CMT 'Next Women of Country' Event Aims to Put a Lot of 'Girl(s) in a Country Song'

The state of females on country radio has been so dire that, when you see CMT has an initiative called “Next Women of Country,” the name almost seems too naively hopeful. Will there be a next woman of country? As long as country radio has Miranda Lambert to play, doesn’t that fulfill their entire quota for the year?

CMT put on a showcase for some of these young women during CMA week in Nashville at the City Winery, co-hosted by Lee Ann Womack, odd man out Gavin DeGraw, and CMT exec Leslie Fram. The talent on view was so strong that it was hard to believe that at least one of these acts couldn’t rise up and crash through the bro ceiling. Actually, at least one of them is making big waves at the moment: Maddie & Tae performed their protest song “Girl in a Country Song,” which has somehow risen into radio’s Top 10, despite being openly (if playfully) oppositional to the subtle chauvinism that the format has lately seemed to stand for, where women usually ride shotgun, not in the driver’s seat. Go figure, and go forth!

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A couple of others gal on the bill at this industry showcase have also had some success at country radio, notably Jana Kramer, who had her breakout hit in 2012 and is working on a sophomore effort. RaeLynn also has “God Made Girls” still impacting at the format. The others were largely unproven at radio but clearly rarin’ to go: Mickey Guyton, Angaleena Presley, Natalie Stovall, Lindsay Ell, Kelsea Ballerini, and Kelleigh Bannen. (Brandy Clark, a CMA Best New Artist nominee, was also set to perform but had to bow out because of the flu.)

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I talked with Maddie & Tae about their unlikely success at country radio. “We were probably just as surprised as you were!” said Maddie Marlow. “But the message is definitely something we believe in. It’s honest, and a different story. You’ve been hearing from the males for so long, and everyone’s just ready to hear a female perspective.” Added Taelyn Dye, “It’s crazy how country radio has just embraced us with open arms, with our first song, right out of the gate, so we feel so blessed.” They have a debut EP out just this week, with a full album to come in the spring.

Jana Kramer debuted a powerful new ballad called “I Got the Boy” — the sad addendum to which is that her ex-sweetheart’s ultimate wife got the man. “It’s probably one of my favorite songs on the (forthcoming) album,” she told me. “It’s about my high school sweetheart, Matthew. I feel like everybody can relate to a high school sweetheart. And at the end of the day I got the boy and she got the man. Although I bet she would tell me she got the boy and I got the man!” she laughed. “Things always work out and I’m in a very happy place, but on my album there’s songs from my past as well as songs about my future.”

Does this more emotional tack suggest Kramer’s coming album might be a little rougher around the edges? She confirms it, in the strongest terms. “I think in the darkest times was when I finally figured it out: Why am I still trying to hide behind something? All of a sudden my voice came out and I was like all right, I got it,” Kramer said. “All of a sudden I went from a s—ty performer to a confident performer. I had no idea who I was as an artist. It happened so fast, my first album. I didn’t have time to figure me out on the first album. It was like holy crap, I got signed, and now I need an album two months later! This time Scott Hendricks, my producer, who I adore, would give me a song and I was like ‘No, absolutely not, I’m not singing it.’ Where before I would be like ‘Well, if you like, it, I’ll sing it’… I wrote a ton, too. I wrote half the album. I’d go into (co-writing) rooms and say ‘This is exactly what I’m writing and I’m not going to settle for anything less.’ So I was empowered on this album! Hopefully you’ll hear there is a change. For me, this is my baby album.”

Another highlight of the Next Women of Country event was Kelleigh Bannen’s rendition of a Liz Rose/Nicolle Galyon co-write called “Church Clothes,” which is the kind of ballad that would burn up the charts if this were the 1990s and Trisha Yearwood were still having smashes. Bannen told the story of meeting with one of her songwriting heroines, Jessi Alexander, who told the young singer that she’d finally broken through as a hit songwriter when she “started writing guy songs.” “Y'all, that’s really sad,” said Bannen. “There’s just not a voice for her songs for the most part in this moment. And I think that’s a really serious statement.“

Sometimes there’s something to be said, though, for excelling at something usually associated with guys. Lindsay Ell proved when she turned in some acoustic-guitar-hero licks to punctuate her song “Shut Me Up,” which is sort of a country update on ‘Til Tuesday’s not-gonna-keep-it-down “Voices Carry.”

Angeleena Presley is close to being this year’s Brandy Clark; like Clark in 2013, she has one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the moment, although country radio is unlikely to touch it, despite her having charted with the Pistol Annies. With truthful songs like “Pain Pills,” she may find the most acceptance in the Americana world — toward which, not coincidentally, cohost Womack has recently drifted.

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Mickey Guyton seems destined for big things within the world of mainstream country radio, if big things are indeed still possible. Last February, she brought down the house at a Universal Nashville radio programmers’ showcase at the Ryman with “Better Than You Left Me.” Introducing Guyton at the CMT event, label group chief Mike Dungan explained that the problem was they only had that one song in the can at that time and nothing to follow it with. But with a debut album nearly complete, spring may tell whether Guyton’s powerful pipes can push through the radio logjam.