This research examines the gendered nature of cultural legitimacy and consecration in popular music. We explore two related questions. First, which factors affect the likelihood that female performers achieve consecrated status? Second, how are those decisions discursively legitimated? Using a mixed-methods research design, we find that in both direct and indirect ways, gender significantly shapes a performer's likelihood of consecration, leaving female artists at a disadvantage in this process. Moreover, the discursive strategies employed to justify artists' inclusion among the all-time greats are shaped by existing cultural frameworks about art and gender, limiting in more subtle and indirect ways the amount and type of legitimacy that female artists can accrue.
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