The Editorials

Hey Radio!

Written by Jeff Krasky

There was once a time when female country music artists found it nearly impossible to get their music on the air and in turn found it difficult to ever achieve meaningful album sales. Then in the 90's that started to change. Female artists began to gain popularity, respect, and airtime. In fact female artists saw such a high level of success that the male artists were starting to get left behind. Their airplay continued to stay consistent but album sales started to slip. There hasn't been a major male star break into the country music scene since Tim McGraw and Nashville is dying for one.

What does this mean for female artists? They are starting to get screwed over yet again. There are the major artists like Shania Twain, Faith Hill, Reba McEntire, and Jo Dee Messina who will continue to be able to get their songs on the air due to their huge fan bases. However a number of smaller female artists are not even being given the chance to succeed. Their careers are being killed before they even begin. Albums are being delayed and airplay isn't given to singles. Hit songs are far and few between for these artists. It's not a good time to be a female artist in country music.

This is where the country music industry needs to wake up. The reason that you're not seeing any male artists breaking into superstar status is because every damn one of them sounds alike, dresses alike, and acts alike. It's a trend that started when Garth Brooks hit the scene. Everyone wanted to have his success and since then we've seen a stream of cookie cutter hat acts that are trying to cash in on a proven formula. It doesn't work. Female artists on the other hand each tend to have their own unique style and sound. Not to mention their songs cover a much wider range of issues. If the industry wants to break male artists into the big time they need to find singers with fresh sounds instead of rehashing the sounds of a successful past.

They also need to stop punishing female artists for their success. The industry should instead be thrilled that these artists are turning out incredible music and can generate record sales. Cutting these artists off of radio is serving the fans a major injustice. In fact maybe if radio would play some of the smaller male acts as well we might see another major star emerge and then they could get over this new found obsession.

While radio continues to ignore the incredible wealth of talent to be found in these artists you can count on the fact that this web site won't. You'll hear about the big stars but you're also going to continue to hear about the up and coming artists like Allison Moore and about acts that are shunned by the radio industry like Kelly Willis. Their music is some of the best out there and it deserves to be heard.

Hey radio. I'm only going to ask one more time. Please wake up and give all these talented artists their chance on the airwaves. You never know who might take off and you never know where it might take you.

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