Can women rock?

Do on my ride home I heard Jessie James - Wanted, a forgettable pop tune with a rock and roll exterior.  Female pop stars seem to want to have a little bit of a rock star sheen, and will do a quasi rock song.  Britney did a cover of "I Love Rock and Roll" and more recently Rihanna did "Rockstar 101."

Aside from pop stars singing faux rock songs, have there been any female fronted rock bands of note any time recently?  (Avril Lavigne doesn't count, she's a corporate anti-Britney)  There are the female rock fore-mothers of course, Joan Jett, Janis Joplin, Pat Benetar and the like, but who carries this forward today?


A look at Billboard's top rock songs from 6/20/09 to now shows the following number 1 artists: 
Green Day, Linkin Park, Alice in Chains, Foo Fighters, Breaking Benjamin, Three Days Grace, Stone Temple Pilots, Shinedown, The Dirty Heads, Disturbed, Stone Sour, The Black Keys, and Cage the Elephant.

All male fronted rock bands.  Over those many weeks, there wasn't a single female fronted rock band at number one, and a cursory glance of the top 10 is a combination of the above bands, with some Green Day and Papa Roach thrown in. 


If you check the Alternative charts I see Evanescence at number four back in 2006, but since then I can't recall a high charting female fronted rock band.  

I wonder why this is.  Is it a marketing issue?  In our overly pornified society would we pay attention to a woman rocker who wasn't calling attention to her looks and sexuality?  Taylor Momsen seems to be making strides with her career, but I never hear anything about her music, just her shocking antics (and the fact that she's technically jailbait for another few months).  Even Evanescence seemed to thrive off their quasi-goth look, and faded out just as quickly as the resurfacing of that style did.       

Rock music has an ability to transcend time.  The Rolling Stones are still touring, and millions of people are still fans of The Beatles, Led Zepplin, and Pink Floyd.  Current groups like the Foo Fighters have been going strong for 15 years and seem like they could have the stuff to endure.

Where is the female-fronted group that will have this rock longevity today?  Can one even come into being?  You'd think that they would be huge already if they existed.  Is it a band out now that I'm overlooking?      

Discuss! 

(I apologize for any incoherence.  I started writing this while cooking dinner, took a break to eat and play Shoots and Ladders, then had to put my son to bed.)


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