* Pop music both expresses and shapes popular values. Anyone listening to the radio in the 1960s and ’70s received a pretty comprehensive commentary about men, women, and all that might pass between them. And while much of rock ‘n’ roll encouraged boys and girls to traipse lightly through a series of casual encounters, country music explored the heartache and the rewards of love sincerely pursued. Among the ladies of the genre there emerged a distinctively American portrait of womanhood, juxtaposing female strength—especially in Loretta’s songs (in country music, most everyone is on a first-name basis)—with vulnerability, as seen best in Tammy Wynette’s heart-achers. Their lyrics were unromanticized and sometimes even unromantic. They were candid about what made a man attractive, and how his attractiveness could make married life challenging. All the same, in the last analysis these women still managed convincingly to extol the virtues of marriage and fidelity. Their example can help provide an important counterweight to the extreme dysfunction of our modern sexual ethos.
* At the fundamental level, the women of classic country acknowledged—with a forthrightness that is now all but forbidden—how important love is to a woman’s happiness. The melancholy lyrics of Patsy Cline could never gain mainstream favor today, since they suggest that female happiness arises chiefly from love and marriage rather than career or partying. Her greatest hits depict lonely, regretful women who missed their chance at love.
* It speaks volumes that Cline’s brand of loneliness has all but disappeared among female country singers. More women over 45 are unmarried today—both as a percentage and as an absolute number—than at any time in our history, and the number is climbing. Yet feminine loneliness and regret have declined as musical themes and in art generally. Either women simply do not mind their newfound solitude, or an entire domain of female experience is going unspoken and repressed. Rising rates of female depression and medication would suggest the latter: women have not lost their longing for love, just their outlets for expressing it. Today’s songs insist on celebrating women’s bravery while minimizing or ignoring their regrets. But does refusing to acknowledge vulnerabilities make one stronger, or weaker?
