Country Music Change: 3 Women Make The Top 10

For the first time in more than seven years, the country radio airplay chart has three solo female artists in the top 10, reports Variety.  The accomplishment provides hope for proponents of greater gender parity at the heavily male-dominated format.

The number holds true on both the Mediabase and Billboard airplay charts for this week. On Mediabase, the three singles are clustered together: Ingrid Andress’ “More Hearts Than Mine” and Gabby Barrett’s “I Hope” — both from freshman artists — on the rise at Nos. 7-8, followed by Maren Morris’ “The Bones” on the way down at No. 9.

Country Hits, Source: Mediabase

No one should feel too bad about Morris’ song being on the decline: That single already set its own contemporary benchmark when, in February, “The Bones” became the first song by a solo female artist to spend consecutive weeks at the top since 2012.

The good news is compounded by the fact that both the Andress and Barrett songs have been almost universally acclaimed by programmers and cited as strong contenders to get to No. 1, eventually, in country radio’s slow churn.

These upward moves follow on the heels of a panel at last month’s Country Radio Seminar in which some programmers and label execs were predicting, or at least hoping, that 2020 could be “the year of the woman” for a format that has spent a lot of years being called out by the media for affording female artists so few slots, in comparison to eras when they were better represented.

On the Billboard chart, the last time there were three at once dates back even further, to October 2012, when Underwood’s “Blown Away,” Miranda Lambert’s “Fastest Girl” and Jana Kramer’s “Why Ya Wanna” were all in the top 10.