There's Your Trouble: The Feminist Struggles of Country Music
By Kate O’Flanagan
On September 20th, almost sixteen years after the release of her eponymous debut album, Taylor Swift accepted the Songwriter-Artist of the Decade award during the annual Nashville Songwriter Awards. With a record breaking seven wins in the Songwriter of the Year category, it’s clear that Swift is still Nashville’s darling. Now a bona-fide pop icon, Swift shot to fame by tapping into an (at the time) unrecognised market — teenage girls who listen to country music. A genre dominated by men, it is the female artists who have blazed a trail and shaped country music for decades.
A major inspiration for Swift, documented from the very start of her career to the present day, is the country band the Chicks. Previously the Dixie Chicks, the group dropped the ‘Dixie’ from their name in 2020 to avoid glorifying the Confederacy. The Chicks are not just the best-selling country group of all time, they’re also the best-selling all-female band. Period. However, the country music industry turned its back on them at the height of their fame in 2003 after they spoke out against President George W. Bush and the American invasion of Iraq. Blacklisted by country radio stations, sales of their music plummeted. Their single Travelin’ Soldier fell almost immediately from #1 to #63 in the country music charts. Their CDs were burned, smashed, and even run over by a tractor in bespoke events organised by select country stations. In addition to being harshly criticised by other country artists, the band received death threats so severe they had to hire an additional security team. That same year another country artist, Merle Haggard, also criticised Bush and the Iraq war. His music was still played on the same stations that banned the Chicks; he wasn’t condemned for daring to voice an opinion contrary to that of country music’s right-wing base. Haggard also had the grace to publicly back the Chicks, saying that the backlash against them had been “like a verbal witch hunt and lynching.” Another vocal critic of the Iraq war was country icon Willie Nelson, performing his protest song What Ever Happened to Peace on Earth? without fearing for his life. The stark difference between the public’s response to the Chicks and Haggard and Nelson highlighted a harsh reality; the world hates women who speak their minds.
Following the Chicks controversy, the number of female artists in the annual top 100 country songs fell dramatically from 38 per cent in 1999 to 18 per cent in 2015. The ban on the Chicks bled into female artists as a whole. From 2000 to 2018 the disparity in total spins (plays) accorded to songs by men and women on country radio increased from a 2:1 ratio in 2000 to a 9.7:1 ratio in 2018; women made up only 8.9 percent of daily spins in 2018. 2019 saw a minor increase of 1.2 per cent in daily spins for women. However, this increase was relegated to the evening and overnight timeslots with the lowest percentage of listeners, thoroughly neutralising any positive impact the increase could have.
This focus on radio plays may seem dated and anachronistic. Aren’t we in the age of streaming? (Though female artists don’t fare much better there, either.) But for country music, radio is still king. In rural areas, where the genre is most popular, many people still listen to radio in their cars. Linked to opportunities such as label and publishing deals, touring and festival dates, award nominations and more, airplay and chart activity is crucial exposure for artists — especially new artists. The declining presence of women on country radio has evolved into a sustained, industry-wide deficit.
Many of the country music greats came from poverty. Their songs are rich in their lived experiences and those of their family and members of their wider community. Recurring motifs in the music of female country artists include two-timing violent men; women being used, abused, and shamed; the stark realities of living through hell on earth with little to carry the protagonists forward but their own strength and determination. The feminism found in country music is not one of studies and theories, but one of experiential knowing. Songs about, by, and for working-class women who have seen the most devastating outcomes of gender inequality; women with too many mouths to feed, too poor and rural to access the legal system, doing undervalued and underpaid backbreaking work. Both intellectual knowledge and lived experience are required for the movement to succeed, and people from all backgrounds may have both. But country music is unique in its exaltation of a group often overlooked.
Country artists have also tackled explicitly feminist themes. Loretta Lynn's 1975 single The Pill tells the story of a woman delighting in her newfound ability to control her own reproductive choices due to the legalisation of birth control. The song's release was contentious due to the 'risqué' subject matter and a number of stations refused to play it. Peaking at #5 in the charts the record received more press and attention outside of the country music scene, and, according to a number of rural physicians, did more to highlight the availability of birth control in isolated, rural areas, than all previously released literature.
Dolly Parton has championed feminist causes without ever claiming the label. Her first hit with RCA Records Just Because I’m a Woman, inspired by her own life, illuminated the sexist double standards that encourage men to sleep around while disparaging women who do the same. On another track, she denounced men who take advantage of women’s labour and their wages without contributing themselves — “They’ll wait all week for payday and they hope the money’s plenty / And the wife that worked those long hard hours, she never gets a penny.” Feminism, intersectional and inclusive, can be found across Parton’s discography and career from her lesser-known back catalogue to her pop-crossover juggernaut 9 to 5, her contribution to the Transamerica soundtrack (for which she, like the Chicks, received death threats) and her literacy initiative; children registered with Dolly Parton's Imagination Library receive a free book every month from birth to age five. Throughout the decades, Parton's progressive messages have been delivered with her trademark open-heartedness and sharp wit.
There's a strong throughline of humour in country music; people looking at the hands they've been dealt with a wry smile and raised eyebrow. Sometimes they play their hand the best way they can, other times they fold and walk away. The women of country music, the musicians themselves and the protagonists of their songs, have mastered the art of leaving. Of packing up and striking out for something better, or just something different, from what you've left behind — a wayward partner, a brutal job, a small town. A departure is a declaration. An acknowledgement of worth.
The female artists who came before, who stood their ground when the industry went against them, fought for their right to perform their own songs and own their work, made it possible for the current generation of country artists to make waves. With more musicians of colour and openly gay musicians gaining traction and wider industry recognition, the future of country music is in good hands. The classist dismissal of country music as “yee-haw” music diminishes the raw, honest, and often radical artistry women and other minorities have brought to the genre since its inception.