Contemporary rhetorical trends and tensions in women's country music

Abstract

During the 1990s, both music scholars and the popular media have claimed that a "new voice" is emerging in women's country music. According to these sources, female country performers are shedding their conservative messages about gender roles and instead are singing of empowered and enlightened women. To determine if such changes have occurred in recent years, this work traces the rhetorical evolution of women's country music from 1952 to 1993. Kenneth Burke's cluster analysis is used to examine randomly selected songs by women which reached number one on Billboard's "Country Singles" charts. Additionally, through the use of gender ideology criticism, the four most popular music videos of the 1990s sample are evaluated. The study revealed that women's lyrical themes in country music have remained fairly consistent. However, the songs and videos of the 1990s highlight a tension between assertiveness and dependence, a tension merely hinted at in the works from previous decades.