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On Holly Williams, Kacey Musgraves, and the year of the woman in country music

If you haven't figured it out yet, Holly Williams has made a country record which could, one might imagine, in a perfect world, reset the gauge as to what constitutes a country music album these days. If I had to name an Album of the Year right now, her new record would be duking it out with Kelly & Bruce.

That's what I thought, at least, the first time I hit play and heard her sing her way through the bitterness, anger, fear, and heartache to lines like "I raise your babies and I kiss your lips, so why you cheatin' on a woman like this?" Loretta Lynn may as well have written that line in her heyday, but when Williams sings it, there's nothing throwbacky about it. Coming on the heels of "Why you drinking like the night is young?" the line betrays a certain timeless truth about the dynamic of an unfortunate - and all too frequent - situation.

If you walk past the signs and the uniforms and the preconceived ideas about the movement, what's happening on Williams' record is feminism, period. Her songs tell stories of women realizing that, for all their strength and wisdom and assertive personalities, all the personal power with which they were raised in a world that's still trying to convince itself women are equal citizens, it turns out old habits die hard.

Old habits are another theme of Williams' record, as is the journey through and away from them. Hence The Highway after which she titled the disc. It's hard to say if all of this was intentional, but these themes recur throughout the album and, once you spot them (which, how could you not, given the blatancy of the opening track?), it's hard to put the images back into a case.

Similarly, there's a new disc streaming on NPR right now from Kacey Musgraves - an als0-young, als0-Nashville-based singer-songwriter who also approaches mainstream-palatable country music through a lens of feminism and Americana, maybe not necessarily in that order. On first listen, Musgraves' disc struck me as a little more twee than Williams' gritty raw energy, but then I read what Ann Powers had to say about it and listened again, and the rusty edges started showing. (It's a wonderful thing when criticism does what it's supposed to, don't you think?)

But, here's the thing. On Powers' Facebook wall, I felt inclined to call the disc out as less hard-hitting than Williams' effort. As soon as I hit "enter", I stepped back from myself, found myself asking the question: Am I comparing these albums because they were both made by pretty young girls? Or am I comparing them because there are actual sonic similarities? What young twee male country singer who could be enjoyed by Americana artists could I compare Musgraves to? What about that kid - he was nominated for a Grammy? Hunter Hayes. (I had to look him up.) No.

This is what happens, though.

The impulse to compare women as though "female singer-songwriter" were a style of music, is ingrained. As a female singer-songwriter, I played those "women" nights at clubs. As a critic, I feel inclined to abolish that absurdity. As a woman critic, I'm aware that any attempt I make to conflate the work of women with the work of men could be met with eye rolls and blow-offery. And yet I find myself making a point of drawing comparisons across gender lines. If you pause to consider it, it seems silly to even say out loud (or type on a screen): woman is not a style of music or a form of expression; it's a gender. Compare Lucinda Williams with Buddy Miller. Simple enough. Compare Ani DiFranco and Steve Earle. Even easier.

But, is feminism served when someone like me goes out of her way to try to find a man to compare a woman to, simply so she doesn't fall into the trap of comparing her to another woman? Isn't that a pendulum swinging too far in the other direction? Does it matter? Shouldn't I let it swing that far when it was kept from swinging for so long (and continues to be kept from swinging for women in fundamentalist religious-run nations)? I don't know the answer to that. And, anyway, the fact is that I believe Musgraves and Williams are drawing from the same tradition, aiming for a similar target. Sure, I think Musgraves made a record with hopes of it becoming The Big Record of the Year on Country Radio, whereas I get the feeling Williams made a record so she could get some songs off her chest and, maybe, hopefully pay some rent in the process. (And also, perhaps, Williams is aware that her name brings with it some automatic clout and the novelty that the Williams family line has thus far produced just male inheritors of Hank Sr's legend, affording her extra leverage on a heavily-tapped legacy.)

Quest for fame aside, the target seems to be women telling the truth, no matter how it feels to do so, and no matter what the reaction. It's a hat worn by Loretta Lynn before them, and more recently Elizabeth Cook and Natalie Maines (whose forthcoming album promises to have absolutely nothing to do with country music, if the buzz is to be believed). There have been other truth-telling women in mainstream-palatable country before them, but they've slid the truth into songs which were heavily arranged and surrounded by layers of pillowy production - so much that you had to squint your ears sometimes to hear the daring. (The Judds all the way to Taylor Swift, who does her damnedest, for better or worse.)

Granted, there's a decade of life and experience between Williams and Musgraves. The heart with which Musgraves drops lines like "We get bored, so we get married / just like dust, we settle in this town," could easily lead to the spirit of "I've been sitting here every night for a brand new song and a peace of mind," in ten more years of uncovering the reality of what's expected of women, what women expect of themselves, what we expect of each other. Maybe more importantly than any of this, what makes Williams and Musgraves (and Cook, and even Maines) comparable is not a determination to defy expectations, but a willfulness to ignore them. A willfulness to sing the songs they've written, the way they wrote them, without the filligree of femininity or even feminism.

Comment by Easy Ed on March 13, 2013 at 9:08am: Perhaps because I'm a guy, I'm having a hard time connecting to this concept of "the year of the woman in country music". It seems counter to the comment you make that "woman is not a style of music or a form of expression; it's a gender". Not to put words in your mouth, but is the point that women are writing from a more personal experience and space more than in the past? If so, that's probably because most of the songs sung by women used to be written by men. Maybe "female singer-songwriter" at least for now is a genre unto itself.

