▼ Music Women’s Work Marissa Moss examines country music through the lens of Texas talent in Her Country. BY PRESTON JONES country music that would be told by looking at the charts,” she says during a recent conversa- tion. “And that would be a very different story from what I lived and saw and really loved, and it felt important to present that story.” The result of her decision to look beyond A the charts and probe the last 25 years of country music history is Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Supposed to Be, Moss’s debut nonfiction book, out May 10. Moss, a Nashville-based contributor to Rolling Stone, Billboard, the Los Angeles Times, NPR and other outlets, frames her narrative around three iconoclastic Texas talents who rose to prominence over the last decade: Grand Prairie’s Maren Morris, Ar- lington’s Mickey Guyton and Golden’s Kacey Musgraves. Through extensive reporting on all three women and multiple interviews with Morris and Guyton, as well as a constellation of con- temporaries, collaborators, journalists and academics, Moss, across 304 pages, deftly makes a case for, among other critical changes, country music’s urgent need to em- brace diversity. (Moss spoke with me as a source for Her Country.) The three women, all of whom experi- enced country music’s most toxic tendencies, PROFESSIONAL TATTOO SUPPLY FOR PROS ONLY Call for your appointment or design commissions today! HAND BUILT NOT BOUGHT. COME ON DOWN! FRANKLINS TATTOO AND SUPPLY 469-904-2665 • 4910 COLUMBIA AVE, DALLAS, TX 75214 115 t a glance, the history of coun- try music might seem straight- forward enough. For journalist Marissa Moss, the reality was something else. “I realized there would be one story of Mike Coppola/Getty Images provide a through-line for Moss to examine the misogyny, inequity and racism embedded with the country music power structure. Moss reaches back to the Chicks’ infamous 2003 imbroglio involving President George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq, and even the early days of Miranda Lambert’s career, to illustrate how the next generation of Mor- ris, Musgraves and Guyton elected to forge their own paths, expectations be damned. “It feels like we’re at this moment, at least in my point of view, where country music is taking two different roads,” Moss says. “That’s been a pattern over the history of the genre … but you have this major gap in equality for women; very specifically, Black women, queer women. But then you also have these huge audiences that are access- ing these women completely outside of the standard country music access points.” Moss points to Morris’ pop crossover suc- cess with her multi-platinum smash single “The Middle,” as well as Musgraves’ awards- bedecked ascent to stardom without any sig- nificant radio support, as examples of how women — never particularly well-repre- sented on radio or TV platforms within the genre to begin with — have simply decided not to feel obliged to play Nashville’s game, reaping the rewards of, to borrow a phrase from Musgraves, “following your arrow.” “It’s very empowering and exciting to me to look at people who lead their careers that way, that say, you know, ‘I’m going to be true to myself, and my vision, and my moral cen- ter, and all of those things, despite every- thing else,’” Moss says. “Because they’re doing that within country music, it’s really easy to break the rules and push the limits.” Some ugly anecdotes are embedded within Her Country — the much-discussed “Tomatogate” controversy makes an appear- ance (male artists are the lettuce, females the garnish in the country music salad, a radio consultant said in 2015), as do some cruelly myopic and dismissive comments from pro- gram directors and other country music gate- keepers. Given that ugliness, it’s no wonder some of the musicians seem deeply bruised by the machinations of the town where they live and work, as evidenced by a quote Moss obtained from Morris in the wake of Morgan Wallen’s racial slur usage in 2021. “I was like, ‘Fuck this place,’” Morris says in Her Country. “But then I was like, if I leave, everything will stay exactly the same. I thought, I need to stay in the ring and get the shit kicked out of me a little longer. And it’s going to help more people than how I’m hurting right now. There’s obviously so much work to be done, but I think I’m will- ing to have the hard conversations and also identify myself as part of the problem to get to a better spot because I don’t want to leave Nashville or country music.” If history is any guide, circumstances will almost certainly worsen before, hopefully, im- proving — it’s as true for country music as it is the world. Still, Morris’ sense of beaten-but- unbowed optimism is shared by Moss as well, who hopes Her Country is as much a vehicle for discovery as it is a clarion call to Nashville and country music fans eager for change. “I want people to feel informed in a pow- erful way about what the realities were,” Moss says. “[I’m] hopeful that someone would read this book, who loves country music, but doesn’t feel like or it hasn’t felt like it’s a place for them … would feel like they were welcomed back in through these stories, and these women, and lead [them] down roads of so many different artists that they maybe hadn’t listened to before. That’s the best outcome for me.” Arlington’s Mickey Guyton is one of the focal points in journalist Marissa Moss’ new book. dallasobserver.com dallasobserver.com | CONTENTS | UNFAIR PARK | SCHUTZE | FEATURE | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | MOVIES | DISH | MUSIC | CLASSIFIED | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS DALLAS OBSERVER DALLAS OBSERVER MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2014 MAY 12–18, 2022
