The Politics of sound

David:                   Welcome to Disarming Data. It's Paige and me David, talking to extraordinary people about interesting things and extraordinary things they've done. The twist is we're doing so from two generations. I'm an old boomer.

Paige:                   I'm a millennial who grew up in the tech generation.

David:                   I don't know anything about tech. I usually lose my cell phone rather than use my cell phone. I'm a tech novice, but in this podcast, I think I can handle it because we're going to be talking to some really interesting people, including psychologists, chefs, undercover agents, active veterans, and on and on.

Paige:                   And Dad, you forgot about whistleblowers and other people who are interesting and influential to us.

David:                   And Paige, you forgot to say thank you for listening to the show.

Paige:                   Thanks for listening.

David:                   You know how much we like country music and we are extremely lucky to have Jada Watson from SongData here today. She's got some great things to talk about and we're looking forward to the conversation.

Paige:                   Thanks so much for coming on.

Jada:                      So excited to be here.

Paige:                   So we always just like to start out by asking our guests where they're from, how they grew up, and how did you get into what you're doing now?

Jada:                      I love this question and I'm going to try to make a through line for you. That actually didn't really reveal itself to me until the last few years when I started to think more critically about where I'm from. So I was born in Montreal, but I moved to Eastern Ontario in a rural town called Gainesville in 1990, and I was nine then. And so this was about the time that really music became a huge part of my world. I grew up in a family where we always listen to music, but this is when radio became integral for me, right?

                                Growing up in the country, we had tapes, we had vinyls, but it was those long drives to the city when we were doing things where radio was part of my world, and through the nineties, one of the things that I now remember doing was taping the countdown. I used to listen to it on one day and tape it the next day because I would then use those recordings one the way we obsessively stream now, I would create my own playlist, but also I would use those tapings to teach myself to play those songs on piano. It's interesting now to look back at my childhood and to see how really truly formative some of those experiences were, because now many years later, years later, I study radio.

                                I study radio programming, and I look at the ways in which songs by women and artists of color are programmed and the time of day that they're programmed and the ways in which their songs are programmed as a way of better understanding the extreme gender and racial inequity that happens within the country music industry. Of course, I skipped over steps where I did my undergrad in music and my master's and my PhD, and I have a master of information studies, which is sort of where this interest in data all really comes from. My PhD was traditional musicology. I did a lot of analysis of recorded song, but it was after I finished my PhD when I returned or I turned to data.

Paige:                   So you studied music in undergrad. Did you know that that was what you were going to end up doing with your career or did it kind of just form into that and originally you wanted to go into singing, songwriting or some other aspect of music?

Jada:                      At the time, I would say I really didn't know. Before I went off to college, I thought I might be a journalist, so I was applying to music performance programs and journalism programs and I got in, but I ultimately just really wanted to play piano. So I went to college first and I did a diploma in piano performance.

David:                   Wow.

Jada:                      Then went to do my undergrad and I thought I would double major. I thought I might do some performance, but I really by that time knew I wanted to be a music historian. Music historian was really where I was going. And I started out being a Soviet musicologist. I especially-

David:                   Oh, come on.

Paige:                   Oh wow.

Jada:                      ... in music censored under Stalin. So I was researching Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich and looking at the ways in which they use their music to respond to censorship through his last 5 or 10 years about. And I really thought that I was going to continue that and work on Cold War politics. And at the same time I found a passion for popular music studies via the chicks. My very first research project was on again radio, the backlash to their anti, I don't even know if I can call it that, but I guess yeah, their anti bush statement of 2003. That was my first published article, and then 2015 I returned to all of that. So there was a bit of a gap because I went and did my PhD in musicology where I did the more traditional music analysis route. And then yeah, I came back to radio again. So it's been there the whole time.

David:                   Wow.

Paige:                   Countries kind of like this really unique music I find at least because it's very enjoyable and fun and a lot of it's lighthearted. But I knew, and I've known for a very long time that a lot of country musicians much different than other genres, stay very out of politics and do not speak their political opinions. I'm not going to say all of them, but I would say a vast majority. And I've also known because I go to a lot of concerts that the makeup of a crowd when I go to a country concert is vastly different than the makeup of a crowd when I go to a hip hop concert. And I was just wondering if you could talk more about some of the studies you've done or research that you've found with radio and country music and the lack of representation within that music industry.

Jada:                      What I do now really began after 2015, and I don't know how much you know about this, but in May 2015, a prominent radio consultant did an interview about scheduling on country radio. And in this interview he said, we're a principally male format with a majority female audience and female listeners like male artists. He literally said this, right? And so he goes on to say, if you want to maintain or improve your station ratings program songs by women at 13 to 15% and then goes on to say, women are the tomatoes in our salad. Men like Luke Bryan, Blake Shelton, Keith Urban are the lettuce. And of course there was a big moment because women had been declining on charts and radio and people had been noticing for a few years. It's a conversation that keeps coming back like what's happening with female artists, but saying this was the first time that it put to print this idea that there was indeed a quota going behind the scenes at radio programming.

                                And then in the weeks and months that followed, there was this discussion that this had been ongoing since the sixties because there just were not a lot of hits by female artists, and so you had to space them out. But nowhere in this conversation was discussion about, well, if there are fewer hits and we want a bigger representation of female or why aren't we trying to do something about it? So there had been along the way studies, this particular radio consultant did his own studies where when his ratings would fall on stations he was managing, he would cut the number of songs by women and report a ratings increase. We've never seen this data, but he speaks about these studies. And so this happened and it was literally when I was depositing my dissertation to my committee and in the year that followed, I started to think, well, how can I start to explore these types of questions of representation?

                                And I turned first to popularity charts. The data is a little bit easier to get access to. And so my first work was on the Billboard Hot Country songs chart and looked at the ways in which changing methodology, so the ways in which they were even tabulating that data, whether it was straight airplay or audience impressions or a combination of streaming, which is what they have today on that particular chart, it's streaming, airplay and sales. It's really interesting to look at when you change the method, actually the groups of artists that are most marginalized end up being the first impacted. So a method changes in songs by women start to decline. And then after that, I'm very fortunate I was able to get access to radio airplay data through a database for one of the monitoring services, and I've been tracking airplay ever since.

David:                   Wow. Is it actual over the air radio or streaming radio or what kind of radio do you track?

