Journalist and author Marissa R. Moss has been telling the stories of women in country music for … [+]
Journalist and author Marissa R. Moss has been telling the stories of women in country music for more than a decade. In her debut book, Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Supposed to Be, available today, Moss goes deep into the archives and shares the often tumultuous journey of countless women trying to pursue a music career in the male-dominated industry.
Her Country is an eye-opening account of the gender bias within the genre told through the lens of Maren Morris, Kacey Musgraves and Mickey Guyton. Each woman faced her own obstacles along the way and rose to success by playing by her own rules. Throughout the pages of Her Country, Moss unpacks each singer’s story with precise detail and often harrowing accounts of sexism and racism. Moss says she wanted to tell a focused story that followed the three women – all Texas natives – with the common antagonist between the trio being country radio.
“I think each one of them epitomizes three different and very unique ways that you can pave your own way in this boys’ club essentially,” Moss tells me. “There’s a million biographies and biographical works about men in country music … and I think sometimes we don’t give that to the women because we’re so consumed with their success against the odds that we don’t look at their real biography.”
With Her Country, Moss takes readers back to Morris, Musgraves and Guyton’s early beginnings and love of country music as well as the sexism and racism the women experienced navigating the industry long before seeing success. In one account Guyton, who made history in 2020 as the first solo Black woman nominated in any country category at the GRAMMY Awards, details hearing the N-word at an after-show signing. “That wasn’t as surprising as the reaction she got when she told those around her what had happened,” Moss writes. Their response: “We don’t want to talk about it now,” they told her. “But we will, one of these days.”
It’s these uncomfortable experiences that Moss shares in detail. She hopes that the accounts from these women opens an even bigger dialogue. Moss says Her Country isn’t “candy-coated” and she wants to leave readers fired up because the work for equity in country music is far from done.
“I hope the conversations we’re having culturally right now opens up the floor to so many more stories,” Moss says.
Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Supposed to Be
Throughout Her Country, Moss also features countless women behind-the-scenes – song pluggers, publicists, managers – and gets their perspectives working in the male-dominated field. Beth Laird, Co-Founder/CEO of Creative Nation and the first female rep at BMI, shared her journey of trying to blend in with the guys before finally realizing that being one of only a few female song pluggers was an asset.
“I hit a crossroads,” she told Moss in Her Country. “I will never forget having a moment where I was like, ‘I cannot try to be something that I am not.’ I have to see being a woman as a strength and not a weakness. … And once I changed my mindset, I feel like being a woman was an asset for me.”
Laird went on to work with Musgraves and became an early champion of the singer-songwriter’s when she first moved to Nashville from Texas. Hers is just one of many stories Moss shares in highlighting the plight of women working in country music.
“I think a lot of the stuff that was really enlightening came from those women that were there driving the train,” Moss says. “I was pretty intentional about the choices that I made, even in the wider scope of the book. All my research assistants were female and Catherine Powell, who shoots for Maren and Kacey a lot, did my cover photo and author photo. I wanted to follow through with the whole spirit of what the book was and every aspect of it.”
While the statistics of women played on country radio remain bleak – a 2019 report from the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found women make up just 16% of country radio airplay – there has been some progress. This week, Carly Pearce and Ashley McBryde’s “Never Wanted to Be That Girl” is No. 1 on both the Billboard and Mediabase country charts. Last month Elle King and Miranda Lambert’s “Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home)” also topped the chart. The song became the first female duet to hit No. 1 on the Billboard Country Airplay chart in 30 years. A major milestone for women in the genre, the chart success represents an even bigger problem: why did it take so long to get here? It’s a question Moss continually asks throughout Her Country.
“Why do we have to take the crumbs and celebrate the crumbs?” Moss says. “No more crumbs. … There’s a bit of sadness within the strengths and success and that’s OK because I think you need to feel a little bit fired up when you put [Her Country] down because obviously the work isn’t done.
“I would never want people to close that book and be like, ‘Well it’s good. Everything is fine now.’ Because then I would have failed. You can feel both inspired that country music is for you and there’s people speaking to you and there are people working really hard to change it to include you, but it’s not anywhere near where it should be either.”
Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Supposed to Be is available now via Henry Holt.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/anniereuter/2022/05/10/her-country-examines-and-exposes-gender-bias-in-country-music/