in spite of the largest New country album of the yearBeyonce gets a complete shut-out from the 2024 Country Music Awards. his Cowboy Carter The list of countries is topped by — a Historic first for country singing by a black woman — and spent 22 weeks on Billboard’s Top 200 album ranking. Yet despite nominating other pop crossover artists, including CMA Post Malone and Shabuje, the voting body declined. Cowboy Carter Nomination in any category.
The rejection marks the second time CMA and its audience have clashed with Beyoncé. But while the 2016 backlash over her CMA performance with the Chicks arguably stemmed from tension over the artists’ political identities, it’s hard to chalk this snub up to anything else but misogynoir Most definitely — especially in a year where Malone (in a chart-topping collab with Morgan Wallen) and Shabuji were both nominated for single of the year.
There are a number of complex factors that can contribute to the dissociation of CMA Cowboy Carter. But it is also clear that sometimes the simplest explanation can be the true one.
Cowboy Carter Suffering from lack of promotion
Lead single off Cowboy Carter“Texas Hold ‘Em,” had the biggest release boost ever — a drop during the Super Bowl on February 11, 2024. That date is significant, as the song immediately lit up the charts and saw significant radio play It took two daysAccording to Billboard, country radio stations first received a copy of the song from Beyonce’s label, Parkwood, through Sony Nashville. as details In the industry blog Saving Country Music, the media narrative that quickly lumped country radio together to refuse to play the song wasn’t actually accurate. Rather, because of the way the song was initially positioned — it was first listed as a pop song rather than a country song, and was first played on pop stations — it took a week for most country stations to add the song to their playlists. When it finally did, On 20 FebruaryThe song received radio play on 79 country music stations across the country and debuted on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart. Beyoncé’s label even put out an art ad to thank them:
As Billboard noted, “Country radio has traditionally been reluctant to play songs that were not performed by them or actively promoted by the label.” Billboard also noted that Beyoncé did not heavily promote her 2016 crossover single “Daddy Lessons,” which may have contributed to its poor performance on the country charts at the time.
Lack of promotional energy can hurt Cowboy Carter Although the album was a hit in the long run, it quickly fell down the Billboard ranks and faced stiff competition from artists like Wallen and Taylor Swift — especially in a male-dominated year where men swept the charts and had plenty of radio despite a bumper crop of new albums. Saw the play. Liberation from female artists.
Beyoncé’s label seemed reluctant to promote the album or its songs beyond the initial drop: “Texas Hold ‘Em” received no follow-up music video, and Beyoncé received no regional promotion or in-person radio drop-ins to increase the song’s recognition. Radio listeners.
Much of this is understood to fall within Beyoncé’s brand; His superstardom is driven by mystery and glamor as much as his artistry. That mystique lends itself to sudden album drops with little promotion, but not to overexposure through traditional industry channels like radio.
However, there appears to have been a deliberate choice on Beyoncé’s part to actively refrain from publicity Cowboy Carter As a country album – quite literally, that he initially announcement It says, “This isn’t a country album, it’s a Beyoncé album.” If he wants to argue for his fans that, in fact, it is was A country album, that trick works; Fans quickly pushed Apple Music to change the initial designation of songs from “pop” to “country”. an application The album received more radio play for over 27,000 signatures. Even if industry insiders don’t feel refined enough, though, that feeling of being overlooked can easily translate into a weak response when CMA voting rolls around.
There’s another explanation for all of this though – and it’s what you’re thinking.
(Straight) male crossover artists, including black artists, tend to be welcome at the CMAs
It’s no secret that the country’s music industry has had a longstanding problem with the exclusion of artists of color. The CMAs most notably eliminated Beyoncé first in 2016 for “Daddy Lessons” (which was a musical lesson aimed at erasing black artists from country history), and then Lil Nas X in 2019. Lil Nas was snubbed from every musical category when the CMAs gave him a nod for his collaboration on the song with Billy Ray Cyrus — effectively suggesting that he owed the song’s massive success to a white man, not his own merits.
It was only a few months after Lil Nas came out that gays might factor into the equation, as other straight black male artists like Darius Rucker found success and a warm country welcome in Nashville. Artists like Charlie Pride and Ray Charles also broke boundaries in the genre, though that may be a factor because they were already huge stars before their talent turned country.
The Lil Nas snub also puts this year’s CMAs — in which Beyoncé’s own black male collaborator, Shabuji, received multiple top award nominations — in sharp perspective. Shabuje, the Nigerian American multi-genre artist, received a huge boost in the mainstream by collaborating on two songs with Beyoncé. Cowboy CarterAnd then saw his single “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” go viral; It was hailed as one of the (many) songs of the summer of 2024 and received a Record-breaking amount of radio play Radio across the country.
By first boosting and promoting, and then nominating, Shabuji’s work behind her collaboration with Beyoncé, the industry seems to be sending a message, however inadvertently, that black women’s artistry lags behind their straight male counterparts. . That’s quite a statement to make about that Cowboy CarterAn album featuring country legends like Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson
But it’s also undeniable that the industry is more hospitable to male pop crossover artists. Post Malone has come under fire for appropriate style collaborations from black artists, an issue that sits uncomfortably next to his collaborations with Wallen, whose incredible career rise following the N-word scandal is arguably an interconnected issue. Yet country fans had little trouble embracing Malone and Wallen’s “I Had Some Help,” and CMS rewarded the song. A total of four nominations.
Meanwhile, while Beyoncé has undoubtedly opened doors for artists including Shabuji, progress for black women in the country remains. There is art though upheld Black artists like Valerie June, Mickey Guyton and Yasmin Williams, it has yet to win any of them a CMA award. Last year, the legendary Tracy Chapman and her iconic song “Fast Car” became the first black woman in history to win the CMA Award for Song of the Year — but she did so only because of a white man, Luke Combs, and his viral cover. of music
In other words, while there may be some logical reasoning behind the industry’s snub of Beyoncé that has nothing to do with identity, the CMA has a noticeable pattern of erasing and sidelining black women, even within their own industry. Beyonce is actively aware of this gatekeeping; Cowboy Carter built on the marginal contributions of centuries of black artists who had come before him. It’s hardly a surprise that he’s far from establishing himself and the country since his album debut; He probably knew well before the rest of us that the CMAs would never let him in the door — even though the entire world was clamoring to let him in.