Jada:                      It's terrestrial radio.

David:                   Oh wow.

Jada:                      So those commercial stations looking directly, I can go down to the station log and up to the weekly or annual report. And so that's what I've been doing for the last, I think I'm going on seven years now of looking at this direct from radio airplay representation. So that first study that I published in April 2019 with an advocacy group in Nashville called Women of Music Action Network, we found drastic decline from about 2000 to 2003, there was a 66% decline in songs by women on the year-end reports. They made up about 33% and dropped. We've looked at that data in various ways.

                                I look at the year-end reports, it gives kind of a snapshot of those years, but then I always dive into the weekly and to look at the rate at which songs by women are played, and then you can compare that to charts because if they're only played at like 20%, they're going to make up a smaller representation of the chart and then also the time of day. So a larger percentage of songs are played in the overnight and the evenings, which are the time of day with the lowest percentage of radio listeners tuned in because evenings and overnights, you're either out or you're sleeping or you're with your family or there's various factors in your life that sort of keeps radio out of your world.

                                And this is something that I find very troubling is the type of song. So in radio you have current singles, but then you have recurrent or gold catalog songs, and those are songs that are no longer current, right? Think of a song, like Elany Wilson song that has already peaked on the chart but is still retained for airplay will first fall into recurrent programming. So she's still there, but she's not charting, and then that song might become part of a gold catalog, and that's a way of, I call it canonizing within an industry. So what songs actually get kept for long-term programming and songs by women actually get tossed out at a far greater rate than songs by men. It's not just this sort of current issue. It's not just that currently singles by women where they're vying for chart activity. It's not just that. It's that their songs, once they exit the charts, they're quite quickly erased from cultural memory by not being retained in those gold catalogs.

Paige:                   It's so interesting to me too because I just think about women in music and I think about if someone was asked who do you think the hottest musician is right now? It would a hundred percent be Taylor Swift and what she's done on her tour and stuff like that. So it's not that people aren't interested in music, particularly young girls, I think love female musicians. It's been my experience at least. So it's very kind of strange to me that would be sort of the trajectory of radio. And I feel like she also has defined that odd then because you have to pay $2,000 for her to get to her concert. Do you know what I mean?

David:                   But she got out of country too, right? Do you think that was an explanation, Jada, for what she did?

Jada:                      I love the Taylor Swift question because on the one hand, when she was still actively in country, there were only three women that were sort of given top spot, Carrie Underwood, Miranda Lambert and Taylor Swift. So those three women for that period of time, it's not to say there weren't other women, of course there were, but only those three were programmed well and in a way that allowed them to achieve chart success. So there's always a collection of threes, and those three were very big for a very long time. And so Taylor leaving, it's actually interesting because when I did the first report, Taylor Swift was still one of the highest played female artists, but she left the industry. She's still ranking within the top most played female artists, but she hadn't actually been played in a while. I think with Taylor, I mean, I don't know the motivating factors, but there is a limit to what a woman can achieve in country.

                                And it's not to say that they can't become bigger, but the industry kind of caps opportunities. It's really hard to find a female artist who's been given the same kind of red carpet treatment as like a Garth Brooks, and so they kind of many age out, many marry out because the industry treats women differently when they become mothers. Also, she was quite young at that moment, and so the world was her oyster. She really could have, and she's proven it, been even bigger, and I don't think she's ever fully left country behind because country was always part of those tours. But I think that that move gave her a bigger platform, slowly greater ease of having a platform of inclusivity, of being a space for LGBTQ communities, to feel safer than would've been possible at a country show. You sort of hit on this earlier, those audiences, those shows are not necessarily safe spaces for anyone who is not a cisgendered, heterosexual white person.

                                Whether these things were at the fore of her mind or just sort of part of the kickback of shifting her platform, it allowed her a lot more artistic freedom and as we see now, greater control. So she's rerecording all of her albums, and that's really powerful. It's really about ownership and independence and authority. And so I think she's a very interesting conversation and I'm really excited to see Taylor Swift studies sort of pick up within academia because I think there's a lot to learn for how... And it's not been easy, it's not been smooth. There have been bumps along the way and certainly some of her inclusive stances have been problematic at times in the way she goes about them, but I think at the same time, she's showing a very interesting way of navigating the industry.

Paige:                   Yeah, I agree. And I do think it does. She went over to pop and then I think that's when she was much more open about her pro-choice stance and these political leanings that she had that. I mean, I don't think I would ever hear Carrie Underwood say a single thing about politics no matter what her opinion is on it, which I find really interesting.

Jada:                      Well, politics is really, it has a very tight relationship with the country music industry. If we go back to the, would've been the sixties, I think where politicians started to grace the stage at the Grand Ole Opry. And if we go back even further, we have Fiddlin' John Carson who's sort of performing at KKK rallies.

David:                   Oh wow, I didn't know that.

Jada:                      There's a very long history and so many artists choose to keep their politics close. You would probably never know which way they vote, and instead of politics, they use bible verses. It's a really interesting line to walk, but certainly there are always artists who come out with very political anthems. If we think a 9/11, the ways in which artists sort of responded to that attack and artists at that moment, you might be surprised to know that Toby Keith is a card carrying Democrat, but his songs have a sort of Republican esque tone to them, so you can't always tell either whether or not the narrative of the song aligns with the political ideals of the character.

Paige:                   Right. I mean, I am very curious about your opinions about Jason Aldean because I had followed his Instagram for a very long time before he came out as a Trump supporter, and it kind of felt like overnight one day he was just Jason Aldean, and then the next day there was pictures of him and his wife at Mar-a-Lago, and she suddenly was making a clothing brand with very anti-trans dance. And then he comes out with Try That in a Small Town, which I watched the music video because I was really curious what the issue was. I hadn't heard the song yet, and it's not my favorite song by him, even based off the political undertones. I just don't think it's that good of a song, but it's blown up. It's huge, and I think it's one of his best on radio performing songs so far. And I was wondering if you could just kind of touch on that and how he's navigated this and also just the response that's been kind of overwhelming.

Jada:                      Yeah, I wrote an article on this for the Toronto Star that funnily enough I think got little traction because of Taylor Swift's announcement of Six Nights in Toronto. It was interesting because one day I was talking about Jason Aldean and systemic racism and country music, and the next day I'm being called to talk about the Taylor Swift effect. It was a really interesting moment for me. But Jason Aldean is to put a fine point on it, if we look at data for the last 20 years, he's the second most played male country artist.

