A decade after Maren Morris’ “Hero,” a new generation of female artists are redefining pop stardom by tearing down genre boundaries and expanding the emotional universe of country music.
Over the past decade, many unprecedented standards have emerged in popular music, but they have not yet dominated mainstream tastes.
That could change soon.
Presume that for every four new female superstars in pop’s top ten, one has a clearly defined Nashville lineage.
Now, we’ve finally achieved a moment where those female Nashville superstars could be ready to dominate pop overall.
Yes, think about it.
Ten years after Maren Morris’ June 2016 debut album “Hero,” there’s a through line from Adele, Beyoncé, Miley Cyrus, Billie Eilish, Selena Gomez, Ariana Grande, Halsey, Dua Lipa, Tate McRae, Bebe Rexha, Rihanna, Chappell Roan, Olivia Rodrigo, Sia, Taylor Swift, and SZA to Lauren Alaina, Kelsea Ballerini, Gabby Barrett, Ella Langley, Maren Morris, and Kacey Musgraves.
Three key Nashville-based creators — Billboard Songwriter of the Year Laura Veltz, current three-peating Academy of Country Music Songwriter of the Year Jessie Jo Dillon, and award-winning Musician of the Year Derek Wells — all share creative DNA with Music City’s past decade of women entrenching themselves beyond country renown and into certifiable pop superstardom.
Dillon offers a statement about the past decade that doubles as a thesis underpinning Nashville’s incredible moment as a female star machine.
“(Nashville’s female pop moment) is about permission, or the lack of it, really. Every artist who pushes the boundary and still connects with the audience makes the boundary a little less rigid for the next person. What was once perceived as risky becomes part of the vocabulary. That is what allows music and genres to evolve. I don’t think the goal is ever to escape Nashville. It’s to make Nashville big enough to hold the full artist.”
Country’s New Queens: How Rhythm, Humor, and Heart Are Defining a Generation
2016 arrived as platforms like CMT, via their then three-year-old “Next Women of Country” program, had heralded the likes of Kelsea Ballerini, Kacey Musgraves, and Margo Price as women who, in the words of Leslie Fram, then CMT’s senior vice president of Music Strategy, were the “cornerstone” of country’s future.
Fram may have narrowly missed the mark. As Ella Langley dominates Billboard’s all-genre Hot 100 for four consecutive months with “Choosing Texas,” the work that began with Maren Morris selling a million copies of her debut album has evolved significantly.
“We wrote like we were running because we understood each other so well,” said songwriter Laura Veltz about her initial work with Morris and Jessie Jo Dillon on the island-breezy pop-country hit “Rich.”
From “Rich” to “Choosing Texas,” including Musgraves’ breakout hits “Biscuits” and “Follow Your Arrow,” thematically familiar songs soulfully refreshed for the modern era have been a calling card of this new era of country-to-pop queens.
Dillon offers up being inspired by everything from The Foundations’ 1968 classic “Build Me Up Buttercup,” to a pair of relatively recent instant classics, Cee Lo Green’s “F*** You” and “Hey Ya!” by Outkast, to arrive at the lyrically simple, emotionally downcast, yet still rhythmically fun mix that drove “Rich.”
“People love a sad song, but they love ones that are funny, yet touching, even more,” Veltz said.
Since bossa nova hits like Ruby and The Romantics' “Our Day Will Come” to Dolly Parton’s disco stomper “Jolene,” the message that rhythm trumps emotion has been a calling card for country and pop’s most beloved female performances.
Dillon offers a simple explanation:
“Why cry really hard over someone when you can jam out with swagger and move your hips while a single tear falls down your cheek?”
Behind the Scenes of Country-Pop’s Creative Revolution
Derek Wells has played on over 100 hit Nashville songs over a decade as a renowned Nashville performer and producer.
The same guitarist heard on the “bro-country” songs dominating Nashville’s airwaves before Maren Morris’ “Hero” is also the session guitarist on Morris’ debut album.
And yes, he’s remained in the room for so many other dynamic female country-to-pop crossover potential stars, too.
“Cool girls cutting cool songs,” says Wells, boiling down the essence of what’s allowed country’s pop emergence to sustain itself.
“In Maren Morris’ case, here’s a girl from Texas raised on Willie Nelson who also appreciated The Cardigans and Chaka Khan and was a naturally great singer.”
Alongside creatives like Wells were producers like Los Angeles-based frequent Nashville visitor busbee (aka Michael James Ryan, who tragically died of brain cancer at age 43 in 2019).
