Country Songs Women Should Sing Instead Of Men
Hint: all of them
In 2015, radio consultant Keith Hill, an unknown to the general public, burst onto the scene with a bold take on country music radio, which then, as now, was dominated by the winkingly named “bro country.” “Trust me,” he told Country Aircheck, “I play great female records, and we’ve got some right now; they’re just not the lettuce in our salad. The lettuce is Luke Bryan and Blake Shelton, Keith Urban, and artists like that. The tomatoes of our salad are the females.” It’s almost two years out, and I still haven’t been able to shake this story, perhaps in large part because in embracing his own salad metaphor, Hill seemingly forgot that tomatoes are much tastier than lettuce.
And, actually, that part is true of country music today — not that men are lettuce (I don’t think), but that women are writing and performing nearly all of the juiciest, tastiest music on the radio. Yet, despite the flame I hold for the likes of Carrie Underwood, Miranda Lambert, Kacey Musgraves, and Maren Morris, only a handful of solo female artists can ever be found on the Billboard Top 20 Hot Country Songs. It’s easy to see this vast bro country landscape and decide it all needs to go. But I want to suggest something even more radical: Let female artists re-record all of country’s current hits.
Why? Well, first, a lot of the songs male country stars sing are actually great. They’re catchy, they’re often romantic, and they have classically evocative country lines. They just have no business being on a man’s setlist. Second, there’s precedent. 2014’s “Somethin’ Bad” — chorus: “got a real good feelin’ somethin’ bad about to happen” — was “tweaked” to make it for two women instead of a traditional male-female duet. And not just any two women. “Somethin’ Bad” features country music’s two powerhouse female stars, Miranda Lambert and Underwood, who even post-tweaking get to sing such deliciously subversive lyrics as:
Ran into a girl in a pretty white dress
Rolled down a window, where you heading to next?
Said I’m heading to the bar with my money out the mattress
Got a real good feelin’ somethin’ bad about to happen…
This is a former Bonnie-and-Clyde duo, now turned Thelma and Louise, all played over presumed conservative country airwaves. Country music sung by men, which today encompasses both bro country and more traditional country, has the opportunity to subvert our expectations — for relationships, for family, even for “huntin’, fishin’, and lovin’” — and the easiest way for these songs to flip the bird at society’s expectations is to gender flip their lyrics. In fact, I’ll go one step further: There isn’t a song on country radio that wouldn’t be improved by having a woman perform it.
I have workshopped this theory with country-loving friends, and I can reassure you it holds up. But it’s worth walking through a few proofs here, if only so we all get to admire some country music craft along the way.
1. Humble and Kind, Tim McGraw
Tim McGraw’s latest hit single is a gentle intonation to his daughters to “always stay humble and kind” through life’s triumphs and tears. It’s a guaranteed tearjerker with gorgeous lyrics, if one that can sometimes veer into preachy territory in the hands of a father. Take this verse, which I always hear as coming from the classic “I know because I was once a teenage boy myself” school of dad thought:
Know the difference between sleeping with someone
And sleeping with someone you love
I love you ain’t no pick up line so
Always stay humble and kind
Sung by a woman, in contrast, this advice transforms into something hard-won, true, and beautifully melancholic. Lucky for us, this version exists, and performed by the song’s writer, Lori McKenna, it’s as poignant as expected.
2. Blue Ain’t Your Color, Keith Urban
This is a standard country ballad in the vein of, say, LeAnn Rimes’s “Blue.” Unlike “Blue,” it’s a little bit annoying. Keith Urban sees a lonely woman sitting at a bar, assumes she’s distraught over a man, and tells her — well, what he tells her is a lot, to say the least:
Blue looks good on the sky
Looks good on that neon buzzin’ on the wall
But darling, it don’t match your eyes
I’m tellin’ you
You don’t need that guy
It’s so black and white
He’s stealin’ your thunder
Baby, blue ain’t your color
Now imagine instead you’re the woman in that bar, thinking of your no-good boyfriend, absentmindedly stirring a cocktail straw, and Maren Morris, in a leather jacket, knee-high boots, and a fierce red lipstick, sits down next to you and sings this. It’s suddenly great, right?
3. She’s Got a Way with Words, Blake Shelton
It’s self-evident that if anyone gets to declare their ex put the “S.O.B. in sober,” the “hang in hangover,” and the “low in blow,” it’s the spouse who did not find new love on The Voice, and not the one who very publicly made googly eyes at his pop star co-star mid-divorce. Give this clever, spite-filled song to Miranda already.
In fact, give all songs — whether they’re clever and spite-filled or not — to Miranda, and Carrie, and Cam, and Kacey. Giving women these hits would make bland bro country more palatable, even tasty. Which is to say, I’m still waiting to turn the radio dial to RaeLynn telling us all to “kiss a little more, think a little less.” But in the meantime, I’ll just be over here listening to “Somethin’ Bad” instead.
Erin Robertson is a freelance editor and writer living in California. Follow her on Twitter: @eringoesgolfing
