Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-4rdrl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-08T00:26:11.086Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - A Double-Edged Sword

Industry Data and the Construction of Country Music Narratives

from Part I - Industry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2023

Paula J. Bishop
Affiliation:
Bridgewater State University
Jada E. Watson
Affiliation:
University of Ottawa
Get access

Summary

In September 2007, Rissi Palmer’s debut single “Country Girl” entered Billboard’s Hot Country Song (HCS) chart, making her the first Black female artist to chart in twenty years and one of just seven Black women in the history of the industry. With short life cycles on the chart, their songs left faint data trails making their time in the industry. As a result, their careers received limited attention from the press, their music was not widely distributed, their contributions went unrecognized by the industry, and, as a result, they remain unknown to country music fans. In an industry tightly centered around documenting, preserving, and promoting its heritage, these women have been largely expunged from the genre’s historical narrative. Drawing on intersectional theory and feminist scholarship on institutional discrimination (Collins 1990; Ahmed 2014, 2019), this chapter analyzes sixty years of chart and award history data, to offer a framework for considering how industry data shapes cultural heritage, dictating whose stories get preserved.

Type
Chapter
Information
Whose Country Music?
Genre, Identity, and Belonging in Twenty-First-Century Country Music Culture
, pp. 55 - 70
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×