F Sharp: It’s Kacey Musgraves’ ‘Golden Hour,’ despite Nashville’s apathy

Last year proved to be one of my favorite years for music since I started seriously consuming it. While the mainstream suffered in no small part due to artists like Drake, looking beyond popular music revealed a plethora of experimental and exciting releases ranging from underground hip-hop to noise rock. What surprised me most was that 2018 was the year I started to like country. It’s not my favorite genre, but there were several albums that made me realize there’s more to it than tractors and fake machismo.

My favorite of these was Kacey Musgraves’ “Golden Hour” — an ode to young love and nostalgia. Each song drips with a passion that unfolds in intricate and breathtaking layers. Whether she’s celebrating the small things on album opener “Slow Burn” or reprimanding a man for his misplaced ego on the groove-heavy “High Horse,” Musgraves blends genres and experiments with the boundaries of what country could sound like today. It was the first album of 2018 that made my heart pound with excitement, and I knew it would go on to make my personal top-10 list the moment I first heard it (it came in at No. 6).

The album debuted at No. 4 on the U.S. Billboard 200. Any commercial success she garnered came with no help from country radio, which has a long history of ignoring women in Nashville. The Billboard country radio airplay chart dated for Feb. 2 shows an all-male top 10. The first song by a woman shows up at 15, “Love Wins” by Carrie Underwood, and in the entire top 60, only eight are by female artists. The 2018 year-end chart for Top Country Artists paints a similar picture, with women showing up on the list seven times but completely shut out from the top 10. Musgraves appears at No. 43 — an impressive feat for someone largely ignored by the Nashville machine and country radio.

Sexism in country radio airplay isn’t a new topic of conversation, but it is one that has gained momentum. Underwood continues to have her new material played on the airwaves, but she’s an established act. When promoting her album “Cry Pretty,” Underwood called out radio for making it harder for emerging women country artists to make their voices heard.

“Think about all of the little girls that are sitting at home saying, ‘I want to be a country music singer,’” Underwood said in an interview on the “Women Want to Hear Women” podcast. “What do you tell them? What do you do?”

Country radio would tell those girls they can make it as long as they start off in pop and team up with a generic, bro-country duo to break airplay records. The biggest “country” smash of 2018 belonged to Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line with their song “Meant to Be.” It sounds like every other run-of-the-mill song listeners associate with mainstream country — complete with drum machine, autotune and oversaturated synthetic instruments. Although I am a fan of Rexha, the song exemplifies every bad songwriting trope the genre has acquired in recent years.

Yet, the song not only became a hit but the biggest hit country radio has ever seen. It holds the record for longest-running No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart and even topped the Hot 100.

“I never thought a New York girl like me would have a country hit, but I guess it goes to show you that some things are just … meant to be,” Rexha said about the success of the track to Billboard.

I’m sure someone in charge of airplay in Nashville waved their hands in the air and declared the song a progressive step toward evening the playing field for men and women in the genre. However, if the success of “Meant to Be” proves anything, it’s that country has become so exclusionary toward women in country that they are willing to tout the work of female pop stars over the new, truly country talent trying to break into the scene. Rexha has and will continue to find success as a pop performer even when “Meant to Be” is sent to a dark and dusty corner where bland-pop country songs go to be rightfully forgotten. Her moment in the Nashville sun doesn’t help the women who are trying to slog their way past a system bent on shutting them out in favor of an outsider.

Fortunately, Musgraves has a chance to take home Album of the Year at the Grammys this week despite what’s going on in Nashville. “Golden Hour” is one of the most critically lauded albums of 2018, and it shows what country can be when untouched by the Nashville writing machine. As excited as her nominations make me, I know they probably won’t do anything to change the culture within country music. Awards are often scoffed at by the music community for being out of touch with current trends. To a Nashville insider, the “Golden Hour” love at the Grammys is further proof that those outside of their scene are oblivious to what their listeners consume. They’ll turn up their noses and continue peddling the same songs about whiskey and women without missing a beat.

It’s too bad. They could have something better instead.

Baylee Shlichtman is junior writing about women in music. Her column, “F Sharp,” runs every other Monday.