"When we try to define what country music is, what could possibly tie together a genre with such wide aesthetic variance and complex history, those two occasionally contradictory arcs—nostalgia for some mythic, bygone rural idyll paired with unapologetic candor and sharp observation—more or less sum it up. When we’re looking at Loretta, we are indeed looking at country" - Esquire writes after the passing of Loretta Lynn. Vulture goes deeper:  "She wrote true stories ripped from real rural life about what it meant to be a woman".

Not because they are women, but because of the ways they changed music, NPR argues in favor of 41 women deserving to be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Dolly Parton for changing much more than country music. PJ Harvey for changing the shake of rock'n'roll. Kate Bush for extensively combining synthesizers and rock elements.