The Double Standard of Gendered Violence in the Music Industry: Pondering Why Violent Acts Committed by Women are Celebrated in Country Songs

 

Normally if someone mentions violence in the music industry people’s minds jump to rap lyrics that glamorize domestic abuse or pop music videos that problematically objectify women’s bodies.  However, another (surprising) music genre has been embracing violent narratives throughout the past few decades:  country music.  The standing joke is that all country songs can be reduced down to the following plot:  a man loses his wife, his dog, and his truck.  This is, of course, a silly oversimplification but I’d like to offer another one.  There are some country songs that follow this equally reductive formula:  a woman is abused/wronged by husband, she gets revenge, her man suffers/dies.  Whereas the first plot summary highlights the association of country ballads with sorrow (perhaps highlighting its ties to the Blues), the latter points to a recent shift toward country being able to churn out songs that tap into another emotion:  anger. 

While many people criticize rap music for normalizing abuse against women, I have yet to hear of anyone criticizing the various country songs that feature violence directed at men.  Now, admittedly, there are some differences between the scenarios.  The female victims of the rap narratives are often portrayed as innocent, whereas the male victims in country ballads are depicted as deserving the treatment that befalls them – making the latter songs revenge narratives.   Here are a few songs that might illustrate this trend in country music.

Garth Brook’s “The Thunder Rolls” (1990) has an added third verse that implies that a wife kills her husband after she realizes he has cheated on her.  (The previous verses found her waiting for him to come home on a stormy night, thankful for his eventual safe return, and then devastated to realize that his tardy arrival was not due to weather but to being with another woman).

She runs back down the hallway
To the bedroom door
She reaches for the pistol
Kept in the dresser drawer
Tells the lady in the mirror
He won't do this again
Cause tonight will be the last time
She'll wonder where he's been

The Dixie Chicks’s “Good Bye Earl” (2000) tells the story of a pair of best friends (Mary Ann and Wanda) who successfully kill Mary Ann’s abusive husband after a failed restraining order against him has landed her in intensive care:

And it didn't take them long to decide
That Earl had to die
Goodbye, Earl
Those black-eyed peas,
They tasted alright to me, Earl
You feelin' weak?
Why don't you lay down and sleep
Earl, ain't it dark
Wrapped up in that tarp, Earl…

Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats” (2006) is a song about a woman who enacts revenge on a man who has cheated on her by destroying his property (his car):

                        Oh, and he don't know...

                        That I dug my key into the side

                        of his pretty little souped up 4 wheel drive,

                        carved my name into his leather seats,

                        I took a Louisville slugger to both headlights,

                        slashed a hole in all 4 tires...

                        Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats.

                        I might've saved a little trouble for the next girl,

                        'cause the nextx time that he cheats...

                        Oh, you know it won't be on me!

                        No... not on me

Six years later, Underwood contributed another song to this set of songs:  "Two Black Cadillacs" (2012).  It was hearing this song recently that inspired this blog post.  This song tells the take of two women who meet for the first time at the funeral of the man whose bed they shared.  As the song unfolds listeners realize that this wife and mistress eventually teamed up to kill this man after they realized that he cheated on them both with another woman: 

Two months ago his wife called the number on his phone
Turns out he been lying to both of them for oh so long
They decided then he'd never get away with doing this to them
Two black cadillacs waiting for the right time…

And the preacher said he was a good man
And his brother said he was a good friend
But the women in the two black veils didn't bother to cry
Bye bye, Bye bye

Yeah they took turns layin' a rose down
Threw a handful of dirt into the deep ground
He's not the only one who had a secret to hide
Bye bye, bye bye, bye bye
Yeah yeah

It was the first and the last time they saw each other face to face
They shared a crimson smile and just walked away
And left the secret at the grave

As a feminist I'm not quite sure what to make of these songs. What does it reveal when women sing these songs joyfully?  I actually admit to having been one of these women.  I sang along with the Garth Brooks song as a teenager, jumped up and down and belted out the chorus of "Good Bye Earl" at a Dixie Chicks concert with a crowd full of other young twenty-somethings, and lived vicariously through the protagonist in "Before He Cheats" while disgusted with the men in my life during my late twenties.  Now I assume that others, like me, don't actually condone real acts of violencew - even those committed against abusive husbands or cheating boyfriendsd.  But are we even thinking that critically at all as we listen to these songs?  Are we thinking as we sing:  sure this is a fun revenge fantasy but it's still encouraging a culture of violence?  Not likely.  So, are these songs really completely harmless?  Are they really any less problematic then the rap songs?  It took "Two Black Cadillacs" to make me ponder this.  Perhaps it was the ridiculousness of that narrative and the question it left me with:  why was it okay for him to be in a relationship with both the wife and  the mistress but once he adds in a number three they go ballistic?  Mostly the song made me just  realize how I had never questioned this music trend before.  As a media scholar I had been critical of the way  women were violated in music songs and videos, but I had never consciously thought about how violent acts on men were portrayed in the music industry.  There's no way around it:  there's a double standard here.  Maybe next time I'm singing karaoke-style to a song on the radio I'll stop to analyze the lyrics a bit more... but, then again, maybe not.