Keith Urban Doesn’t Need to Defend ‘Female’

In today's culture it is impossible to make everyone happy. Someone will always be offended. You can tell someone that Big Bird is the best character on Sesame Street and someone will rant to you why Big Bird is offensive.

During the CMA Awards Keith Urban performed his recent single Female.

The song was written by Shane McAnally, Nicolle Galyon and Ross Copperman.

Many referred to the song as a response to the multiple scandals in Hollywood concerning sexual assault. In particular, Female was a response to the Harvey Weinstein scandal.

The phrase "mansplaining" came up a few times with reactions to the song.

A writer for Elle Magazine wrote:

There are a lot of things men can do to curb the culture of patriarchy and toxic masculinity. None of them are this. This is the musical equivalent of a guy wearing a shirt that says "Male feminist." Like, why and also stop...I don't know what I'm supposed to feel except...blind rage question mark.

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert host poked fun at Urban's song with his own version.

Song-writer McAnally told the LA Times, "...[it] was part of the conversation that led us to what is going on" while stating the song was not a direct reaction to Weinstein. He continued by saying, "It feels like we've gone backwards. We felt like women continue doing equal work in every regard, but getting less credit."

However, social media wasn't all negative. Many people praised Urban and the song.

Here is my take on it.

The fact that a man sings this song does not discredit the message. If you are truly for equality then you must accept equality in all cases. A man can sing a song with a feminist narrative, just as a woman can. This is equality.

Many people were disgruntled over comments made by song-writer Cooperman when he said, "We're like, 'What can we do about this?' And that's the one thing we can do is write songs."

This is exactly what song-writers do. They take real life and make music. This is art. Song-writers, in many cases, take the issues that face society and create songs to convey the message. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this and the fact that Cooperman's statement seemed to discredit the song baffles me.

If Miranda Lambert released this song would people have reacted in the same manner? I believe the answer is absolutely not.

Urban is a musician who looked at the issues and wanted to spark a positive conversation and there is absolutely no reason why he and the writers have to explain themselves. Society has done an unfortunately good job at becoming judge and jury, a judge and jury with strong biases.

I believe the song Female is empowering and has a strong impact as a woman. The fact it is performed by a man holds no weight.

Watch Urban's performance here:

Sources: LATimes.com, Elle.com