There is little question that Beyoncé Knowles-Carter is one of the biggest superstars on the planet right now. She resides in the lofty echelons of fame wherein her projects are treated not simply as new releases, but culturally significant events. It should be no surprise then that “Texas Hold ‘Em,” the first single off Beyoncé’s brand-new “Cowboy Carter” album, has spent more than six weeks atop Billboard’s “Hot Country Songs” chart. This makes Beyoncé the “first Black woman with the number one single” on that particular listing, as she noted in an Instagram post thanking her fans for the achievement.
The accomplishment, however, has been accompanied by a contentious debate over whether Beyoncé is indeed a country artist, along with broader questions of how one of popular music’s biggest genres defines and limits participation. Just days after Beyoncé announced “Cowboy Carter” during the 2024 Super Bowl, a country music radio station in Oklahoma refused a listener request to play the album’s single because, as the station manager wrote in an email, “we do not play Beyoncé at KYKC as we are a country music station.” The rejection was quickly reversed after a massive outcry and allegations of racism.
With “Cowboy Carter” set for a March 28 release, the discourse over who is — and perhaps more important who gets to define — a country artist is likely to intensify.
‘A classic case of cultural appropriation’
Criticism of Beyoncé’s country turn with claims that she should “stay in [her] lane” or “Well, that’s not real country” are couched examples of racism, Grammy award winning folk and Americana artist Rhiannon Giddons said to ABC. Exclusionary critics “don’t wanna say it’s because she Black” and use “coded terms” instead. Giddons, who is Black and plays banjo on “Cowboy Carter,” pointed out that “nobody’s askin’ Lana Del Rey, ‘What right do you have to make a country record?'” while stressing that with this album Beyoncé is only exploring her roots.
That exploration comes amidst a broad conception that country music is “a genre made by and for white people,” Forbes said. It is a notion that is “empirically false” given the genre’s roots that were influenced by “Black music and shaped by Black traditions.” Given those “historical origins,” denying Beyoncé’s work as sufficiently country is “not merely exclusionary; it is a classic case of cultural appropriation.” Historical precedence aside, this gatekeeping “ignores the fact that [Beyoncé is] from Texas and the country aesthetic is a cultural silhouette of her identity.” Beyoncé’s music has long featured a “proud and overt appreciation for her Southern roots,” The Harvard Crimson said, contrasting the Texas native with genre stars like Keith Urban and Shania Twain who are “not from America and have no heritage connected to the American South, yet they face no backlash for their country music.”
‘More elasticity’ with genre-hopping
In particular, the debate over Beyoncé’s country-ness exists largely in the realm of radio, where country stations “still retain a significant gatekeeping power, elevating favored performers and mediating the genre’s metes and bounds for audiences and the industry,” The New York Times said. That “Texas Hold ‘Em” hit #1 on the Billboard Hot Country chart is a “combination of streaming, sales and airplay data” with just “modest” radio airplay. While some major country stations have welcomed the song, the industry at-large can be punishing to “those perceived as outsiders or dilettantes,” and “programmers may be scanning for signals from their audience before pushing further.” As one major format programmer explained to The Times, the questions posed are often “How committed is the artist is to the format?” and are they are going to be a “one-time wonder, or is there going to be more?”
Conversely, transitioning from one genre to country — even in radio — “might actually be easier now than ever before for multiple reasons,” Billboard argued. Not only has the genre itself become “much more flexible,” but Taylor Swift’s “reverse transition” from country to pop music has “made genre-hopping more acceptable.” At the same time “radio programmers are operating differently” than even a few years earlier. Increasingly, station program directors “came into country from other formats” and “view country’s boundaries with more elasticity.”