Country Music’s Biggest Feuds: Where They Stand Today
usmagazine.comSomething to sing about! Country music’s biggest names haven’t been afraid to go head-to-head over the years, exchanging blows on social media, making up at awards shows and more.In 2015, several female artists came together to fire back at radio personality Keith Hill amid his comments about why he plays more male artists on the air.
The controversy was dubbed “Tomato-gate.”“If you want to make ratings in country radio, take females out. The reason is mainstream country radio generates more quarter hours from female listeners at the rate of 70 to 75 percent, and women like male artists,” Hill said at the time, “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 percent. 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.”Martina McBride, Miranda Lambert, Sara Evans, Jennifer Nettles and Kacey Musgraves were among those to speak out.“Whether or not a song gets airplay should be based on how good the SONG is … not whether it’s sung by a male or female,” the “Independence Day” songstress, who sold “Tomato” and “Tomato Lover” T-shirts, wrote via Facebook. “It’s kind of like comparing tall artists to short artists, blondes to brunettes, bald guys to guys with hair. … What does it matter?”The “Merry Go Round” singer then told Billboard in 2016: “If they can’t get your song off the ground, it’s immediately blamed on your personality, or the fact that you’re female, or that you didn’t make a radio station
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