Country Approved: Lesbian singer-songwriter Brandy Clark is on the verge of becoming country music’s next superstar

Country music, along with rap and hip-hop, are genres that have long held an image of exclusiveness when it came to women and gay artists. The music’s male-dominated landscape leads some to label it misogynist and homophobic, but that seems to be changing, at least within country music.

In the last few years, several country artists have stepped out of the closet and onto the Grand Ole stage. One of those is the up-and-coming country talent Brandy Clark.

Clark is a rarity in the land of country music; she’s a female artist who writes her own songs. Clark actually got her start writing songs for other country artists.

“It’s always really amazing when you hear a song you have written and someone has taken it and really made it their own,” Clark says.

Clark penned some of the biggest hits on country radio over the last several years. Miranda Lambert’s “Mama’s Broken Heart,” Kacey Musgraves’ “Follow Your Arrow” and The Band Perry’s “Better Dig Two” were all critical and commercial successes and all came out of the head of Clark.

“When I first heard [“Better Dig Two”] performed by The Band Perry on the CMA Award show, that was their rollout for that song, and I was there with Trevor Rosen, who is one of the writers on it, and that was a pretty amazing moment,” Clark says.

Clark’s success as a songwriter was not enough to stop her from wanting to be on stage herself.

“I had sort of already let go of the dream of being an artist myself, or so I thought I had, but really I never completely let go of that, and being able to stand on stage every night and sing my own songs and get that immediate response from a crowd, that’s a pretty big gift,” Clark says.

Clark put together her first album, 12 Stories, with producer Dave Brainard. The album was first envisioned as a concept record which chronicled a couple’s relationship. While the concept was abandoned, that idea can still be heard in choices and layout of the album’s tracks.

“I think I had a concept in my head of 12 Stories,” Clark says. “Dave and I, we sat down and we talked about a couple of the concepts I had, neither of which we used ultimately, but I think it helped shape what songs fit on the record.”

The record is 12 songs that deal with heavy subjects, including religion and drug use, and carry a bit of dark humor.

“A lot of the songs from 12 Stories came from the fact that nobody else would touch those songs,” Clark says. “The subject matter was just too much for a lot of artists, but those songs mattered to me, and when I would play out, I would play those songs, and I saw what they did to an audience, so that has a lot to do with why those songs ended up on my record. And it’s funny, because once I started recording them, then other people wanted them, and I wouldn’t let them go then.”

12 Stories was released in October of 2013 and was a critical success earning Clark two Grammy nominations; one for Best Country Album and one for her as Best New Artist.

“That was one of those things in my life, I’m going to be honest, and if anybody who tells you any different is probably just trying to play it cool, but it felt like supreme validation,” Clark says. “That record had a long road, and it was hard to get labels to bite on it and to bite on me, so for it to end up getting two Grammy nominations it just felt like the biggest validation.”

Even with Clark’s critical accomplishments and the success of other female country artists, the radio is still very much a male-dominated field right now.

“I feel like it’s coming into a season where we are going to hear a lot more female voices on the radio, and I think it’s on us females,” Clark says. “I think a lot of women in country music are making really great music, whether it’s on the radio or not, but it’s on us to make music that matters. I look at times when there were a lot of women on the radio, and one artist that really struck a chord with me was Patty Loveless, and when I look back on the music she was making in the ’90s, it was for women. She was telling stories for women and about women, and I think that at some point we lost a little bit of sight of that, and I think we need to get back to that.”

One person who agrees with that is country music legend Reba McEntire, who, in an interview that ran in Watermark last May, said, “We’ve gotta promote these younger females coming on,” and when asked which ones come to mind, McEntire said Clark.

“My gosh, that girl! I’ve got three or four songs of hers on my new album. She’s got great material. I mean, Miranda’s [Lambert] recorded them. All the girls have recorded her songs,” McEntire said.

Compliments from giants in country music are still something that Clark is trying to get used to.

“When I hear that, I instantly think back to standing in line, buying her records,” Clark says. “At this point, I still haven’t met Reba, but that she would be talking about me in an interview like that is mind-blowing. She made a lot of music that made me want to make music, and that made me decide that I’m going to leave everything I know and move out of Nashville and chase this,because she has made records that I think people will be listening to a hundred years from now.”

Clark is currently on tour with Jennifer Nettles and working on having her new album out by March 2016.

Clark, along with Nettles, will be performing at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater Oct. 24 and at the King Center for the Performing Arts in Melbourne Oct. 25.

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