Throughout her career, Dolly Parton 's hit songs have dealt with gender-neutral gut-wrenching poverty and pretty much every aspect of womanhood.Ĭontemporary acts continue the work of their forebearers, pushing the genre toward inclusivity and demanding respect in the male-dominated genre. Loretta Lynn routinely took a defiantly feminist stance (although she rejected the label) in her music and had her song "The Pill,"about how birth control pills liberated women, banned from most radio play. 1 in 1967 and three GRAMMY Awards with a torpid ballad about apathy and suicide ("Ode to Billie Joe"). In 1952, Kitty Wells ' "It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" placed the blame for unfaithful women squarely on the shoulders of philandering men in a retort so resounding, hardly anyone remembers the song that inspired it.Ī decade later, Bobbie Gentry scored a No. Just five years after the first country music recording, the Carter Family cut their first album - often considered country music’s "Big Bang" - at the 1927 Bristol Sessions. Despite Hill’s comments and the country music industry's often restrictive and prescriptive attitudes, women are essential to the genre and its growth.įemale country singers have broken the rules and fought sexist expectations since the genre's inception. In 2015, radio consultant Keith Hill provoked outrage by saying out loud what had long been an unwritten rule for much of country music radio: Women are like the tomatoes in a lettuce salad, they should be sprinkled in sparsely.
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