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Gender Poor
Marissa R. Moss’s Her Country
When you think of classic country music, many names come to mind: Johnny Cash, George Jones, Merle Haggard, and Waylon Jennings. Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, and Patsy Cline also raise their hands. So, someone not too versed in this genre might assume that Country Music has always been performed in an egalitarian studio where artists share space and airtime more or less equally.
If, however, you imagine that in those days, Country Music was dominated by men, despite the successes of the women named, and that the power behind the scenes lay with the men controlling the Nashville sound and The Grand Ole Opry, you’d be right.
You might also think that surely things are better, that control lies elsewhere today in Nashville, given our strides in gender equality. You might believe women have it made, riding the wave of The Chicks, Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood, Kacey Musgraves, and Taylor Swift. Reading Marissa R. Moss’s new cultural history Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Supposed To Be (Henry Holt 2022) will prove how wrong you are.
Moss, who has written for Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and NPR, moved to Nashville a decade ago from New York because Nashville felt like the home she wanted for her family and because she wanted to…