Who would of knew that one simple comment, probably not the smartest one, could land you in hot water. I would really hate to be this guy.

Find Out How Country Music's Top Female Performers Are Taking A Stand!

A few weeks before CMA Fest, one man touched on the “women in country radio” issue in a way that sent shockwaves through the industry. Keith Hill, a music consultant, told a trade publication that to make good country radio, you have to be careful with how many women you play. From Country Aircheck:

Finally, Hill cautions against playing too many females. And playing them back to back, he says, is a no-no. “If you want to make ratings in Country radio, take females out,” he asserts. “The reason is mainstream Country radio generates more quarter hours from female listeners at the rate of 70 to 75%, and women like male artists. I’m basing that not only on music tests from over the years, but more than 300 client radio stations. The expectation is we’re principally a male format with a smaller female component. I’ve got about 40 music databases in front of me and the percentage of females in the one with the most is 19%. Trust me, I play great female records and we’ve got some right now; they’re just not the lettuce in our salad. The lettuce is Luke Bryan and Blake Shelton, Keith Urban and artists like that. The tomatoes of our salad are the females.”

The salad analogy hit a nerve, sparking commentary from big country music stars, from Sara Evans to Miranda Lambert to Martina McBride to Jennifer Nettles.

By CMA Fest time, that drama had not died down; Hill’s comments were still being referred to as “Saladgate” or “Tomatogate” and many woman artists at CMA Fest were asked to comment on them. At the CMT Next Women of Country panel, Ballerini, Danielle Bradbery, Cam, Angaleena Presley and RaeLynn all weighed in on on the women that shaped them. As Rolling Stone reported:

The five of them were models of mutual admiration through two rounds of songs, quietly singing along with lyrics they knew, sometimes even piping in with unrehearsed harmonies, and expressing appreciation for each other’s performances and perspectives.

“We can’t get by coasting,” Cam said of the challenges they face as women in the industry, “so even if we wanted to be mediocre, we couldn’t.”

Presley, who’d been in Nashville the longest, was even more pointed: “I’m not a tomato. I’m a hard-working, sophisticated woman. My mama didn’t burn her bra for nothing. I’m here to stay.”

Evans had been asked the same thing the night before, at the CMT Awards, and she was optimistic about the future of country. “I’m excited to hear any song that’s not about drinking, or beer, or trucks, or partying, or jeans… or beer,” she said.

“Now that all of this is being discussed, I think it’s very positive,” she says, noting that the best thing her fellow female artists can do is to speak up on the topic—and not be silent because they think it’s safer. “I don’t think Patsy Cline would be ok with that. I don’t think Loretta Lynn would be ok with that. I grew up on a farm; I grew up in country music. For me to now feel like they’re not allowing me to be a part of this genre? What do you do?”

And when the news broke about Ballerini’s single hitting number one, she also touched on Hill. “So many people were taken aback by that comment,” she said. “I think people really wanted to step up and help women, and I’m excited I was part of that.”

Others have a larger perspective on the whole thing. “There are bigger issues going on in the world than being called a tomato,” Kellie Pickler told Rolling Stone. “I’ve been called worse! If our biggest thing is fighting to get on the radio, then that’s a good problem to have, considering what other women are dealing with around the world, who would do anything to trade problems with women in country music.”

There’s anger in the responses from these artists, famous and less famous, but there’s also a lot of hope, an excitement for something tangible to rally around. And it’s an energy that has been percolating for some time now. This spring saw the launch of CMT’s Next Women of Country Tour, an extension of an initiative started in 2013. A group of women, including Tracy Gershon of Rounder Records, music journalist Beverly Keel and CMT senior vice president Leslie Fram, founded Change the Conversation, a group whose goal, Keel wrote, “is to increase the number of women played on country radio, signed to label and publishing deals, nominated for major awards and selected for LP Field performances during CMA Music Festival and other high-profile events.”

“The Tomato-gate just accelerated it because it really brought forth what people knew but nobody was talking about,” Gershon said in an interview with Keel. “When I was shopping female artists, several labels said, ‘We don’t sign females,’ or, ‘We already have too many females and they are too hard to get on radio,’ or, ‘It is too hard to find songs for females.’ We had to find proof that that isn’t true.”

