In more recent decades, Carrie Underwood, Miranda Lambert and other country divas have carried on the proud tradition of being women you definitely wouldn’t want to cross in a bar fight. You better close your face and stay out of my way if you don’t wanna go to Fist City You’ve been making your brags around town that you’ve been loving my manīut the man I love, when he picks up trash he puts it in a garbage canĪnd that’s what you look like to me and what I see is a pity When it comes to calling out and throwing down, though, you can’t get more poetic than country queen Loretta Lynn’s 1968 hit, “Fist City.” When Beyoncé released her iconoclastic 2016 album “ Lemonade,” people were shocked by the raw drama of the track “Sorry.” The scathing and specific lyrics about infidelity were widely thought to refer to her husband Jay-Z, which shone a new light on a partnership between two stratospherically successful artists. The single eventually outsold Thompson’s and made Wells the first woman to score a #1 song on the Billboard country charts.Ĭhallenging a man in such a way - even surpassing him in success - that’s diva behavior. That was quite a statement in the 1950s, but it worked out famously for Wells. Too many times married men think they’re still singleĪnd that’s caused many a good girl to go wrong Wells’ recording, however, had something different to say: The latter bemoaned good girls gone wrong, those honky tonk angels that prefer dive bars to marriage. Her 1952 hit “ It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” was a direct response to “The Wild Side of Life,” by Hank Thompson. Kitty Wells, one of the first big female acts in country, may not be considered a diva, but she laid some important groundwork for divas to come. That may not sound like country music, but consider this: In a genre historically monopolized by White men and conservative notions, what kind of woman dares to make it to the top? Along with the look and the voice, divas are just a little too full of dangerous things of talent, of ideas, of themselves. Speaking specifically of Black divas, Cornelius Washington of the Bay Area Times wrote: “They warble about love, triumph, dating, dancing, trauma and transcendence, usually over the neck of some man in particular or men in general.” “Tellingly, much like the word ‘slut’, it has no equally powerful corresponding masculine term.” “Being a diva connotes a particular kind of womanly arrogance,” Christina Newland wrote for Vice in 2018. There are other definitions that complicate the term. (Show-stopping talent in general is a given.) A diva is timeless, often used to describe women with long, storied careers, such as Cher, Celine Dion, Reba McEntire and Gloria Estefan. The expectation of a big powerful voice has carried through the times in Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston and Carrie Underwood. “Diva” was originally an opera term for female singers whose talent and fame made them nearly divine in the eyes of their admirers. What makes a diva different than any other performer? Of course there’s a look, epitomized in the confident, authentic glamor of Dolly Parton, Tina Turner and Mariah Carey. Reba McEntire, Carrie Underwood, and Dolly Parton perform onstage during the 53rd annual CMA Awards in November 2019. Dolly Parton, Reba McEntire and Carrie Underwood are just the beginning: Since women broke into the country scene in the ’50s, they’ve been taking us to heaven with their bouffant hair, blinding us with rhinestones and spangles and singing songs that celebrate the power and complexity of womanhood. She’s an unusual fit for the slowly evolving White, conservative world of country.Īfter all, no one loves a diva like country music. This is the same Beyoncé who has been R&B royalty for decades, who enraged critics with her unapologetically Black Super Bowl halftime show in 2016, whose 2023 Renaissance World Tour was a traveling showcase of glamor, pride and diversity of all kinds. When one of the biggest artists in the world decides to shift genres (though Beyoncé’s work has always alluded to her Southern roots), it’s bound to grind a few gears. “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages” have soared up the streaming charts, with the former debuting at Number 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart today. In anticipation of her forthcoming new album, the iconic entertainer has released two singles with some serious twang.
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