Country music's women get the play they're due in new book 'Her Country'

For at least three modern country trailblazers, a name serves as the only introduction needed: Maren Morris. Kacey Musgraves. Mickey Guyton.

"Her Country" — a new book from Nashville journalist Marissa Moss — chronicles the origin of these women as each carved a vital one-of-a-kind path to success in an industry that too often fails women.

With Guyton, Musgraves and Morris as an anchor (plus the bones for a killer playlist, of course), the book takes readers through roughly two decades of landmark women in country music — The Chicks to Shania Twain, Gretchen Wilson, Miranda Lambert, Amanda Shires and Rissi Palmer — and the systemic prejudices each faced in a necessary battle to own their artistry.

Moss gives readers a front-row view to a continued disparity in country music; radio gatekeepers continue to play women at rate alarmingly below men; Black women receive virtually no play despite advocates pushing restlessly for racial equality on stage and behind-the-scenes in Nashville.

And she offers a look at the chance meetings (Shires met Morris at a cookout once?!) and one-off moments (Yes, Morris opened for Sturgill Simpson at the Basement ... with a few dozen people watching) that helped build a cohort of Nashville artists lauded today as generation-shaping.

In a Tennessean interview, Moss discusses how the book came to be, where the story picks up today and why radio still matters in a business often dominated by streaming.

Why Guyton, Morris and Musgraves?

"Her Country" invites readers to Texas 20 years for the small-town and suburban stories of Morris, Guyton and Musgraves, who transformed from a teenager appearing at President George W. Bush's inauguration to a leading advocate for inclusion and gun reform.

In enlisting these women, Moss said she hoped to tell a mainstream country story.

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"The way that the country radio charts look and everything from who's at the top of festival bills to who's being signed," Moss said. "X number of years from now, the Billboard charts will tell the stories of very successful men in country music.

"I wanted to offer a different history that shows all of these women [who] were very successful in their own ways," she said. Moss added: "I wanted it to be grounded in our current culture and cultural issues and struggles because country music is a good way to hold up a magnifying glass to all of those things."

Radio should be an option

"Her Country" showcases how these women — particularly Guyton and Musgraves — found success without country radio, a leading path to sustained mainstream success.

And sure, streaming and social media created new paths for artists to reach modern listeners. But the door to radio shouldn't be closed to women releasing ground-shifting songs.

"I do certainly believe that if a woman wants to have a mainstream country career and have airplay on country radio, that should still be an option," Moss said. "If that your dream, like millions of dudes dream about, you should have a shot at that. It shouldn't be, 'I have to do something different because country radio will never play me.'"

An eye on the future

A week in Music City seldom passes without a new line of history being written. When did Moss know to finish her book, knowing advocates continue to gain ground on equality in some Nashville spaces?

"The whole last chapter [was], 'OK, we've talked about these things. We've made progress in this area. We've talked about women, but what is the future now?'" Moss said. "How do we think bigger and more inclusive and go beyond just equality for women or white women to making a much more inclusive country music?"

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: 'Her Country' book chronicles country music's groundbreaking women