(Kyleigh’s Version)

Gene Autry   Country music has come a long way since the days of the Carters and Fiddlin’ John Carson. The genre based on Appalachian Folk has been transformed many times over, and through creating a timeline of sub-genres and key events we can understand how Blue Yodel, as shown below, turned into Old Town Road . Victor Records was the first recording company to take on a dedicated country artist– Eck Robertson in 1922. His record was met with minimal success but nonetheless inspired the studio to sign on Jimmie Rodgers, now known as the Father of Country Music, in 1927. This move and the company signing The Carter Family have been identified as the moment country music was born. During this era, the country was headed toward the Great Depression, and many Americans found it easy to bond over their hard times. Key components of this early rendition of country music are yodeling and the fiddle, borrowing from folk music. By the 1930s, Hollywood stars, such as Gene Autry began noti...

Over the last few months, the connection between music and gender has intrigued me. Particularly, the rarity of men frequently listening to female artists. I don't know where this idea came to me, but I asked all my male friends which female artists they listen to, and to my surprise, most of them could not name one they had recently listened to. Even my closest friends, who are exposed to plenty of female artists by me, do not listen to any in their own time, even when they frequently acknowledge that they like certain artists. Women on the other hand listen to a more even gender breakdown, with a bit more women. I, for instance, have flipped between male and female artists as my number one most listened-to artist for years. Obviously, my friends are not representative of the entire world- so I took to statistics.  The Argus , an English newspaper, listed the top ten songs streamed on Spotify in 2022, and only one of them was by a female artist. Shockingly no, it's not by Tayl...