On Saturday at CMA Fest, Song Suffragettes—the self-ordained group of women who have been performing in a showcase just for female artists at The Listening Room in Nashville every Monday for a year—took the stage to discuss music and play some of their work. Readily referring to themselves as “tomatoes,” the Song Suffragettes have gotten support from a variety of places, like the website Taste of Country, who noted that they’re “a proud partner in this effort.

During the first week of every month, one #LetTheGirlsPlay artist will be featured in depth, turning a light on the next generation of great female singer-songwriters.” The women were featured at CMA Fest again the next day, but on Saturday, another lady-focused musical event took place: Diva Jam, also held at The Listening Room, hosted by artist Olivia Lane.

Lane’s single “You Part 2” is newly out, and there were posters for it all over the Nashville, on Broadway and even at the airport. She’d actually gotten the chance to meet Hill a week after his comments blew up, when he came to a showcase of hers.

“He wasn’t wrong,” Lane told Jezebel of Hill’s comments. “It’s the way he said it.”

“He comes to my showcase, and my radio rep—you always need to have people around you who believe in you and who will help you maneuver this crazy business—my radio rep comes up to me and she was just like, ‘I know what you want to say, you’re not gonna say it, but here’s what you can say.’ So I went up to him and I was like, ‘Okay, I’ll be a tomato, as long as you put me in the salad!’ So you just kind of have to take it with a grain of salt and poke some fun at it.”

“I think it was an interesting metaphor, to say the least,” said Lane with a small smile. “But, you know, that’s the battle that you’re up against: you’re up against all of these guys that have different opinions, in radio have different opinions and at the end of the day, as an artist, whether it’s male or female, you just have to be true to who you are. I think as a female, if we all come together—like this event, like a Diva Jam—if we all come together and rise up above it, and we just ignore it, then we can do such amazing things.”

Lane has the irrepressible energy of a woman who really, really wants to make it and she seemed unwilling to let Hill or anyone else tell her that she can’t do what she wants to do.

“I really wanted all the girls to sort of come together and do a show together because all the bros hang out, they write together, they just hang out,” Lane said of the origins of Diva Jam, which is in its second year. “So I was like, why don’t we have a performance where the girls can come together and network together and become friends and write with each other hopefully, and it sort of turned into this big CMA Diva Jam event. I’m really really excited about it because there’s so many amazing females out there, and I just want us all to be friends.”

Lane supports the theory that the current lack of women on the radio is a cyclical phenomenon, not locked in forever.

“Right now in pop music, women are totally dominating the charts. So, I honestly really feel like this whole bro-country thing was such a big trend and maybe it’s on the out, maybe it’s not, but I hope that radio is, there’s room for all of it now.”

“Things are definitely changing,” she added. “There’s too many amazing females out there for it not to. And females are starting to work now, which is great,” going on cite Ballerini’s rise to the Top Five as proof of that shift.

Lane has high hopes for Diva Jam; she said she hopes it will move to an even larger venue. But she and the Song Suffragettes won’t just stand back and let it happen; they’re using the drama around #Tomatogate as a peg, free publicity to get people out to see them perform. “I think it was an amazing thing in the conversation of females at country radio,” Lane said. “Because it just propelled Martina McBride to get involved, and Sara Evans to get involved, and Miranda Lambert to get involved, and if those artists can support up and comers like myself, then that’s just where it starts.”

“You know I’m a firm believer that significant change takes awhile. It takes a long time for it to be, especially set in stone. Trends come and go, but this has been a long time coming and I think we’re about to see, especially next year, it’s gonna be so female dominated.”

Country’s a rare popular music genre (or just music genre in general) that’s included women from practically the beginning. So to see it go the way of musical genres that have historically been less inclusive is, to put it lightly, disheartening. But it’s still the music industry. Women will still be held to a different standard and people ultimately will still have their preferences, however unfair they are.

Do You Think That Hills Comments Are Being Blown Out Of Proportion?

This feud has been going on now for over a month and has a lot of Country Music Superstars really upset… Do you think that this should be put to rest or is this another reason for more females to take a stand to unjust stereotypes?

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This Article Was Adapted From: The Muse

Photo Credit: John Russell/CMA