Dolly Parton’s death on Aug. 25 came at an interesting moment in time.
Parton lived long enough to know — if she paid attention to current charts and trends — that the path she blazed for women is likely in good hands. Earlier in the month — on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart dated Aug. 4 — women occupied each of the top five positions on the list for the seventh week in a row. Females had dominated that tier several times in the past, but never more than two weeks in a row.
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During much of the last decade, women received short shrift in country music. On several occasions, females were missing entirely from the top 20 of Country Airplay.
This new rise in chart status is led by Ella Langley, Stella Lefty and Lainey Wilson and aided by the return of Taylor Swift to the genre through her Toy Story 5 contribution “I Knew It, I Knew You.” It will only be known as time unfolds whether this moment is a short-term blip or a more permanent market correction, though several factors — the demographics of the audience, the format’s need for sonic variety and the sheer determination of women — all suggest that the industry is unlikely to become a desert for women again in the near future.
“Is it a market correction? Yes,” says Warner Records Nashville chair/president Cris Lacy. “It’s one that needed to happen because our audience is male and female. There need to be representatives of the audience in the format, and equal — as much as you can — [in that] representation.”
Parton’s arrival on the national scene in 1967 — the year after the National Organization for Women was founded — reflected the gender attitudes of the era. After she landed two solo singles on Hot Country Songs, she accepted the role of “girl singer” in Porter Wagoner’s operation, which brought TV exposure on his syndicated show and made her an important cog in his concert tours.
The two of them fought on numerous occasions as Wagoner took a stereotypical view of their roles. She longed to be on her own, and by the time she left his employ in 1974, she was actually a bigger solo artist than Wagoner, thanks to her core hits “Coat of Many Colors,” “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You.” She was a unique force — no other country woman has become as successful in as many platforms as Parton — but she became an inspiration for every female artist that has followed her in the genre. She not only employed a one-of-a-kind voice to a series of important songs, she subtly clapped back at the patriarchal architecture of the business, playfully using her sexuality to both attract attention and disarm potential detractors of either sex.
“She’s such an empowering force that has given a guiding light to women like me who kind of love to step on the boundaries just a little bit,” says Kaitlin Butts. “She’s such a great example of somebody that just does it the right way: says it with grace, but also likes to be a little raunchy sometimes.”
In the generation preceding Parton, women were generally treated as second-class artists. Kitty Wells, Patsy Montana, Rose Maddox and Patsy Cline were told they could never sell enough tickets to headline and were encouraged to dress demurely, to avoid creating jealousy among the married women in the fan base.
Parton and her peers — Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, Reba McEntire and Barbara Mandrell — made enough gains that they were able to step out on their own. All but Wynette were named the Country Music Association’s entertainer of the year, and they set a precedent for the next wave of women, including Shania Twain, Faith Hill, Terri Clark and Martina McBride.
Men wanted to believe that the women were all fighting with each other. Some of that did occur, but mostly, they recognized that they shared unique hurdles: their hair and makeup rituals required more time and money than their male counterparts, radio programmers often refused to play them consecutively in their rotations, and label executives would brush off potential signees if they already had one or two females on the roster.
Women primarily supported each other, as when Lorrie Morgan, Pam Tillis and Carlene Carter organized an all-female tour in 1995, and when the Girls Night Out Tour — featuring McEntire, McBride, Sara Evans, Jamie O’Neal and Carolyn Dawn Johnson — hit the trail in 2001.
When the bro-country era featured songs about field parties, drinking and one-night stands, cultural double standards put women at a disadvantage. They were generally dissuaded from addressing those topics, though Maddie & Tae’s “Girl in a Country Song” managed to poke fun at the trend.
Carrie Underwood, Miranda Lambert and Kacey Musgraves thrived during that era, and their tenacity is something of a bridge to the new generation of female country artists. It’s appropriate, for example, that Lambert co-wrote Langley’s record-busting “Choosin’ Texas” while Underwood is mentoring young artists as a judge on ABC’s American Idol.
“I love that Miranda’s involved — the multi-generational success of ‘Choosin’ Texas’ is so cool,” says Brandi Cyrus. “It’s a really cool time in music.”
Langley, like Lambert, is sharing her success with other members of the women’s club.
“Ella is bringing other women on stage with her, from Madeline Edwards to Lacy Kaye Booth to Kaitlin Butts,” FEMco founder Leslie Fram says. “All these women are doing this. I feel like this is the moment that now we’re finally going to course-correct.”
Parton’s SongTeller Hotel, prior to the singer’s death, aligned with Fram to start a showcase series, “FEMcountry at Parton’s Live.” The “Parton-ership” officially begins Sept. 22; the initial lineup will be announced in the next week.
Perhaps ironically, Gloria Steinem — who was an icon for the women’s movement — died Sept. 2. She conducted her work for equality in different ways than Parton, but both trailblazers helped to change stereotypes around their gender. Women are no longer required universally to stay home and handle all of the cleaning chores by themselves. They typically see the world in different ways than men, and their voices and viewpoints are important for leadership — and for country playlists.
Thus, the rebound of women within the format is an important development at a time that it’s required.
“I think it’s a direct reflection of what’s happening in the world,” Lacy says. “Let’s be honest — it’s a mess. There’s a lot of brute force and aggression and anger and emotion, and women, for years, have worked on processing all of those things.
“Women are innately intuitive. They are instinctively compassionate. They are very perceptive, and rather than mislabeling all of these superpowers as weaknesses, those are actually the things that give them the ability to be great leaders. So their voices are getting louder.”
Thus, there’s more to this window than “Choosin’ Texas.” The country audience — and the country, in general — is more frequently, and with more intentionality, choosin’ women.