Moving to Nashville in the mid-2000s from her hometown of Thousand Oaks, California, Annie Bosko is quite familiar with the grind of becoming a country music singer-songwriter. She paid the bills by recording jingles, cutting demos, writing songs for other artists, and eventually toured the country as an opening act for A-listers like Dierks Bentley and Blake Shelton. Two years after making her Grand Ole Opry debut, Bosko finally released her debut studio album, California Cowgirl, earlier this month. It wasn’t an easy journey, but the singer-songwriter says artists like Jelly Roll help make the road a little smoother.
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Jelly Roll Is Helping Pave the Way For Female Artists, Annie Bosko Says
Decades after artists like Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, and Kitty Wells struggled to blaze their own trails, Annie Bosko says that reality remains bleak for women in country music.
“As a female, this is not a ‘woe is me.’ It’s a stat,” said the “California Cowgirl” singer during a recent appearance on Taste of Country Nights. “Your odds are stacked against you. You make up 8 percent of radio airplay in America on country radio.”
[RELATED: Annie Bosko Shines a Light with “Dandelions” for The Covenant School]
According to Jada Watson, the lead investigator of SongData’s research program, “In 2024, songs by women declined to 8.39% — again, mostly for songs by white women (8.23%), with songs by Black women being programmed at just 0.09% last year.”
1 year ago, I participated for the 1st time in the annual meeting of Country Radio Seminar to discuss representation in radio programming. I reported that songs by women had declined to 9.81% by 2023–mostly for white women, w/0.02% by Black women. How do things look 1 year later? Scroll thru ⬇️
— Jada Watson (@datajada.bsky.social) February 23, 2025 at 4:18 PM
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However, Bosko has had the opportunity to open for Jelly Roll at the California Mid-State Fair two years in a row. And she says the “Save Me” crooner is different from other superstars.
“There are some artists that I open for that don’t know I’m the opener and they don’t know who I am,” she explained. “Jelly makes a point to know who you are. He’ll bring you out on stage to sing with him. He’s giving you that platform.”
As a girl dad himself, the three-time CMT Music Award winner takes his role in elevating female artists quite seriously. “Jelly told me, ‘I have a daughter. In the event that she wants to pursue music someday, I hope that someone does that for her,’” Bosko said.
Featured image by Roger Wimmer/ISI Photos/ISI Photos via Getty Images
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