The Pretty Reckless

The Pretty Reckless emerged in 2009 as the vehicle for Taylor Momsen, who traded her Gossip Girl celebrity for something more visceral: hard rock with grunge's grit and metal's heft. Their debut Light Me Up (2010) announced a band uninterested in teen-pop crossover, whilst 2014's Going to Hell topped Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart, making Momsen the first female artist to achieve back-to-back number ones on that format. The band's sound draws from Soundgarden's sludge, Led Zeppelin's blues swagger, and the sneering defiance of Joan Jett, with Momsen's vocals carrying a rawness that refuses polish.

Death by Rock and Roll (2021) arrived after profound tragedy: the deaths of their producer Kato Khandwala and Soundgarden's Chris Cornell, a mentor figure. The album confronts mortality without surrendering to despair, its title track both eulogy and manifesto. The Pretty Reckless function as refusal, a rejection of sanitised femininity in rock's increasingly nostalgic landscape. They've proven commercial viability for unapologetically heavy music fronted by women, their legacy measured in genre persistence rather than reinvention.