David:                   Wow. Who's the first? Is it Keith Urban?

Jada:                      Kenny Chesney.

David:                   Oh really?

Jada:                      Yeah. Data for the two decades shows that the most played are those two. And of course, if we look at the last two years, it would be like Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen, and Jason Aldean might come in around fifth or sixth, but overall for 20 years, he's the second most played male country artist. He's had 24 number one songs on the airplay chart. Up until Try That In a Small Town, he'd had a few songs crossover into that all genre Hot 100 and only one had broken the top 10, and it was Dirt Road Anthem, I think it was number seven. His music sonically is this blend of hip hop and rock with country, right?

David:                   Yeah, it's really interesting.

Jada:                      He does do that sort of rap vocals where it's more speech like, but his base is very heavy rock. And so he's blending these two things in really interesting ways. Again, another artist somebody should be looking at for a variety of reasons. And I think that the moment where he posted that photo with Trump, I don't think that was a very big surprise. I think that in many ways his political ideals were within his songs, but not necessarily at the fore. And he had made a statement about not being political. That was a big moment. I think a lot of people do remember that. And then a lot of people will always remember his wife's very strong anti-trans statements. I mean, she had back and forth with female country stars, Marin Morris and Cassadee Pope about it because they are very much all for trans rights and gay rights, human rights.

                                And so that was a very big moment. And then this song came out, and I like you heard it for the first time with the video, and I couldn't get over it because the lyrics were so aggressive, and I'm from a small town of a hundred people. Granted, I come from Canada and our gun laws are very different, but I come from a small town and yes, we protect our neighbor but not in that way. It was never about violence and it was a very confusing message. And then you add in the video and the second you see all of the news footage and you see what are pretending to be Black Lives Matter protests, you start to realize very quickly what all of this is, that there's veiled racism within all of this. And then you see the video and it's much more to me, explicit, and then you start to learn about the site. There is a very well-known lynching that happened in 1927. Race Riot occurred there in the 1940s.

Paige:                   I did not know that.

Jada:                      So very quickly, within 24 hours of that video coming out, people started to talk about this site and what that site means, but everything sort of unraveled when CMT decided they weren't going to play that video anymore. It had been released on a Friday, and then on Monday they decided they weren't going to play it anymore. And basically, it's hard to say, I'm just going to say it, right-wing politicians and right-Wing fans came out and said, you know what to do, and it's like a bat signal. It's like go buy it and stream it.

David:                   Oh, wow.

Jada:                      And his YouTube numbers, I haven't checked them recently, but at the time that I published my article where they were at 24 million. 24 million streams two weeks after the video was released. And his song went from being in about the forties on the airplay chart so it was doing well, but it wasn't doing incredibly well. Within a week that video coming out, the song debuted at number two on the hot 100 chart and then went to number one, and I can't stress enough for a song to go from not on a 100 position chart to number two within a week of a video coming out. For it to jump like that, there is major movement behind it major. And we're not talking country fans at this point. It's not just right. It can't ever be just.

                                There was a larger concerted effort from within right-wing political communities to encourage this movement of this song. I mean it's an awakening about how fan motivated, and I don't mean country or Jason Aldean fan, but sort of music fan motivated purchasing. They have this kind of purchasing power to push something that high up in all genre chart is quite remarkable, but it's also artificial because it's not an accurate representation in many ways of how the song would behave in a commercial market. I don't think that song would've ever been on a hot 100 chart had it not been for backlash to a video that inspired an angry white purchasing power to push it that way because it dropped after two weeks within number 2 and the top position, it dropped to number 21. And that kind of a drop means that people have been like, okay, we made our point and now we're pulling back. To me, it's really artificial in how it got there to begin with.

Paige:                   I know CMT is like, okay, he's doing this and it's not right, so we're going to take it off. But I wonder in my mind also at the same time, if it wasn't for that, I don't want to say cancel culture, but it is cancel culture, if it would've just kind of faded anyway. And sometimes I wonder if, I think the intentions behind cancel culture are always really, really good, but I also think the outcome does not really silence things. It sometimes makes them even bigger. And I was wondering your opinion on that.

Jada:                      I think that's accurate, and I think I have a hard time calling it cancel culture too, because how can you cancel something that you actually still can purchase and access in any other platform, right?

Paige:                   Right.

Jada:                      CMT is a commercial organization and they made a decision not to play a video any longer, which could actually continue to harm a giant segment of the fan base who's already unsafe at country concerts. So they made a decision not to play a harmful narrative on their channel. Announcing it caused the backlash. I wonder what would've happened if they just stopped playing it and never reported on it. You really can't win, right? Because on the one hand, silence is complicity. If they remain silent on the matter, that would send a message to this audience on what it stands for and what it doesn't stand for. I think you're really sort of damned if you do, damned if you don't because you can say nothing and then people might question where you stand on something that's quite divisive and quite important in this moment.

                                Or you can make a statement and actually make it a lot worse. You really can't win. But I really like this idea that it cancel culture can exist in a digital sphere like this. Go to YouTube. If you can't get it on CMT, go to YouTube. CMTs numbers don't do anything. If you're waiting for it to show up in one of their few video hours a day, I love CMT, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying don't watch it. I'm just saying if part of your reason of being a fan is to show that kind of support to artists and help influence their numbers, watching on CMT is not going to do that. But going to YouTube, going to streaming, going to Apple and buying it, that's your power as a fan. So you can't actually cancel something that you can get in a hundred different places and still make it as we've seen this viral song, right? Everybody was talking about Jason Aldean for a period of two or three weeks.

David:                   We're still hearing about it here in LA.

Paige:                   I think it's worse too because I mean, I think back to the Vegas shooting, and I think about the fact that he was the person on stage singing when the Vegas shooting happened and how many people were injured in that, and the fact that he would feel like putting up a video after being... All these fans are there to see you and then this mass shooting happens at your show, and yet you still want to, I'm not even completely anti-gun as some people, but the fact that he would still feel like it was okay to make a video that's promoting shooting people in a way is just really disturbing to me. I think a lot of people do forget that he was the artist on stage that night.

