Nashville-based music journalist Marissa R Moss examines the sexist culture of the American country music industry and profiles the women who successfully challenged the “good ol’ boys club”.
This is a history of 21st-century country music through the history of women singers. There is a large cast, which can sometimes be confusing for readers who aren’t so closely engaged with the Nashville scene, but Moss focuses primarily on the stories of three major-label country stars: Kacey Musgraves, Maren Morris and Micky Guyton.
Musgraves’ inclusivity anthem Follow Your Arrow may sound innocuous to British ears but was controversial in Nashville at the time. Morris had to release her breakthrough song My Church on Spotify before she could get a major-label record deal. Guyton struggled for longer to make it as a singer because black musicians were not accepted as “country”. She found her voice when she put her identity front of stage with Black Like Me.
As these three, and many others, began building careers in Nashville, they found the system was rigged against them.
On corporate country radio, it was industry standard not to play female artists back to back. The default genre was truck-riding, partying “bro country”, which meant that you could hear more songs about “girls” than records by actual girls.
Part of the problem was the “consolidation” of radio stations when larger corporates swallowed up smaller stations, resulting in more risk-averse programming. Which meant in practice, more female-averse. Part of this was pure sexism, where women were expected to put up with sexual harassment from programmers if they wanted to get any airplay at all.
Part of this was “the genre’s gatekeeper groupthink”: a stifling of diversity in which most women were not considered country enough.
And part of it was pure politics. American conservatism felt itself under threat and, as Moss points out, “country music was its last, most potent hold on popular culture.”
As the Chicks had found out during the 2003 Iraq war, in country music it’s dangerous to have an opinion. And opinionated women, in particular, were something the industry was keen to avoid.
It’s a world in which, as Moss describes it: “You can be penalized for singing your truth in a genre that’s supposed to be built on it.”
Despite this culture of conformity, the industry was changing. Taylor Swift brought country to the youth market. Carrie Underwood got her break on American Idol. The Grammy Awards were recognising new talent. A new country radio station in New York, and the success of the TV show Nashville, brought new audiences to the genre.
There were ways in – and a supportive, more progressive community within the city – that didn’t rely on the “Music Row” Nashville establishment.
Making it as a modern country performer still wasn’t easy, and the book describes in detail the struggles of its three protagonists, but it was possible. And Moss argues that their success has changed the industry for the better. The women in the book still, largely, don’t get the airplay they deserve. But they draw bigger crowds live than their male counterparts and enjoy crossover success.
Country radio hasn’t changed, and men still dominate the top jobs in country labels and publishers, but there is an audience now for a diversity of identities, voices and perspectives within the genre. And there is space for non-conforming women.
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This review originally appeared on Louder than War.
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