You Say Tomato

Scott Hardie | June 3, 2015
There's a controversy right now in country music in which a radio consultant advised playing female artists less because they reduced ratings, boiling the insult down into a crude comparison by saying that men should be the lettuce in the salad and women should be the tomatoes. Naturally, many female artists and women in general are upset at the entrenched sexism and lack of opportunity and undervaluation.

My first thought is, what do the numbers say? Because you can argue that a lot more can and should be done to make female artists successful and remove the barriers in their way, but if the consultant was strictly speaking in terms of what improves ratings, and studies have shown that ratings go up when country stations play more male artists, then his core argument, however rudely put, is not technically invalid.

I myself don't prefer female singers in country music because of the tonal qualities of their singing, and sometimes I have wondered if I'm the only one. In other genres, I very much prefer women to men. Alicia Keys, Regina Spector, Aimee Mann, Fiona Apple, Liz Phair, and Jenny Lewis all play frequently on my computer. Some of my favorite songs are women kicking ass in hard rock or uptempo indie rock, some of which I've shared in song crushes here on TC, like Spinnerette, Mon Frere, Sahara Hotnights, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and CSS. I'm listening to Go Betty Go right now as I write this.

And yet, when I listen to country music, I can't stand female singers. There's something about the twangy pitch in their voices that's a huge turnoff for me. I can only enjoy it if they sing downtempo: Most of Little Big Town's tracks are nails on chalkboard to me, but I like "Girl Crush." Every track on Brandy Clark's 12 Stories is pretty good but they're also quiet and gentle. Steve Dunn turned me on to Lindi Ortega, but she tends to sing with a high-pitched little-girl affectation.

Do you enjoy women singing in country music or other genres? What do you think of this radio consultant's claims about the genre?

Samir Mehta | June 3, 2015
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | June 12, 2015
Best, sure. Most desirable to listen to? Not for me. To cite another genre, I respect Pink Floyd and Sex Pistols, but I can't stand the timbre of their singers' voices. That is, unless you mean that your favorite country singers are all female, and I misunderstood.

You might be on to something about the analysis. A good algorithm fed reams of data might be able to compute which songs played at which times were best and worst for ratings, ignoring gender and race entirely. It might not change radio for the better (does anyone LIKE Clear Channel?), but it might change the way that radio is programmed for the better.

Aaron Shurtleff | June 13, 2015
I could be wrong, but aren't the ratings themselves broken down into categories based on gender and age groups? I feel like I have heard folks saying they head ratings for males 18 to 35 on the radio previously. So, I wonder, can we really fault a consultant for using these categories if those are the categories the ratings are based upon?

Scott Hardie | June 14, 2015
Do you mean categories for the artists or for the audience? I expect marketers to separate female listeners from male listeners. It's probably just as silly under analysis as separating artists, but that's a whole other conversation.

Aaron Shurtleff | June 14, 2015
I had to re-read to make sure I read what I thought I read...

"If you want to make ratings in country radio, take females out," he told Country Aircheck. "The reason is mainstream country radio generates more quarter hours from female listeners at the rate of 70% to 75%, and women like male artists.

It seems to me, based on this quote (which doesn't include the tomato/lettuce remarks, which were dumb whether he was right or not), that he's advising not playing female artists because the listeners are primarily female, and female listeners like male artists. If he's got the numbers to support this, is it really wrong for him to say it, and is he, as Samir said earlier probably not good at his job for using sweeping categorical rules? I mean if the composition of the audience is measured and analyzed, and that analysis says female listeners make up a lot of mainstream country listeners, and those listeners prefer country music from male artists...I would think he'd be terrible at his job to ignore that, not terrible at his job for using the metrics he's given. If the metrics are bad, that's a different issue, and still not the analyst's fault.

If we fed a computer reams and reams of data on what songs do well, when, and left out any reference to gender, race, etc, would the results change? If the computer spat back out a list of what listeners like (with the computer having no idea about the gender/race etc of the listeners), and that list of songs/artists (again, with the computer having no way of telling race/gender etc of the artists), and it 100% backed up what the consultant was saying, would this still be an issue?

Scott Hardie | June 14, 2015
You bet it would still be an issue. :-) But I know what you mean, and it's true, as I said from the beginning: If indeed the numbers back him up, then he's technically correct. People can dislike what he recommends based on the data, but they can't dispute his claims.