Why so few reviews of women in country music?
There are many artist pages for women in a number of genres whose albums don't get reviewed.
6 replies
Elisabeth, I'm also starting to notice a trend that's proportionately reviewing fewer albums by women than by men. I doubt that it's a conscious bias. Even if the bias is unconscious though, it's affecting a group that's historically disadvantaged in a male-dominated industry. On an annual average, women also release fewer albums than men.
If women country artists face greater odds to be reviewed than bro-country, I notice that black women are the exception to these odds. Black women are doubly disadvantaged in a white-dominant genre. Since several new country artists unusually happen to be black women, I'm glad Allmusic is reviewing that minority within a minority.
P.S. the Grammy Museum is currently exhibiting "The Power of Women in Country Music".
This is a really good topic for discussion and I'm glad it was raised.
Looking at the list of American and Australian (for some reason) artists who are featured on the Wikipedia 2022 In Country Music page, here is the breakdown of male country artists to female country artists who have been primary contributors to popular country music so far this year:
Men in Country in 2022 (54)
Aaron Lewis
Bailey Zimmerman
Blake Shelton
Brad Paisley
Breland and Hardy
Brett Eldredge
Chase Matthew
Chris Stapleton
Cody Johnson
Cole Swindell
Corey Kent
Dierks Bentley
Dustin Lynch
Dylan Scott
Eric Church
Ernest
Hank Williams Jr.
Hardy
Jackson Dean
Jake Owen
Jake Scott
Jason Aldean
Jelly Roll
Jimmie Allen
Jon Pardi
Jordan Davis
Justin Moore
Kane Brown
Keith Urban
Kenny Chesney
Lee Brice
Luke Bryan
Luke Combs
Lyle Lovett
Michael Ray
Midland
Mitchell Tenpenny
Morgan Wallen
Nate Smith
Old Dominion
Orville Peck
Parker McCollum
Parmalee
Ronnie Dunn
Russell Dickerson
Sam Hunt
Scotty McCreery
Thomas Rhett
Tim McGraw
Tyler Hubbard
Walker Hayes
Whiskey Myers
Willie Nelson
Zach Bryan
Women in Country in 2022 (13)
Ashley McBryde
Carly Pearce
Carrie Underwood
Dolly Parton
Elle King
Ingrid Andress
Kelsea Ballerini
Lainey Wilson
Maren Morris
Miranda Lambert
Priscilla Block
Reba McEntire
Taylor Swift
Looking at this list, 81% of the country music charting out this year is from a male artist, and 19% is from a female artist. (This is a bit broad since some singles feature both men and women, and this list of names includes primary performers and featured performers, but it's a starting point).
So the truth of the matter is that the establishment and record industry releases more albums by male performers and country radio promotes more male country performers than women.
However!
Looking at the AllMusic Favorite Country Albums of 2021, women made up a third of the albums our editors selected as favorites.
In 2020, the split was 2/3rds men to 1/3rd women as well.
Looking at the Wikipedia list of country albums released by women in 2022, we have reviewed all of them (with the exception of Priscilla Block's Welcome to the Block Party which reached #39 on the country chart and currently only has one user rating on AllMusic).
Looking at the 26 highest-rated country albums on AllMusic in 2022, 11 of the 26 albums are by women (a whopping 42%).
So please be assured that there is no nefarious intent to keep female country artists down, or purposefully ignoring them. Our editors have limited bandwidth to cover the (literally) thousands of albums that are released each week and they prioritize to the best of their ability, trying to cover the things that are popular but also promote lesser-known artists where they can.
Yes Zac, I agree that Allmusic's coverage decisions are independent of an artist's sex. But I'd argue that your editors should cover a higher percentage of minorities than that would be equal to their proportion, in order to try counter-balancing the industry's biases. In commercial country, Allmusic is rightly reviewing MORE than "20-25% of the country albums that come out each week ... released by female artists".