Jada:                      Correct me if I'm wrong, that is the biggest mass shooting in recent history in the United States in terms of numbers of-

Paige:                   I think it is. I do think it is. And I think I remember watching video interviews of fans of his, and I remember particularly one black guy talking, and it was really sad. He ended up getting shot-

David:                   Oh my God.

Paige:                   ... and talking about how he was really scared to go to a country music concert to begin with, but I mean it almost gets me emotional, but that he was such a big fan of Jason Aldean and he was such a big fan of country music and so he was going to do it anyway even if he was the only black guy there. And then for that to be kind of this experience he has, and then for a couple of years later, Jason Aldean to come up with this racist rhetoric is really upsetting to just think about what his perspective on things long-term in terms of a genre of music that is a really good genre of music in a lot of ways. There's been a lot of great artists. That's kind of where I think of it in a way.

David:                   Would you say some of this is just a microcosm of what we have overall? You have Brothers Osborne, Darius Rucker and Kane Brown. Maybe you talk about those guys too. I'd be interested in what you have to say about those guys. But it seems like there's a spectrum on country music, it's not like it's all one way or the other, but your thoughts on that.

Paige:                   I love Darius Rucker. He's one of my all time favorite country music stars, but I also feel like he does a really good job of staying in this lane where country music wants him to stay. And I don't know if you agree with me or not, but that's kind of what I've seen a little bit is he doesn't kind of upset the masses, if that makes sense. I don't know if you would agree with that.

Jada:                      Yeah and I think it's a really complicated conversation. So I guess the way into this would be for Darius Rucker would be sort of thinking through the results of the redlining in country music report that I published in March 2021, which looked at racial inequity within the country format radio. And it's a 20-year average of over 90% of the airplay for white artists in a musical style that is coming from black culture. I've been thinking about this lot lately. Country music as a style is global. Folks on tradition of the British Isles, banjo from Africa, rhythm and square dance and all these other cultural idioms from Africa, types of guitar playing that come from Mexican American community or I should just say Mexican communities, South American influence. It's truly musically, sonically diverse. But when the industry formed in the 1920s, they created marketing categories, hillbilly music and race music.

                                And these two categories were used not just for artists, it was not just white artists go on hillbilly record label and black artists go on race records, but it was also who they were then marketing to white audiences and black audiences respectively. And those labels didn't hold by the 1940s. They were country and R&B and those two labels by this point were the names of charts, were the names you would see in a record store. They were the labels that you would now you see in your digital service providers. They're everywhere. Those two labels are now thought to be musical styles, but they come from classification of humans. And so that backstory is kind of important to understanding that redlining report to see it's still over 90% white. Those marketing labels are doing their job of keeping the industry segregated as was designed in the 1920s. So it's not an easy space for a black artist or an indigenous artist or a Mexican or an Asian artist to navigate, right?

                                Very much like what you said earlier, David, about it being a microcosm of the United States. The issues that artists face in this very white industry are quite similar to the ways in which these artists would sort of navigate American society or Canadian society with the ways in which laws technology, all of these things have so much bias built into them that's no different. When you get to something like the country music industry where you're navigating a hundred-year legacy of whiteness in an industry that makes you prove yourself. So countless black artists talk about the kind of authenticity testing that they're put up to. They have to prove that they're country enough. Do you know this artist? Do you know this artist? What about this random person that played guitar? There's a lot of proving yourself, which is really harmful in general, especially when the music comes from your own community. When you look at the fact that over a 20-year period, 2.3% of the airplay was for BIPOC artists, but 97% of that 2.3% was for three men, Kane Brown, Jimmie Allen, and Darius Rucker.

David:                   Wow. Is that right?

Jada:                      So there's an extreme tokenization that happens with black man within this industry. It had happened previously with Charlie Pride, who was the only black artist who ever really was given support and a pathway through that industry. He's like something like 50 number one songs in his career, which is exceptional for any career. But it's the way in which the industry can then say, oh, we're not racist. We have Charlie Pride, we have Darius Rucker, we have Kane Brown. We can't possibly be otherwise these artists wouldn't be so successful. But it's just another way in which individuals are tokenized in this space and it's not discounting their talent.

                                They're obviously extremely talented, but there are so many other artists of color who are also extremely talented. I think of a Mickey Guyton or Rissi Palmer, there's so many. There's this collective of musicians called the Black Opry, and there each one of them is exceptionally talented, just wanting to be in the country industry. And I've named a lot of men being successful in this space, sort of coupled with this gender inequity is a hierarchy in which black women just can't find a pathway through. The highest charting black female artist female is Linda Martel, 1969. She hit 22 on the billboard chart and she remains to this day, the highest charting black female artist.

Paige:                   Wow. That is-

Jada:                      And she's still alive.

Paige:                   Wow. I mean, that's crazy though. And I always think about not even country music. I think in most spaces I feel like black women always get this really raw end of the stick.

Jada:                      And they're at the fore of this discussion, they're at the fore of the discussion of tech and data. I think of Sophia Noble and her work on Google search engines and the racial and gendered bias that's built into that system. And Joy Buolamwini, who's done this fantastic work on facial recognition technology and Timnit Gebru and all these black women who are at the fore because their experience tells them how these technologies and how these systems discriminate against them. We should be following them really. I certainly do.

Paige:                   Obviously they're so talented like Kane Brown and Darius Rucker, but do you know why it is that they're the ones that kind of pull ahead while other black country artists get left behind? Is it just that they're the more talented ones or is there something else that's going on there, or what do you think it is?

Jada:                      These are great questions. I don't know that there's one answer to them. It's just sort of how this system works. It's founded on white supremacy and sexism and heterosexism. I mean, that's the whole other sort of pillar to this conversation. But on the one hand, they are exceptionally talented. They're very talented, but there's only ever space for a few. What those reasons are, it's really sort of hard to know beyond the fact that they're still operating in a world where whiteness has cash value to them. They know that they can make money off of a Morgan Wallen, off of a Luke Combs, off of a Jason Aldean. Again, I'm naming men strategically. They know that whiteness will continue to make them money. They don't really recognize though the money that's being left on the floor by not diversifying because there is a very large black fan base.

