Martina McBride responds to the silly salad comment

Martina McBride, an American country music singer, has not taken a silly salad metaphor thrown at female artists. The comment was made by Keith Hill, a radio consultant, in an interview with Country Aircheck. He said, “Trust me, I play great female records and we've got some right now; they're just not the lettuce in our salad. The lettuce is Luke Bryan and Blake Shelton, Keith Urban and artists like that. The tomatoes of our salad are the females".

Hill advised to ‘take females out’ in order to increase ratings in Country radio. This was indeed not accepted by the singer. She took Facebook to express her annoyance, “Wow... just wow. Just read this from a major country radio publication. How do you feel about this statement? I especially want to hear from the females. Do you not like to hear other women singing about what you are going through as women? I'm really curious... Because to me, country music is about relating... to what you are really going through on a day to day basis in your life. Did you girls (core female listeners) know you were being 'assessed' in this way? Is this how you really feel?”

She was not even scared to include excerpts from Hill’s interview in her post, “The reason is mainstream Country radio generates more quarter hours from female listeners at the rate of 70 to 75%, and women like male artists. I'm basing that not only on music tests from over the years, but more than 300 client radio stations. The expectation is we're principally a male format with a smaller female component. I've got about 40 music databases in front of me and the percentage of females in the one with the most is 19%".