Song Suffragettes celebrates 10 years with Wynonna, female country chart-toppers, more

Headline performer Wynonna Judd wasn't the only woman who received a standing ovation or sang a multi-platinum chart-topping song on country radio at Wednesday evening's 10th-anniversary event celebrating Nashville's female-empowering Song Suffragettes songwriting collective.

Yes, the crowd at Belmont University's Fisher Center sang along to songwriter Trannie Anderson's performance of the work she did alongside another Song Suffragettes performer from years prior, Lainey Wilson, on the 2022 No. 1 country radio hit "Heart Like A Truck." They sang along as well to Maddie and Tae's 2014 "Girl In A Country Song" and "2019's "Die From A Broken Heart," chart-toppers separated by five years.

They were roused to their feet as well -- as crowds are regularly on NBC's "America's Got Talent" and has been the case over a dozen times so far at the Grand Ole Opry -- by Mississippi-born family trio Chapel Hart's take on The Judds' "Grandpa (Tell Me 'Bout The Good Old Days)."

Given that the initiative's songwriting rounds began a decade ago at Nashville's Listening Room Cafe and continue to the present day, it's an impressive evolution.

An impressive evolution

The mid-2010s arrived with roughly three female artists being played every two hours on country radio and women being referred to as garnishes in the metaphorical salad of the genre's superstar options.

Back then, Song Suffragettes founder Todd Cassetty was a well-respected music industry, tech and trade organization executive with a background in digital marketing, artist management and television production who developed an all-female songwriting round to help women "stand together in the face of systemic gender-disparity in the music industry" and provide "women singer-songwriters a place to be heard and seen with the hope that more opportunities would come from that exposure," he offered via a press statement.

Roughly 10 percent of the 400 artists who have appeared on the Song Suffragettes stage in the past decade attended the Fisher Center on Wednesday evening. Names like Lainey Wilson, Carly Pearce, Kelsea Ballerini, Brittney Spencer and Megan Moroney were absent.

However, because of their involvement in programs like Song Suffragettes or CMT's Next Women of Country, they have developed careers that have allowed them to tour globally or be amid album cycles promoting a dozen albums, No. 1 Billboard Country Airplay singles and critically acclaimed work between them.

However, pop star GAYLE and another country chart-topper, Tenille Arts, were there, alongside Hall of Fame and Grammy-nominated songwriters Liz Rose and Laura Veltz.

GAYLE's success with her 2022 single "abcdefu" led to her recent touring work with artists like P!nk and Taylor Swift, whose renown in female-empowered creative circles is peerless. Moreover, in April 2021, Tenille Arts' "Someboy Like That" hit No. 1 on Mediabase's Country Aircheck chart. It gave her the first No. 1 for a Canadian artist on the countdown in a dozen years and the first country chart-topper ever written, recorded and performed solely by women.

Wynonna Judd offers deep, frank conversation, performances

Wynonna Judd also participated in an onstage Q&A with Apple Music Radio host Kelleigh Bannen. She then performed an intimate trio of hits -- and a new song, "Flying High," from a promised forthcoming album -- alongside her husband, Cactus Moser and an acoustic band.

While in conversation, Judd jokingly referred to herself as a "recovering entertainer" who has only "[known] music best" for the past four decades of her life onstage. It's via that light that her entire career, including the past two years spent living through her mother, Naomi's, tragic suicide one day before she and Wynonna's Country Music Hall of Fame induction, seem even more daunting.

She revealed that she was suffering from vertigo and "failed, while still great," while performing with Jelly Roll at 2023's Country Music Association Awards. Her conversation blended bravery, honesty and frankness with a perpetual awareness of the expanse and impact of a career that, over two decades, saw her sell as many records as a duo as she did as a solo act.

That, alongside her still-robust vocal guiding "What It Takes," "Love Is Alive" and "Love Can Build A Bridge" (as performed with an all-female version of gospel favorites The Issacs, plus all of the event's performers and every Song Suffragette performer in the building who had graced the Listening Room Cafe stage in the past decade) were also notable.

As an event closer, Wynonna's work offered a through-line between female artists' eras of dominance and the potential of a similarly well-defined future ahead.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Song Suffragettes celebrates 10 years with Wynonna, female country chart-toppers, more