What Kelsea Ballerini’s No. 1 Single has to Say About Women in Country Music

Kelsea Ballerini’s debut single, “Love me Like You Mean It,” made history this week when it became the first debut single by a female to hit No. 1 on the billboard country charts since Carrie Underwood’s “Jesus, Take the Wheel” in 2006. Kelsea hit No. 1 on both the Billboard Country Airplay and mediabase country charts. I wonder what Keith Hill is saying about women in country now. (For those of you who don’t know, radio executive Keith Hill made himself a household name and a chauvinistic douchebag all in one day about a month ago when he compared women in country to tomatoes and said they should be taken out of radio completely.)

So what does this say about country? Well, it proves that country radio is not sexist, even if Keith Hill is. However, Kelsea sounds like a pop artist or at best a Taylor Swift, and what this does say is that women have to sound like pop singers to get on the radio. Also, there are plenty of women out there making great country albums who are being snubbed by country radio–Kacey Musgraves, Ashley Monroe, and Sunny Sweeney, just to name a few. Just proves that women are making more quality country music and therefore getting less airplay. So while it is a great day for the “tomatoes,” it is a sad day for country in general. Give Kacey or Ashley a NO. 1 instead. All the same, congratulations to Kelsea Ballerini for breaking this ridiculous nine-year drought.

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