                                There's a very large fan base of Mexican-Americans. There's a very large fan base of indigenous communities and Asian communities as well. Country music is universally loved, and I genuinely believe it's because it is global in sound. Maybe not in narrative, but in sound. And I think that one of the exciting things about streaming, another thing that's been top of mind lately is streaming gives us the ability to actually see who's listening and from where. And that's exciting because until streaming, we didn't fully have access to these numbers. And so there's a lot of people who are saying now, oh, well, country music is becoming global. Country music it's becoming popular amongst youth. I'm like, nope.

                                We finally have the data to tell us. It is global. It is popular amongst the youth because when I was a kid, I was making my own tapes of country music. No one knew that, but my family. But now people are basically in my house with me tracking what I'm listening to. So imagine if somebody could have been tracking little Jada in the 1990s hitting rewind on her Tracy Chapman song or hitting rewind on Wynonna Judd, we would've had a better sense of who's listening and from where. I mean, I went to Germany in early two thousands, and my friend's grandmother who we're staying with is a Johnny Cash fan. Country music is global and always has been, but they've never really done the work to understand their fan base. And part of that is because they've curated the base to be this way.

Paige:                   And is it because it's based out of the south? Because also it makes me think a lot about, I mean, I think it's still happening a little bit, but Old Town Road, when that came out, this intersection between country and hip hop, like Lil Nas X, that song blew up overnight. That was probably one of the most popular, I don't know the data, I'm sure you do, but or Nelly has done country music songs before. These certain hip hop artists, anytime they are in country music songs, those songs seem to perform extremely well. So I'm wondering why they haven't expanded that audience more because it does seem like, and also so many of my friends and I, if someone asked me, what are your favorite genres of music, it's country and hip hop.

                                So many people also share country and hip hop as their favorite genres of music. And most people I don't think would know that. But I have so many people that would agree with me on those two genres. And I think there is, I don't know a lot about melody and stuff like that, but there kind of is this undertone of beat in both thumb that are sort of similar that you don't hear in other genres. So I was wondering if you could just speak to that a tiny bit.

Jada:                      Yeah, I mean, I fear it won't be a tiny bit, I should preface this with I'm not a hip hop scholar, but also love hip hop. But I can say that these are two musical styles that come from the people. I think that there are sociocultural elements to both that are complimentary. Hip hop has this very specific history and where it comes from and who it represents, and the types of narratives that emerge. And I think country does it in its own way. I think that country music is doing quite similar things. So you might also be drawn to sort of lyrical things that are happening in both that are more complimentary than you think, even if they seem politically different.

                                But this is a really interesting conversation because you're right, this idea that hip hop has been influencing country is not new. It's always been there. It's been there for a long time. There's a great article by Tressie McMillan Cottom in a collection of essays called Honky Tonk on the Left, where she writes about, oh my gosh, maybe I'm getting the collection wrong. I'll check it later, hip hop. This sort of history of white artists borrowing, stealing from hip hop, but the industry and the audience is more comfortable with white people doing hip hop because the audience is also predominantly white. But yes, there have been these moments right where Nelly, Lil Nas X, and of course Lil Nas X was not accepted by Nashville. He was at the time, an independent artist from outside of Nashville who released a song that went viral and it hit number 19 on the hip hop and R&B, the hot country songs, and I think the Hot 100 all at the same time, and Billboard pulled it from the country chart for not having the sonic markers of country.

Paige:                   Wow.

David:                   I remember that. Yeah. And didn't a country artist rerecord it to get it back on? What happened?

Jada:                      He collaborated with Billy Ray Cyrus and it never got back on. It has very limited country format radio airplay. It was barely accepted.

Paige:                   Wow.

Jada:                      It did receive a nomination at the CMAs for a collaboration, and I'm pretty sure they won. And that was one of the awards given off-air that year. It's a country song. It was at the time, two more country than a lot of the country that was played on country. I mean, I can't put too fine a point on it. It is I think one of the most important country songs for this very reason. I mean also musically, I do like the song, but I think it allows us to have a really complicated discussion about country music and who's allowed in and who's not. Now he's gone on to do something entirely different. Maybe he would've stayed in country. We will never know. And why would he? Why would he if this is the reaction he gets, he has the highest and longest running number one, highest charting, longest running number one on Hot 100 ever. And it might've been beaten recently, but at that moment ever, and it's country, but country music won't accept it. And so there's a lot going on there.

Paige:                   And do you think that has a lot more to do with him being black or the fact that he's gay? Do you know? Because I feel like he's for this evangelical southern country music listener. I almost feel like once they find out someone's gay, they're like, Nope. And I could be wrong. I could just be stereotyping. But that's what I've been picking up in a lot more lately too, honestly.

Jada:                      I think his sexuality doesn't play into this in its outset because this was all March 2019 and he came out in June or July of 2019. So that initial reaction has many, I think factors and sort of going back to independent artists from outside of Nashville. Nashville controls everything. If you are not on a Nashville label, you are very unlikely to succeed on country radio, on charts in the industry, and then add into the fact that he is a black artist. Had a white male artist record that song, I have no doubt it would've been a number one on country. It's a good song.

Paige:                   Right. It's really good.

Jada:                      It's a good song.

Paige:                   It's very, very catchy.

Jada:                      And it's like the right tempo and everything for a summer song. It had everything it needed to be a number one smash except the person behind it for it to succeed in country. I'm glad it went the way it went in its sort of dominance of the all genre because I think it made a lot of big points about country music that we need to be talking about. It is really a travesty that we really lost somebody that could have been hugely influential in this space. And I guess that he really still has been influential in this space, but to have him stay in the space and be influential from inside rather than from outside.

David:                   Jada, just backing up, so you've studied all kinds of music, obviously if you studied Russian composers and everything like that. So if you were to describe what makes country music special, what would you say because it is special? I mean, I just love the song lyrics. I read the song lyrics when I'm listening to them and they're just so cool. They're heartbreaking. They got a twist at the end, but I'd love to hear you tell us what you think makes it special.

Jada:                      Oh. this is the worst question because it's so hard. I mean, it's the best and worst. I think most people would come down to the same idea that country music is storytelling. I don't think this is unique to country because I do think that there's storytelling and hip hop, and I do think that there's storytelling in R&B and certainly in pop, and certainly in folk, but not quite in the same way. I think that there's a lot in common between country and hip hop and R&B, but I think when we really think about country music, it's about storytelling. And you hit the nail on the head, David, it's stories about people and about places, and they're written in a way so that you don't need to be from the boondocks where little big town are speaking from, but you can associate or identify with elements of that song.