Comment by Kim Ruehl on March 14, 2013 at 8:14am: Exactly - women are writing from a more personal experience, which is great for a slew of reasons. And maybe I didn't say this well enough, but every time there are three or more women who release good albums in a year, in a mainstream genre, there's some critic or publication who feels inclined to call it "the year of the woman in pop" or country or rock or hip-hop, as if women aren't making important contributions all the time. "Female singer-songwriter" is treated as a style of music, the same way "indie" is treated as a style. It might be that more women release great albums this year than men, but when there are more men releasing great albums than women, we just call it "great music." When women do it, it's "women in music" because there's a cultural expectation that women doing great things is still not the norm, or is not expected.

I was also trying to talk about the fact that, for all the advances feminism has made on behalf of women, there are still women waking up in their lives to the reality that they're expected to fulfill traditional roles - raising the kids, making the dinner, taking care of the home - while their man does whatever. In Kacey Musgraves' song, it's the women who settle because they get bored so they get married. The men are free to get stoned and have affairs, while the women still have to take care of things at home, despite the images they see on TV and in movies about empowerment and self-actualization. Not that most women want to get stoned and have affairs, but that most women don't want to settle, but at least in that scenario, the implication is they want more but are afraid to go after it because "that's what tradition told you."

These themes are emergent in the songwriting of younger women because, yes, they get to write their own songs now. But also because that's the everyday reality of young women in a "post-feminist" world. Sure, the Secretary of State was a woman. But in rural America - and also in many cities - women are still struggling to break out of tradition and realize their full potential. They're still struggling with having to get off the road from pursuing their dreams because they started a family, because someone has to stay home with the kids, and societal expectation is still that that person should not be their father.

I will disagree with you all day long about "female singer-songwriter" being a genre. Try to draw any parallel between Bonnie Raitt, Thao Nguyen, Holly Williams, and Anais Mitchell, for example, aside from their gender. Sonically, they're in different universes. Lumping them together as a genre is insulting.

Plus, it's women's history month, so...

Comment by Easy Ed on March 14, 2013 at 11:11am: I don't really believe that there is a genre of female singer-songwriter, but there sure are plenty of females who are singer-songwriters. Didn't you tell me there were like 4,654 of them in just Boston alone? But you are right on the money...I remember the Lilith Fair years and all the "year of the woman" press crap that came with it. On one hand it was elevating, on the other it was mis-leading and derogatory.

A post-feminist world...you obviously have missed several years of Jersey Shore and Housewives of Name your Rich Suburb. And haven't the Kardashian sisters broken out of the "make and post a porn tape ethic" and built a giant funhouse of full potential? Beneath the "lets use sex to sell stuff" exterior, beats capitalist, post-feminist hearts.

By the way, I personally consider every month women's history month.

Comment by denton fabrics on March 14, 2013 at 11:15am: Personally, I think it's the Red Sox year but I've been wrong about that before. But the word that comes to mind after hearing Holly Williams' new album is "stunning" and I'm sure it'll be on many fans Best Of list come next winter. Somewhere in some world, Hank Sr is smiling, one very proud grandpappy.

Comment by Easy Ed on March 14, 2013 at 11:41am: Often curious as to this place where dead people congregate and watch down (or up) the people of planet Earth, to express pride or condemnation. I'd think it'd be awfully crowded there by now. And how do you think they hear all this new music from their offspring? Speakers, or headphones? A celestial You Tube or Spotify? So far, I like Holly's album too although it's hard to stop listening to that "June" song.

Comment by Alan Wagman on March 14, 2013 at 11:59am: Kim,

I respect and enjoy your critical perspective based on what I read here. You have opened me up to hearing artists I otherwise might miss (which is why I was an ND subscriber). Not sure I get what you are saying here even with the additional comments above. When I listen to music, I am usually hooked by the the music first (including the voice) and by the lyrics second. Strange, I know, especially with roots music! That being said, I rarely find myself thinking about gender when listening to music. And the fact that the media use gender as a hook into a story is meaningless for me. If I hear something I like, I will listen. I am not sure I am making sense here, but I rarely read the lead and delve into the meat of a story with the ultimate goal of discovering something new and exciting to listen to. If the article is pontificating about things like the 'year of the woman' I will generally tune it out. Tell me what you love about an artist and let me dive in and listen!

Comment by denton fabrics on March 14, 2013 at 1:50pm: Ed, I'm not sure but I'd guess that the souls that are "up there, looking down on us" probably use some cloud based service - probably iTunes, but that depends if Steve Jobs is "up there" or in the other place. I'd also guess that the souls that are "down there, looking up at us" probably pirated most of their music using some peer-to-peer software or bit torrent application. But like I say, I've been wrong before. Go Red Sox!

Comment by Kim Ruehl on March 14, 2013 at 1:53pm: Go Yankees!

(I don't actually care, but the first baseball game I saw in my life was at Yankee Stadium, so I can't possibly let two Red Sox fans dominate my comment feed here.)

Comment by Easy Ed on March 14, 2013 at 5:44pm: Yes...enough with the Red Sox talk. I too am a Yankees fan.

Comment by Jim Moulton on March 15, 2013 at 3:40am: I like Kelley and Bruce's CD better than Holly's, I can't wait for the new Roys CD in a month or two. I do like Holly Williams CD, but it was a bit too folky for me.