The duo, along with songwriters Natalie Hemby, Brandy Clark, Shane McAnally, and others, developed a broad creative orbit focused on how Nashville’s detail-driven songwriters and musicians honed the most ear-warming and inspiring parts of many genres, churning out hits at an incredible pace.
Over the past five years, some weeks on Billboard’s Hot 100 charts saw 50 percent of slots filled by country artists or songs featuring superstar Nashville songwriters.
That pace has not slowed.
“The idea that Nashville’s biggest hits are songs that aren’t similar, but are instead from amazing perspectives that can’t (be duplicated), is causing people to not chase hits, but create from the truth,” says Wells.
“Especially in the female artists here in Nashville now, how the concepts they’re creating expand on their perspectives of the world allows very special music to develop.”
A Generation Raised on Lasting Influences and Shared Stories
Wells is absolutely right.
Imagine a 16-year-old woman in 2016 is now nearing 30. A 21-year-old is just past that age. If you were a child and Ballerini, Morris, or Musgraves were your first favorite pop stars, you’re now old enough to vote or drink.
The trio’s lyricism colors those women’s emotional lexicon.
Though never married, they have broken up with an ex by screaming “yeah, sure, ok,” like Ballerini in 2023’s “Blindsided.” Their understanding of LGBTQIA advocacy is shaped by Morris and Musgraves’ catalog, as is their country music fandom and attitude about lasting love, shown in “My Church” and “The Bones.”
Veltz notes that the lack of a significant generational or social divide in Nashville’s singer-songwriter communities has allowed women to be mutual teachers and students for the past 10 years.
“We love each other’s brains and humor, which makes writing fun. For the audience, that love connection opens many ways to connect with the songs.”
“If I had a dime every time that you crossed my mind / Well, I'd basically be sittin' on a big a** pile of dimes,” Veltz sings, quoting “Rich.”
“It’s not like listening to a song; it’s like hearing dialogue from a sketch comedy show. People connect to that.”
Humor, Storytelling, and the Modern Female Country-Pop Vanguard
There are several clear modern corollaries to what Dillon and Veltz are alluding to.
Ten years later, as 2010s favorites reach peak pop awareness, another generation is succeeding in what two eras of stars took nearly two decades to achieve.
2026 opens like a hand fan at a cookout with Elizabeth Nichols’ hysterically messy cheating-heart Instagram DM slide-turned-pop-country-bop “Paul Revere,” Willow Avalon and Kaitlin Butts joking about disposing of a dead body in “Hypothetically Speaking,” and Dasha blending feelings and homophones on the catchy “Memo.”
Then, yes, there’s 2025 and Priscilla Block’s "You're Breaking My Heart (Cecilia)" featuring Dillon, Chris Tompkins, Jesse Frasure, and Hailey Whitters, flipping Simon & Garfunkel’s 1970 classic “Cecelia” and slamming it into Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.”
“Everyone’s been flipping that Maren Morris-style humor and giving it a different outfit these days,” says Veltz.
"It pulls you in,” said Avalon in a May 2026 Goldmine interview about why country’s humor endures in pop.
“But the premium that the country industry places on storytelling also resonates with how pop uses specific methods to create catchy, fun earworms.”
How Country’s Women Are Shaping Pop’s Future
To Jessie Jo Dillon, Morris’ 2016 “Hero” album opened floodgates to multiple generations of female singer-songwriters who, through rising year-over-year success, are “funny, sexual, angry, ambitious, wounded, and self-aware, sometimes within the same song.”
It’s 2026, and here’s Ella Langley achieving “Choosing Texas” success by that standard.
The year has also seen Kacey Musgraves continue to follow in her own decade-old footsteps with the critically acclaimed album “Middle of Nowhere,” again crafted to the previously mentioned standards of success.
Dillon is also currently the head of MCA-distributed Gatsby Records and counts already award-nominated star-on-the-rise Carter Faith as among the performers signed to her label.
Noting the decade-old trend will continue, she adds this is likely because country music’s leading women performers are no longer “reduced to one acceptable version of femininity.”
To her, Nashville’s female stars are largely responsible for expanding the country genre’s “emotional and sonic landscape” to a realm that makes it unprecedentedly approachable and relatable to pop consumers.
Nationally, a generation of rebellious women has grown from being chastised for those attitudes to renewing the vows, so to speak, to the country industry’s long history of developing feisty female performers,” adds Laura Veltz.
“It’s exciting that America is accepting of having more (female pop stars from the country industry) while also having to re-learn how to accept women who don’t ask for permission to (sometimes act) out of line.”