                                And so I think it's the ability to transport yourself through these stories into places that are complimentary to your own history. I mean, I can't think of one right now, but of course there's many songs that you just feel as they're part of your story too. For me, sonically, I am drawn to things like heavy bluegrass and slide guitar, the sound of somebody like The Chicks, they're sonically what I would gravitate towards, but it doesn't mean that I'm not also interested in something that is a little more pop sounding country to, and certainly some of the hip hop inspired country, I'm not really into the bro country.

David:                   Okay. Yeah. Right, right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah.

Jada:                      So I think those are the things that sort of to make country country to me, but I think it's that storytelling piece that makes country country to everybody else.

David:                   The stories are great. That's probably a good way of putting it. I read the lyrics when I'm listening to them, and even if you listen to them, to me, it doesn't have the same impact as when you read them and you just think how people could think this out and come up with these stories, it's unbelievable. Anyway, it's the best. We should probably talk about The Chicks a little bit because you mentioned them. They're now back right after, how long were they gone?

Jada:                      Oh gosh, I should know this number off the top of my head. They released taking the Long Way in 2006 and then Gas Lighter in 2020. And it didn't mean they were gone. They still toured in that period, but I think the majority of that period for the three of them was living life and being with their families and recording music. The two sisters, Emily and Marty, they recorded as the Courtyard Hounds. They have two phenomenal albums. And Natalie Maines put out the Mother, which is a little more rock than the stuff they do. But yeah, they're back. It's nice. I mean, they're back in the global sense because they're still not back in Nashville. Country Radio is not playing them.

Paige:                   Wow.

Jada:                      No, they really haven't had country format radio airplay since March 2003.

Paige:                   I forget what it was. Could you repeat it just because a lot of us that listen, we're so young, but it was anti Iraq stance. Was that what it was?

Jada:                      Yeah, so it was right on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and they were touring in the UK and from stage a concert in the UK, Natalie Maines, they were getting ready to sing Traveling Soldier. And she said, just so you know, we're against this war. We're on the side with y'all because they were anti-war protests in the UK at the time. And then she said, just so you know, we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.

                                They took just so you know, from the start and the rest and cut out all that important stuff that was really integral to contextualizing what was going on there in the middle of a country where there's protests from Texas, seemingly representing a nation that's going to go into war. And they're saying, we're not for this war. And just so you know, so that statement got picked up in the news in The Guardian and went viral around the world. And yeah, country Radio stopped playing or there were boycotts at their concerts. There were these things called The Chick tosses where folks would come and bring their Dixie Chick CDs and they'd drive over them with tractors or burn them. They received death threats. They had to have metal detectors at one of their shows in Texas, because they had a threat. So it was a very big moment, and Country Radio dropped them and Nashville turned their back on them, and they can go and perform there, but they won't. And they're huge. They're very well-loved, but nobody will really bring them back into the Nashville fold.

Paige:                   That's so interesting though, because when I think about sixties and seventies in music, obviously I wasn't alive yet, but I think about the anti-war message in music being any music history class I've taken, that's one of the most important things you learn about is the sixties and seventies and anti-war music essentially. So it's so crazy to me that they would get that response because it doesn't seem out of character for musicians to come out against war.

Jada:                      But out of character for a country musician.

Paige:                   Right.

Jada:                      Who's usually politically neutral or on the side of the nation and the president. And it's not about having a political affiliation. It's about respect for the Oval Office, which is I think a big piece of that. I mean, it's very different now, ever since President Obama, now President Biden, there are different kinds of statements about presidents, but at that moment, the sort of perception that somebody would be openly against or seemingly against the president at a moment of international tension was a big problem for the industry and fans.

Paige:                   I was just curious about Canada and where country music is in Canada, because frankly, I think a lot of us Americans, we did not think of Canada as this political place. I was always like, yeah, Canada's the Justin Trudeau Haven. But then the trucker thing happened, I think in 2020, and then I was like, oh, there's definitely two sides in Canada.

Jada:                      Yeah.

Paige:                   I had a fantasy about Canada. And so I was wondering if you could talk about if country is as popular up there, if it's still a right wing base, how it kind of looks up there. We have the same problems, just slightly different laws. We are a colonized nation and we might not have had laws that mandated segregation, but a lot of our communities are segregated, and there are ugly periods of Canadian history where land was stolen from black communities to settle them with white individuals. We have a quite complimentary history to the United States, even if it just looks different. Sometimes you see these sort of discussions about how we were part of the Underground Railroad. I'm like, yeah, but then what happened when those freed slaves came to Canada? Where did they go? What kind of support did they receive? Did they have any support? More often than not, they didn't. We present this sort of idea of being a multicultural community, like a mosaic of, but we have the same types of issues with individuals not wanting immigration, wanting to cap immigration laws.

                                We take in refugees from around the world, and I think that's what makes us so special and beautiful. But then there's people in the country who are like, well, no, we shouldn't be doing that. And it's really complicated. We share Mother Earth together. We actually don't own it. We stole it. We stole it from the indigenous peoples who were here first and we killed them to do it. And now we're saying we can't bring over people to give a safe space for them to be when their country's at war. This makes no sense. We have the same issues. I feel sometimes like we're one step away from having the same laws. We have people who want greater freedom with gun ownership. We have individuals who don't believe in gender-affirming care. We have individuals who don't believe in abortions. It's just at the moment we have a liberal government minority, though it may be, and these laws aren't being changed, but you get the right wrong person in there.

                                And our laws can change too. I mean, I live in Ottawa, so I'm like 10 blocks from where that trucker convoy was. Go outside, you could hear it. It was not a pretty time to be here. And for me it was a glaring statement of how we need to really check ourselves on a national stage. We really need to address and acknowledge the systemic inequities within our community before we go out there and pretend to be a safe haven for people because we're not. To walk to work and see swastikas and confederate flags, and there was one truck that had a noose hanging from it. I would have never imagined seeing that in my city, let alone the country, but it was eyeopening to see that kind of hatred and anger.

