The New Country

Tight jeans and sad songs.

Charles Oliver from the December 1991 issue

Country singer Holly Dunn probably thought that the song “Maybe I Mean Yes” would be another in her
growing list of Top 10 singles. The tune had a catchy melody and cute lyrics about a woman who can’t
decide whether she wants to go out with a man. But some people thought the song was an invitation to
date rape.

As soon as radio stations started playing the song last July, they started getting complaints. Female
listeners objected to these lyrics:

When I say “no” I mean “maybe”

Baby, you don’t know me yet

Nothing’s worth having if it ain’t hard to get

So let me clarify so you won’t have to try and guess

When I say “no” I mean “maybe”

Or maybe I mean “yes”

While feminists have complained about songs before (NOW wanted stations to pull Bruce
Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire” a few years ago because he called the object of his affection “little girl” in
the song), the Dunn controversy was unusual. It wasn’t a planned campaign by some organization but a
spontaneous outpouring of phone calls by country-music fans.

“I’ve never seen such an immediate negative response before,” said Tim Murphy, program director at
Seattle’s KMPS, in an article in the Los Angeles Times.

Dunn at first argued that the song had been misinterpreted. Eventually, she asked radio stations to pull
the song in order to avoid offending people. “I think this song is a victim of timing,” she said. “A few
years ago, a record like this wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow.”

Dunn is right. The country-music audience has grown tremendously over just the last few years.
As recently as the early 1970s, a country album was considered successful if it sold 70,000 copies.
Today, Top 10 albums go platinum (1 million copies sold). Garth Brooks made country-music history in
September when his third album became the first by a country artist to hit number one on Billboard’s
pop chart. The album debuted in the top slot.

But the country-music audience is not only growing, it’s changing. New listeners are forcing their tastes
on the business, and Dunn got caught by the changes. A few years ago, listeners would have taken
the song for what Dunn intended: “a cute lighthearted story about courtship and flirtation.” Today’s
audience listens to the music with different preconceptions and concerns than the audience of, say,
1979.

“There’s no question that big changes are occurring in the audience and the music,” says Gene Bridges,
program director at Los Angeles country-music station KLAC. “The audience is certainly bigger than it

has ever been, but it’s also broader-younger, more urban, probably even more liberal.” It’s also more
feminine. “It used to be that the audience at a typical concert would be 60 percent men, 40 percent
women,” says Bridges. “Now it’s more even. Some of the really popular male singers may even draw 60
percent women.”