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Billboard charts are curators of popular music culture. As Will Straw observes, Billboard charts bring order to otherwise chaotic consumption behaviors, by processing, archiving and transmitting a musical product's commercial activity to radio programmers, streaming services and record labels, thus creating a cyclic relationship between Billboard and these actors. Through this process, charts document and shape a genre's culture. Theories of social remembering offer a critical framework for considering the credibility of such record keeping within a culture that disadvantages and systematically ignores women. Influenced by the work of Catherine Strong, this article explores the role of Billboard charts in the process of 'remembering' and 'forgetting' in country music culture. In this context, Billboard charts function as curatorial instruments that systematically 'remember' some artists, while 'casting away' others. Drawing on the results of a data-driven analysis of the Hot Country Songs (HCS) chart, this article argues that Billboard's new methodology has contributed to the radical extinction of variety and erasure of women's narrative voices within country music culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In May 2015 radio consultant Keith Hill revealed that country radio programmers have strict rules on how many female artists can be included in airplay rotation. Referring to females as the "tomatoes" of the country salad, Hill has sparked debate about gender-representation in country music. This paper examines gender-related trends on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart between 1996 and 2016, aiming to investigate how female artists have performed on the charts over this two-decade period. Analyzing long-term trends in frequency distribution, this study uses statistical results to unpack assertions made about women's marginal status in country music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In October 2004, Nelson Aggregate submitted an application to expand Mount Nemo's Burlington Quarry operations. Local singer-songwriter Sarah Harmer led initiatives to protect the region, using her musical platform as a vehicle for environmental advocacy. This essay examines Harmer's activist campaign within the broader geographic and geologic contexts of the public debate that unfolded throughout the region. More specifically, it interrogates how her music and musical practice articulate a strong sense of regional identity and connection to local environmental issues, while also envoicing the symbiotic relationship between human and natural life cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concepts of "place," "space," and "home" are integral to the study of country music, a genre conventionally associated with geographic regions, rural landscapes, and domestic values. Place-songs have emerged as an important way in which country musicians communicate life experiences and define elements of their identity, emphasizing the influence of family and community on their character, beliefs, and values. However, just as place can signify belonging, it can also represent a constricting environment from which artists struggle to escape. Such narratives enable us to see vital parts of regional identity that would otherwise be hidden, obscured, or overshadowed. The Dixie Chicks' song "Lubbock or Leave It" (2006) is an interesting case study for an inquiry into how artists struggle to define themselves within the country genre. The song spurred immediate uproar insofar as the lyrics portray lead singer Natalie Maines's hometown of Lubbock, Texas as small and narrow-minded. Many listeners and critics interpreted the song as a rejection of both Lubbock and country values. Drawing from the fields of cultural geography and musicology, this study examines how the Dixie Chicks draw on musical codes and conventions in an act of defiance and genre subversion, as they struggle with parochialism and conservative thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the role that place and its musical culture play in Emilie Clepper's musical sound and style as expressed in her musical album "What You See." Topics include the influence of Clepper's upbringing on her musical career, production of the musical album "What you See," and Clepper's musical style. Clepper's style of singing the songs "Hill Country Night," "Lake Geneva," and "Freight Train," as expressed through her album "What You See," is discussed.

The article offers brief profile of Jada Watson, a Doctor of Philosophy student in musicology at Universite Laval. Topics discussed include her primary research to find the ways in which country musicians draw on place in their music, attending a joint meeting of the American Musicological Society and Society for Music Theory in Nashville, Tennessee, and the focus of her first project to explore the relationship between artist and place.

The article examines two songs from "West Texas Waltzes" namely, "Dry Land Farm," and "Texas Air," considering ways in which the environment and weather of Lubbock County in West Texas are evoked in the songs of Butch Hancock. In "Dry Land Farm," Hancock, while seated on his tractor, reflects on the extreme weather patterns that affect the land he is working on, while "Texas Air" is an ode to the land and environment, with Hancock proclaiming his love for the landscape, elements, and nature.