David:                   That's tough. But we got to talk about Bud Light, right? And Kid Rock, you can't leave without that. And I'll make my one comment. The one irony about that whole thing is, so now that Bud Light is just going downhill, the most popular beer in America is Modelo, and it's because the Hispanic culture dominate. So Modelo took over for Bud Light. But anyway, I'll shut up Jada. We got to hear about that.

Jada:                      I mean, I might be the wrong guest to talk about Bud Light. We are in Celiac, so I can't drink the sort of gist of the situation being that Bud Light had, correct me if I'm wrong, a commercial that was pro LGBTQ.

Paige:                   They had a sponsor from TikTok named Dylan Mulvaney. Dylan Mulvaney is trans. She is a trans woman, and it was a freakout amongst the right wing, including Kid Rock, who is a very Trump.

Jada:                      And so that's the piece that I know about that Kid Rock said, we won't be selling this beer. And then Garth Brooks opens his own bar and says, we're selling this beer. If you don't want to get this beer, go somewhere else. That's kind of the gist of what I can say about the Bud Light controversy. But it's an important one to have, right? Because just like supporting Jason Aldean or Morgan Wallen after he was caught saying the N word, just like the support of these artists sends a very loud message to black fans. This sends a very loud message to the LGBTQ community.

                                And so the support of these sort of narratives or supporting artists whose platform is based on these narratives that are exclusive and divisive, sends very loud messages about who can and cannot participate in country music from multiple levels, from the levels of the fan to the artist, to the session musicians, to the people who want to work in industry or journalists. We spend a lot of our time talking about the artists and representation on stage, but we also have to think about the musicians backing them, the ones in the studio, the makeup, the wardrobe, the hair people. I've heard interviews where Mickey Guyton has spoken about having to drive to Atlanta to get her hair done for an event in Nashville. The whole industry needs to change. It's not just who's on stage behind the scenes, who's running the show, who's calling the shots, who's providing support.

                                The whole ecosystem needs to change. Otherwise, we get ourselves into this situation of what I like to call add and stir. You can't just add in the missing artist and expect the whole composition to change because the infrastructure around it is still white supremacist. It is still sexist and is still heterosexist. And because it's been doing that for a hundred years, it's taught the fans to be all of those things, not across the board. I don't want to paint all fans in the same way, but if an industry is founded on these structural and systemic ideals, then it's going to teach everybody inside and around it. And I keep saying this, who belongs, who can and cannot be part of this space? And that's a very strong for a fan base.

Paige:                   Yeah, that's really interesting. And what do you think we can do to change the landscape of country and the fan? I even think about the fan base in terms of country. People are always very surprised. We're a big country fan. I am because I walk around with my prize shirts and my Obama T-shirts from 2008. So people when I tell them, country's one of my favorite music. Whereas I think of other people I know are state troopers or whatever job they might have, and there's no surprise that their favorite music is country. And I'm just wondering how that can start to sort of change or what country, the industry or Nashville can do to start changing it if they even can at this point

Jada:                      So it's not going to be quick and overnight. And I should say that I am speaking very specifically of the Nashville mainstream because of course there's more to country than the Nashville mainstream, and there always is to every genre. There's always more than what is presented to you because I think the first step is the idea that this is an industry that is curated for you. None of this is serendipity. None of this is organic. It's heavily curated. It's heavily controlled by labels and radio. You're seeing what you're seeing because somebody has put it in front of you, not because a fan is calling a station saying, I like that new Morgan Wallen song. Can you play it again? That happens, but that's not why it's happening. So step one, realizing that this space has been curated for you, for the industry to change, it needs to be the whole thing.

                                The whole ecosystem needs to change. They need to acknowledge and address where they're from and what they've been doing, but they need people on board who are from communities that they want to start making feel safe there. The industry can't be white across the board. Now, from a fan level, there's a lot of things we can do, and it might not change Nashville, but it will change your world, and that's important and it'll change the world of people around you. I think first and foremost is finding artists who you believe in and want to support. They don't have to be on the charts for you to change their world. If you want your country music to be more representative of the world, then go find those artists. Go find black artists. Go find Mexican artists. Go find Asian artists.

                                There are countless playlists and organizations that you can follow to go find them. I think of the Black Opry as being the first one. Everybody should go follow them and follow the artists that are part of the Black Opry. I'm just going to name a few. Roberta Lee, Julie Williams, Danisha, Aaron Vance, and Jet Holden. These are some artists who I adore, who I follow, whose music I buy and stream. And even though streaming gives you a fraction of a fraction of a penny, those numbers start to matter for them. So if you put your purchasing power in these spaces and you use your space to follow and share these artists, go see them when they come to your communities because they do tour by their merch. Merch is actually one of the ways that an independent artist make money. You make so little off your music, you actually going to concerts and buying merch is the best thing you can do.

David:                   Oh yeah.

Jada:                      But it's the sharing piece that's important because it's not just your world that will change. It's the world of everyone around you who, if you're sharing the stories of these artists who are BIPOC, who are queer, who are trans, who might make commercial sounding pop country, but who might be more Americana folk or hip hop kind of country, there's hundreds if not thousands of artists that we're missing because Nashville isn't interested in anything but what it's selling. I had a point, and I think I lost it. Oh, it's more of a story.

                                My daughter is 10 and I brought her to Nashville with me for the first time in June, and she's not very into music. She's only really coming into it now, and she's coming into it by way of country, and she's coming into it because when we went to Nashville, we went to see Julie Williams EP release show. She's a Black Opry artist. And then we went to an event where we were able to see Trisha Yearwood and Mickey Guyton and a bunch of female singer songwriters, some of whom were black, some of who were perform. And then we went to CMA fest. We went to the Color Me Country stage where Rissi Palmer was hosting, and it was Julie Williams, Charlie Lowry, Willie Jones and Zachy.

                                And my daughter saw a handful of white artists, but that week she saw black artists and indigenous artists and Mexican-American artists. That's country music to her. She has no idea that country music is not like this all the time. And now when we're in the corner, she only wants to listen to Julie Williams and she's talking about Julie Williams to her friends who are in the car with us. She has her first piece of merch. We bought Julie's T-shirt for her for her birthday. My parents weren't in the industry or researching music. So my interest in more diverse music comes from a family where they listen to all genres, but I listen to pretty much only country now, and I'm actively introducing her to a world that doesn't look like what's on the charts. And I think that's important.

