New singers have swagger
nashville, tenn.» Country singer Cam has no regrets after a one-night stand in “My Mistake.” Kelsea Ballerini is not interested in her crush’s mind games in “Love Me Like You Mean It.” Maddie & Tae would prefer a guy just shut up and fish in, well, “Shut Up and Fish.”
It’s a perspective you may be surprised to hear these days in the maledominated country music world, on display for a national audience Sunday on Fox’s “American Country Countdown Awards.” The genre is inundated with hit songs in which women sit in the passenger seat, swing their long, tan legs off a flatbed truck, dance around in cut-off jeans — and, sometimes, they bring their man an ice-cold beer.
In the past year, however, a wave of young, female artists has been gaining buzz as they try to break in, and many are writing and releasing songs with a notably different theme: They have swagger. And they’re the ones in control.
The topics vary. Sometimes they’re flirtatiously aggressive takes such as Lauren Alaina’s “Next Boyfriend” or Clare Dunn’s “Move On.” Occasionally they’re carefree postbreakup tunes, as in Olivia Lane’s “You Part 2” or Lindsay Ell’s “By the Way.” Or they have nothing to do with relationships, such as Maren Morris’s “My Church” or Kalie Shorr’s “Fight Like a Girl.”
Country female-empowerment anthems have been around from Dolly Parton’s “Just Because I’m a Woman” in 1968 to Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” in 1997. But these days male artists have cornered the market with smash singles from their very specific point of view. “Bro-country” acts Luke Bryan, Jason Aldean and Florida Georgia Line have established themselves as party-song hitmakers, and many artists jumped on the bandwagon. Can this influx of female singers cut through the noise?
“These songs have always been out there, but it seems to be a wave right now which I feel like is going to break the door wide open for female artists,” said Leslie Fram, who is Country Music Television’s senior vice president of music strategy and talent and who pioneered the network’s Next Women of Country Tour. It’s no longer about “‘He cheated on me’ or ‘This is a revenge song,’ ” she said. “These are songs with a ton of confidence.”
While these singers sing about men and relationships, they’re not responding to what guys do: They’re taking the reins. They don’t use the carsmashing Carrie Underwood or fire-starting Miranda Lambert brand of power. This music is simply about doing whatever they want, whenever they want.
So far, though, these newer artists have had mixed success. After all, it’s a big challenge, in general, for women to be played on the radio — still the primary way to kickstart a career in Nashville.
Morris is gaining steam with the self-assured hit “My Church,” about the beauty of solitude in your car, although the artist who has scored the most with this formula is Ballerini, who will perform at the “American Country Countdown Awards.” She has won big in the past year with No. 1 songs in which she establishes the rules in relationships: “Love Me Like You Mean It” (“I don’t have time to waste on the boys that are playing the games and leaving the girls crying out in the rain”) and “Dibs” (“Make everybody jealous when I take you off the market. Get my lipstick on your right cheek, ’cause, boy, I gotta mark it.”)
Ballerini wrote the former song after one of her co-writers remarked she could pull off the “swag” of Rihanna — one of the queens of the empowerment anthem in pop, a genre in which female solo artists soar. The comment inspired the pop beat behind the tune, which last summer became the first No. 1 song on the Billboard country chart by a female artist in nearly three years.
Maddie & Tae launched their career in 2014 with the brash “Girl in a Country Song” (“We’re lucky if we even get to climb up in your truck, keep our mouth shut and ride along, and be the girl in a country song.”) While their quiet follow-up, “Fly,” was a top-10 hit, their latest bold track, “Shut Up and Fish,” about a guy who won’t stop talking during a fishing trip (“I finally had all of him that I could take, so I gave him a cold shower in the lake”) is the duo’s lowest-charting song yet, in the low 20s.
R.J. Curtis, Nashville editor for All Access Music Group, said although some female artists are making inroads on country radio, it’s too early to say that there’s a unified message of self-confidence that’s breaking through. “It’s kind of all over the place,” he said of the themes that are gaining traction for women.
Now, country radio likes up-tempo, regardless of theme — which may explain why new female artists are doubling down on these new thumping, selfconfident songs.
That’s what Dunn attempted with “Move On,” in which she implores a guy to just kiss her already: “Go ahead, get out of your head. Think you’re overthinking, use your lips instead.” The song couldn’t get out of the high 40s on the charts, so she’s trying again with “Tuxedo,” in which she declares her man looks great in a dirty T-shirt — the flip side to male singers who insist they like their girls in a ponytail with no makeup.
Others try to improve men’s treatment of women, such as “Sunday Morning” by up-and-coming artist Brooke Eden, who recently explained to a Nashville crowd the message behind the song: “If you’re his Saturday night, you better be his Sunday morning.” In another concert video, she explains the song is “not man-bashing but man-teaching.”
That idea can get risky, as former “Voice” winner Danielle Bradbery learned with “Friend Zone,” a strange, rap-infused song about the right way to woo a lady. (“Let me break it down the facts — you will never get a girl like that. You gotta step up to the plate with a bat.”) The song was criticized for its troubling sports metaphors and quickly disappeared from the charts.
Alaina says her music is just her natural attitude. Sure, she enjoys being in the driver and passenger seat — it’s just a matter of having the choice.
“I don’t mind my boyfriend driving me around and sitting in the passenger seat, but I definitely don’t want him smacking me on the rear end and treating me like a piece of meat, you know?” Alaina said.