Having not been effectively counterbalanced, the 19% statistic from 2015 cemented bro-country as the overbearing element of today’s country music. Then Billboard's definition qualifies the same percentage on today's country charts. In turn, Billboard's charts program Top 30 playlists. Narrowing playlists (with fewer artists than in the past, whose music must fit Billboard's definition) makes it easier for Nashville labels to clone than to take a chance on new artists who do "not embrace enough elements of today’s country music". If not counterbalanced, then this cycle will perpetuate itself and you'll be flooded by more cloned artists (increasing the percentage of men who record bro-country).
Zac said:
81% of the country music charting out this year is from a male artist, and 19% is from a female artist
Allmusic shouldn't trust the narrow representation on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart, because they're really charting a narrow radio format. Under Allmusic's country genre for example, country rap is included and your editor describes Old Town Road as a "country-rap novelty" (by the way, doesn't such a groundbreaking single deserve an editor's review?). As the single shot up Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart, the single became disqualified because it did "not embrace enough elements of today’s country music". (Where it still qualified on the all-inclusive Billboard Hot 100 chart though, the single held onto #1 for a record-breaking streak.)
Due to Billboard's restrictive definition about Hot Country Songs, new songs that embrace traditional country will be disqualified if they're on tomorrow's new release. So if O Brother, Where Art Thou were to re-release tomorrow, Billboard would disqualify the soundtrack from repeating its 20-week streak on the Top Country Album chart. Wikipedia's list of artists from Billboard's Hot Country Songs should be footnoted by Billboard's rhetorical definition of what qualifies for today's "country" charts, which has been redefined from what would have qualified in prior decades.
Perhaps you recall Tomato-gate: a radio programmer advised as a man about adding women to commercial radio's country playlists. He freely advised the good ol' boys in his industry: "If you want to make ratings in country radio, take females out." Why do women currently comprise 19% of today's Hot Country Songs? Back in 2015, he supported his advice by citing that 19% (coincidentally the same % in the previous sentence) of country playlists were women.
I'm warning about Billboard's country charts because they've become a flawed barometer for editorial decisions about coverage. They're supposed to represent what's on commercial radio's country playlists, but they don't fully measure what fans are streaming off the FM dial. Besides, Allmusic defines the country genre much more broadly than Billboard.
Zac
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Right. And we cover a higher percentage of female country artists than the establishment, and (near as we can tell) cover a higher percentage of female country artists than what is represented by looking at the sheer number of country releases by men vs women. (does that make sense?)
If only 20-25% of the country albums that come out each week are released by female artists, and 30-40% of our coverage of country music is of women in country, doesn't that at least indicate that we are not ignoring the terrific women of country music?
ER
You cite the Wikipedia Country Music page, as a source either for your information, or for comparison with your representation of women in, in this case, country music. In either case, it is problematic, because wikipedia isn't a source of unbiased or comprehensive information. If you use it as a source, and they underrepresent women, then you will just be repeating their bias. If they are missing artists that no one writing that Wikipedia page knows about, you are passing on their ignorance. If using as a comparison, the same goes. That is a sorry list for both male and female artists. Hopefully Allmusic is using less biased and full of information holes sources used in deciding what music is out there, and what merits being reviewed.
Elisabeth, Billboard Magazine did an analysis of its own Country Airplay charts. In 2020, women comprised 21%. Historically, they've averaged 17%. Comparing to the past decade, I think 2020 started this decade with a high (in terms of this statistics).
Zac
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I was using their Billboard information as a resource to try to determine what percentage of popular country albums were by female artists. If I had looked at that list and seen that the charting releases were 50% male and 50% female, but we were only covering 30-40% of female artists, that would have indicated that we were disproportionately reviewing male artists.
We are well aware of the failures of the country music industry to fairly support the terrific female songwriters and performers out there. That is why we go out of our way to cover a larger percentage of women in country than the industry promotes, and try to highlight lesser-known artists that will are not getting country radio airplay.