Paige:                   That's so cool. I really like that. I think when people ask me why I think representation is important, I always think of the next generation and what it means to them to see. That's the main thing I think of honestly, because I feel like a lot of us, no offense to dad, boomers, it's over. There's no changing, not in my opinion.

David:                   It's true.

Paige:                   But with younger generations I just feel like for them to grow up in worlds with lots of different representation can just completely change what they think they're capable of doing, what they see other people doing. And I think that's what matters is looking to the future. And that's what I think of when I think of representation. So I think that's really awesome. I know we have to let you go, but I just wanted to ask this last question about Oliver Anthony, which I know is more focused on one artist, but I think it's interesting because he's independent. He wasn't with a label. He blew up overnight over YouTube. I don't really like the Rich Men North of Richmond song. I just don't even think it's that good. He talks about fat people on welfare in it.

David:                   Oh yeah.

Paige:                   But I mean, I don't know if it's just the right has this really good way of, and maybe even better at the left and when they find something that represents them, they blow it up overnight or if he's actually good. And also if it's scary for mainstream music, kind of labels and stuff like that, these independent artists that are now coming up in country because he is independent in country, and I don't think that's as common as in hip hop with SoundCloud and stuff like that. I don't think that has happened yet as much in country. And I could be wrong.

Jada:                      Oh my gosh. And you wanted to ask a quick question.

Paige:                   I'm so sorry.

Jada:                      This fascinates me to no end. I mean, he himself has said he's not a very good singer and guitar player. I don't know that I will say that I don't like to make qualifiers on human. He is an artist. He's made a song whether you like it or not, for whatever reason, musically speaking, the thing is, there's something in his delivery that I think is captivating for many people. Notice he's basically yell singing into the microphone. There is something very powerful about a mode of expression that is anger to the point of yelling. I think that take that with lyrics that do speak to a portion of the population that feels ignored and left behind, whether we're digging deeply into the meaning of every word or just sort of a general blanket of what that song sort of speaks to. I think that it appeals to many people actually on both sides who feel like they've been ignored by government forever, but also who feel like they've been screwed over in pandemic. They were often furloughed or they had to go to work when it was really unsafe for them to do so.

                                And so they have possibly very strong feelings about government regulations on life and employment, but also what happens when you lose your job and there's unemployment only for so long if you even have right to it. So I think those sort of things combined of a narrative generally that many can relate to in a vocal delivery that maybe captures their own anger. We don't talk about this enough, the actual mode of expression, that's part of it. One of the reasons why I love country music is the vocal break in a singer that kind of, it sounds a bit like an almost yodel. That break tells you something emotionally about a vocal performance. It makes you feel closer to somebody. So take with that somebody who's yell singing and you have a mode of expression that I think personalizes it for many. So I think that this song, it's filling a gap for people. Interestingly, he has come out and said he doesn't like that it's being co-opted by the right. It was performed the other night at a presidential debate and he was not happy about it.

                                So he says in this YouTube video, he doesn't like being co-opted, but he also isn't appreciative of the ways in which the liberal progressive audience, how they're viewing his narrative. He speaks as though this was a message that he's been delivered to send, that he sees himself as in the center of politics and that his message isn't about one person. His message isn't about Biden. It isn't about the current president. He actually said it's about those individuals on the stage that night speaking about the debate. For him, it's about a rich political system that is exploiting a working class. And that for him is a, and I'm going to keep saying for him, for him is a global message. So he thinks that's why his song is having this global, because it really is, it's having a global impact. The fact that he's independent I think makes it that much more troubadourish, right?

                                It kind of fits into that 1960s folk singer, whatever your political affiliation, it doesn't matter. It appeals to that working man, working woman, working person mentality or value system. And there was sort of one other piece there. The fact that it can do what a label cannot, I think is exciting. Now, he can only get to that position on that chart because of the push he had from a political affiliation he wishes he didn't have and because he's white. I don't think there is a black country artist who could have sang the same song and had the same push-up the chart the way he did. But I think that's reflective of the North American political spectrum and divisiveness within both of our nations.

                                But yeah, the pushing of an independent artist to the top of a chart in a way a label could never do is kind of exciting for somebody like me who studies the industry and the way in which it heavily curates what we get access to, who we see, who we hear, and the types of narratives we're given. Because I see the popular music industry as a heavily curated space that responds to data. So somebody like him coming along with this song at this moment and proving that you don't need to be signed to have a career, I think is important, especially because you also don't need to be a number one charting artist to have a career. I think there's a lot really in this example that should give a lot of artists who are struggling on the margins potentially a template for things to consider when promoting their careers.

Paige:                   And my understanding is labels are offering him deals and he is not taking them. He is very stronghold about staying independent.

Jada:                      The other piece that I'm unsure of in all of this is, again, this was not organic. It is believed that there was somebody helping behind the scenes to pull the strings. That somebody may be affiliated with Jason Aldean. But I don't know.

Paige:                   Okay.

Jada:                      I've seen the tweets. I just don't know. I don't know yet who, why or how. But all this to say something happened that was pretty exciting to watch from a data standpoint.

Paige:                   Yeah, I would imagine so.

Jada:                      Even if from a political standpoint, it is troubling.

David:                   We better let you go, Jada. You're going to come back though and-

Paige:                   Yeah, thank you so much.

David:                   It's too cool. And we asked to end on a positive note. I was listening to Rissi Palmer and she referred to this site called CountryEverywhere.com. Have you've seen that site? It's so cool. It's so cool. It says where y'all really means all. It says that and we love the music that hates us.

Jada:                      And that's my friend Jeremy LaRue. He's a Canadian, he lives in Vancouver. He built that and watching him go from his original database to this new database has been really fun. And it's just another resource out there for you to find artists who are doing exciting things in country, who are BIPOC, who are queer, who are trans, who are disabled. I mean, a huge part of this conversation. We need to put the footnote of everyone here was able-bodied. None of these musicians were disabled. But country everywhere is such a beautiful database.

David:                   Oh, we'll let you go. Thanks so much.

Paige:                   Thank you so much.

Jada:                      Thank you.

Paige:                   Thank you for listening to Disarming Data, and thank you to Eric Montgomery for producing this podcast. To support the podcast, please rate, review and follow on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. If you'd like to learn more about the current state of data security, head on over to our website, disarmingdata.com.