Welcome back to Country Music 4 Ever! Ashley Cooke just became the second solo female artist to hit number one on the country charts this year with her song “Your Place.” This got me thinking again about how unfair country music can be for female artists.

I decided to take a look back at the number one songs so far in the 2020s. So far, songs by either solo female artists or all female duets have made up 8.5% of country radio in the 2020s. This number has dropped from ten years ago. From 2010 to 2014 women made up 13.1% of country radio. It seems like each decade, this number drops a little bit. Men however, have been holding steady at about 83% of country radio.

In the 2020s, there have been 141 number one songs on country radio so far, and only 12 of them are either solo female artists or all female duets. 118 of them are all male songs and the rest are male/female duets. I think it is crazy that men can easily have over 100 number one songs any given year, but women normally don’t have more than 15-20.

I think this is a problem that country music will always have for some reason. It doesn’t seem like country music can handle more than one or two female superstars at a time. Lainey Wilson is on top of her game right now, and it seems like Ashley Cooke might be starting to become a star, so I honestly don’t know if any other female artists will become very popular at the moment.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back soon!