Country's Better Half

It's women both as performers and as fans who are driving today's music

B Y    M A R K   L A S W E L L

Even in an art form as homespun and humble as country music, appearances can be quite deceiving. Take for instance the nominees for the Country Music Association's most prestigious award. The candidates for Entertainer of the Year are all male. And most of the speculation leading up to this week's ceremony concerns guys: Can George Strait complete the superlative type of year he has had (he just passed Merle Haggard as the CMA's most nominated performer ever) by copping the top prize? And if the notoriously competitive Garth Brooks loses, will the shade of purple he turns more closely resemble a damson plum's or Barney the dinosaur's?

But the most vital story in country music during the last year or so isn't going to be found under the brim of a Resistol cowboy hat. It's the women of country-performers, record buyers and concertgoers-who have Nashville agog. From such stalwarts as Trisha Yearwood and Shania Twain to the just arrived Dixie Chicks, female artists have established a groundswell in country music that is transforming the industry. Their emergence has spurred massive record sales driven by female fans, who now make about 58 percent of all country-music purchases. (In fact, they've outnumbered men at the cash register for more than a decade; among music buyers overall, women overtook men just this year.) Country music's female posse has also created a sense that women, in a mostly male business, are the ones breaking new ground. With the country-music industry worried about stagnation after the boom years of the early 1990s, female performers are taking on controversial topics with their lyrics (in a recent concert, for instance, Twain revised a verse of "God Bless the Child" to include girls with "daddies who make them play games they don't want to play"), spicing up their music with unabashedly pop and rock riffs and generally shaking up a town that prefers life on the sedentary side.

"They've done an extraordinary job of articulating the situation of the contemporary woman in society today," says CMA executive director Ed Benson, discussing country's female big four, Twain, Yearwood, Faith Hill and LeAnn Rimes. "They have really set the standard for music in the last couple of years, whether by taking some chances on songs or doing music that's a bit edgier than the standard down-the-road stuff that country-music radio stations normally like to play."

Shania Twain

She started singing in backwoods Canadian bars as an 8-year-old; now she has large chunks of North America (and beyond) singing bars from her music. Shania Twain, 33, is technically a country star-Come On Over is up for the CMA's album of the year award-but her pop chops have also won a massive mainstream audience. Her '95 album, The Woman in Me (produced and cowritten by her husband, rock-music veteran Robert John "Mutt" Lange), has sold more than 10 million copies, double-digit territory previously reached by only three female vocalists: Carole King, Whitney Houston and Alanis Morissette. Twain's sexy yet strong image is also decidedly beyond Nashville: She's post-Madonna, not latter-day Loretta.

TV Guide: Your success selling albums while not performing concerts led to expectations that your first world tour would be a bust, yet it's a critical and financial winner. Do you feel vindicated?

Shania Twain: People thought I was going to be petrified and that it was going to be a disaster. Meanwhile it's the easiest part of anything that I've ever done. The irony is that the studio and the video and the television-all the controlled environments that were very new to me a few years ago-that's the stuff I was most uncomfortable with. When you go up onstage in front of a live audience, the freedom is unbelievable. And when you're on television or in a video or in the studio, you have to achieve communication without communicating. It's so bizarre.

TVG: Is the whole "bare belly button" controversy behind you as well?

ST: I think that the industry seriously underestimated the fans and where they were at. I mean, come on, we have the Internet these days. Watch TV for one hour! The times are very progressive and very free. That's why I don't particularly pay a lot of attention to what the industry is doing. I don't want to be influenced by it, I don't want to know what they consider right and wrong.

TVG: You've struck a chord with young women in particular.

ST: You can't underestimate or fool the fans. They live real lives and they want real music, real thoughts and real words. That's what I try to give them. I like to express to young girls especially that you should feel comfortable with your body. Whether it's an extra roll that you don't like or whatever it is that you don't like about your body, you shouldn't feel that you have to hide it. The best example I can give, because this is what I spent doing in my teens, was I had a girlfriend who was very flat-chested, and she could always go around in T-shirts in the summer and tanks and stuff like that, and I never felt that I could because I was so heavy-chested. I covered myself up, and I never went to the beach. Now that I'm older, I'm thinking, What a waste. People should learn to respect the way you look and who you are. Period. I always try to explain to people that it's not about sex. Sensuality is part of being feminine. If you feel that you want to wear something that's sexy, that doesn't mean that you're looking for sex. People interpret these things way out of whack. And I think that's just a shame.

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