In 2022, alongside country radio staples Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood, Dolly Parton, Reba McEntire, and Maren Morris, we're highlighting the following lesser known artists:
Lera Lynn: https://www.allmusic.com/album/something-more-than-love-mw0003668160
Lola Kirke: https://www.allmusic.com/album/lady-for-sale-mw0003651511
Amanda Shires: https://www.allmusic.com/album/take-it-like-a-man-mw0003722080
Sarah Shook: https://www.allmusic.com/album/nightroamer-mw0003621362
Anne Wilson: https://www.allmusic.com/album/my-jesus-mw0003713266
Gaby Moreno: https://www.allmusic.com/album/alegoria-mw0003718727
Michaela Anna: https://www.allmusic.com/album/oh-to-be-that-free-mw0003699728
(including an interview with her: https://www.allmusic.com/blog/post/michaela-anne-interview )
Joan Shelley: https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-spur-mw0003703037
The Whitmore Sisters: https://www.allmusic.com/album/ghost-stories-mw0003610544
During this same time period we have reviewed albums by 29 male country artists. This indicates that 48% of our 2022 country coverage is of women artists. The majority of the female country artists we have featured have not (yet) made a big impact on the Billboard charts or in country radio.
I agree that established music outlets have more to do to promote this underserved portion of the genre, and I feel as though we are doing something to help in that area.
I sincerely hope that mama changes that Nashville sound.
ER
Another dicey issue in music criticism in general, not just Allmusic, is the ever expanding taxonomy of musical genres. Obviously there is are good reasons to classify and categorize music and musicians, but there seems to be a trend to make up new genre names as fast as there are new artists releasing new material. Taken to extremes, any artist or work that doesn't fit easily into some established genre's criteria, will end up a genre unto itself, at which point, the use of genre classification will be rendered meaningless. I don't know the solution to this. As artists mix things up, the more that traditional genre classifications will be unable to "contain" them. On the other hand, there must be some way to helpfully categorize without making each artist and/or each work to be categorized. Can you imagine if in animal taxonomy, for example, each individual animal became it's own kingdom? What would be the point?
Zac
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I feel like we've got a solution to this. Our genre hierarchy is editorially controlled and about once a year the editorial staff gets together and looks at the landscape to see if there are emerging subgenres like Chillwave (https://www.allmusic.com/style/chillwave-ma0000013410) or Trap (https://www.allmusic.com/style/trap-rap-ma0000013576) that have gained enough momentum or critical mass to seem like a lasting Style (within a parent genre).
One of the things we're proud of at AllMusic is the flexibility of our Genre/Style hierarchy, where if an artist who was firmly in a specific genre decides to take a big shift, we have the ability to tag that album with a different genre or apply different styles https://www.allmusic.com/album/1989-mw0002726289
Or somebody like Linda Ronstadt who started out in a Soft Rock/Country Rock mode (https://www.allmusic.com/album/silk-purse-mw0000628308) but also made Spanish-language albums (https://www.allmusic.com/album/canciones-de-mi-padre-mw0000194236) and an album of American Popular Song recordings (https://www.allmusic.com/album/whats-new-mw0000195540). The ability to tag albums and artists with different genres and styles throughout their career really helps us to give a pointer to a user who is looking to better understand what an artist or album sounds like.
Elisabeth, I think that Allmusic is conservative about adding new styles. (But I don't necessarily agree with the styles that are and aren't added.) Under the country genre, I believe Allmusic has added only 3 styles since the 1990's: Red Dirt, bro-country, and country rap.
I waited years for Allmusic adding bro-country. It had been coined in 2013, but Allmusic didn't add it until 2019. In any case, you may want to have a conversation about this topic that's blogged by an editor.
Sorry, my Covid-recovering brain forgot that Allmusic has also added Americana as a subgenre. Since Americana had industry media starting to track airplay in 1995 and hosted its own awards show by 2003, it became undeniably a format-defined subgenre. As a stylistic "umbrella" -- which is how it's described by Allmusic -- that's ever-expanding, the addition of Americana has (unfortunately, to me) alleviated the need for music critics to define new styles within the country genre.
Great review of a recent collection that highlights obscure women in country music from the 60s and early 70s! Eventually, archival compilations will creep toward the end of last century to dig up music that has been forgotten. The archivists remind us that radio charts weren't a measure of quality, ever since early country music.
P.S. I think there are more women songwriters in country music now.