Rodrigo’s co-guitarist Arianna Powell was another guitarist propelling the set forward with a Soloist in hand.
By the end of the festival, it became clear that this isn’t just a gear shift, but a key change away from the age-old archetypes.
Meg Mills of Turnstile performing at Alcatraz in 2025. Image: Sergione Infuso/Corbis via Getty Images
Silver. Glittery. Crazy.
So why is it that more and more women in pop are reaching for pointy metal-adjacent guitars, and what does that say about gender, genre, and the evolution of our modern-day guitar heroes?
Originally a P-bass player, Emily Smith from rapidly rising Welsh upstarts Panic Shack never expected to pick up the Silvertone Apocalypse bass — the four-string version of KISS guitarist Paul Stanley’s early 2000s signature model — let alone be seen with it.
“I remember typing in Google, ‘Silver. Glittery. Crazy’,” she laughs from her home in Cardiff. For Smith, the shift isn’t just about aesthetics: it’s about subversion. “If you’re a woman, people assume you’ll gently play an acoustic guitar, shy away, and not take up space. I love that these artists are like, ‘No, I’m gonna get that crazy guitar. I want to stand out!’ It’s not all dainty, cutesy guitars. It’s ‘look at my minging rock guitar’. It’s disgusting and I love it.”
Young women are no longer being put into a Daisy Rock-shaped box when it comes to guitar inspiration. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying that of course, but a generation of new players are having their FYPs filled up with female musicians who aren’t ashamed to break with conventions.
Emily Smith of Panic Shack. Image: Press
It’s why you’ll see Willow Smith rocking a Jackson King V at Coachella, or you’ll see Halsey’s pop pyrotechnics backed up by seven-string Warrior-toting guitarist Vixen. A Jackson artist, Vixen has definitely noticed a shift in who uses the pointy stuff.
“These instruments were traditionally designed for men’s bodies, so I’m seeing a lot of offsets and shorter-scale options,” they explain. But for the skilled session musician, this shift is something deeper than gear choice. “Why try to be a slightly worse version of someone? Just do your own thing.”
For Vixen, the use of out-there shape guitars like the Warrior and the King V is key to that “thing”. “The pop scene requires drama,” they explain. “It’s about dynamics, ups and downs – so let’s bring out the white V, you know?”
Willow Smith performing at Coachella in 2023. Image: Presley Ann/Getty Images for Coachella
Full Circle
In some ways, this return to the pointy, the dramatic, and the genre-agnostic is a full-circle moment. In the 70s and 80s when many of these weird and wonderful guitars were first designed, shred and metal had yet to claim them.
Take a few minutes and look up Latin-pop legend Jose Feliciano posing in a suit and open-collar shirt with his custom Soloist with ‘Jose’ written in the Jackson font on the headstock – it’s wonderfully incongruous, and can be filed alongside a similarly amazing shot of Wrecking Crew legend Carol Kaye playing a BC Rich Warlock in while dressed a chic 70s housewife.
But as Tim Hillier-Brook, who heads Artist Marketing manager for Fender’s Specialty brands (Jackson, Gretsch, Charvel, and EVH), puts it, today’s revival isn’t about irony; it’s about reclamation.
“Men have had thirty years of playing guitars because they could,” he insists. “The idea that you need a bullet belt to play pointy guitars doesn’t exist anymore.”
Rhian Teasdale of Wet Leg performing at the Royal Albert Hall in 2025. Image: Chiaki Nozu/WireImage via Getty Images
Rejecting the pressure to perform on a “correct” instrument resonates strongly with Smith, especially when confronted with purist opinions.
“If anybody said anything to me about using an instrument that’s metal, I’d be like, ‘Oh, fuck off!’” he exclaims. “It’s just a guitar at the end of the day; it’s not that deep.”
Vixen is equally unfazed by this sort of mindset. “It no longer has to be, ‘If I’m playing this genre, I have to play this guitar.’ It’s cool to play something different and to make it work.”
And women are making it work – everywhere. Fender’s 2019 study famously found that women made up 50 per cent of new guitar players. Their 2022 follow-up revealed that many bought guitars online to avoid the intimidation of traditional stores.
As Danielle Haim puts it on the band’s Women In Music Pt. III track Man From The Magazine: “Man from the music shop / I drove too far / For you to hand me that starter guitar.” And if the chart-topping LA sisterhood is still fielding that kind of prejudice, what chance does a new, fresh-faced player have?
Arianna Powell performing with Olivia Rodrigo at BST Hyde Park in 2025. Image: Lorne Thomson/Redferns via Getty Images
Screen Idols
With physical stores still feeling fraught in some cases, thankfully, digital spaces have become a lifeline. Just as Ableton has equipped a whole new generation with access to studio gear and home recording opportunities, social media has made discovery democratic.
“Artists with huge followings like Willow Smith and Phoebe Bridgers,” continues Hillier-Brook. “People will see them and go ‘Cool, I’m going to buy that.”
Now, if someone is curious about picking up a guitar, they can simply find the model they want online, without being subjected to a character assassination.
New players without that traditional knowledge curve through dad-focused guitar mags and gatekeeping open mic nights are coming to guitar, thinking less about their forefathers and more about how the instrument fits with their identity and lifestyle.
When Vixen caught millennial musician Nai Palm of Aussie outfit Hiatus Kaiyote, they were intrigued to find her picking up a Randy Rhoads to play out the band’s sultry sounds. “Not only was it bad ass to have that guitar anyway, but to play it in a neo-soul way is like you really don’t give a fuck,” they explain.
Nai Palm of Hiatus Kaiyote performing at Coachella in 2023. Image: Arturo Holmes/Getty Images for Coachella
Panic Shack’s Smith agrees about her role within her brash and bold foursome, who recently brought their high-kicks and hotpants to the BBC’s Later…with Jools Holland.
“We’re all very out there,” she agrees. “It makes sense to have a guitar that represents your style and personality.” And in pop – a genre built on the razzle dazzle – that matters more than ever.
“It is a conversation piece,” adds Hillier-Brook. “The aesthetic of a show is arguably more important than it’s ever been. You want people to leave thinking that was a complete spectacle!”
Perhaps that’s why earlier this year, after a decade-long legal battle with producer Dr Luke, Kesha returned to the stage as an independent artist, wielding a Jackson Rhoads.
It was, in many ways, the ultimate guitar power move: reimagining a guitar designed to be played with the Prince Of Darkness himself, Ozzy Osbourne, as a vehicle for a pop artist to celebrate her independence.
Emily Smith performing with Panic Shack. Image: Press
“If you’re a woman playing guitar, you’re already doing something against the grain,” Vixen agrees. “So why not lean into that?”
For Smith, the empowerment goes beyond the stage. Picking up that gleaming Silvertone every night means seeing herself – loud, unapologetic – reflected back.
“The whole industry is intimidating as a woman or someone who’s not a guy,” she admits. “I know that the other girls in the band, Romy and Meg, only now feel confident to say ‘I’m a guitarist!’”
It takes more than talent to stand out; it takes courage. Because underneath the outrageous shapes, the bold finishes, and the sneers from traditionalists, most players want the same thing: to be heard.
“Just because you’re standing there gurning doesn’t make you look like a more serious musician,” Smith says. “If you listen closely, we’re doing the same thing as you are.”
The post How Women Are Giving Metal Guitars A Mainstream Moment appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.