To be fair, there are few acts that do what SmithField does. Country has plenty of duos
Florida Georgia Line,
Maddie & Tae,
Brothers Osborne, just to name a few but each of them is a single-gender combo. The last full-time male/female pair to log chart-topping singles,
Thompson Square, hit No. 1 in 2011 with Are You Gonna Kiss Me or Not and in 2012 with If I Didn t Have You.
The paucity of that artistic structure is a head-scratcher at first glance, though even
Keifer and
Shawna Thompson understand why the configuration is so rare. You got to coexist with this other partner, boy or girl, says Keifer Thompson, and you got egos: ‘You re singing more than I do. ‘You re singing them better than I do. ‘I m fatter than you are. ‘I have abs. You have all this stuff that goes into play when you enter into a band or a duo. And so that s one giant obstacle right there: just coexisting together as a duo. And then you got the male/female version of that.