The CMA Awards lit a fire in Beyoncé in 2016. At that year’s ceremony, she took the stage with the Chicks to perform “Daddy Lessons,” the country cut from Lemonade. There was bristling within the audience, the first spark of contention. Online, scandalized viewers torched the appearance. They spewed their misogynoir-laced criticism that the Houston native was corrupting the sanctity of the genre — and the Country Music Association forfeited its chance to address the racist malice running rampant in its comment sections across social platforms. Beyoncé let that fire smolder for nearly a decade. All the while, Cowboy Carter was cooking.
“It’s a lot of talkin’ goin’ on/While I sing my song,” the musician sings on “Ameriican Requiem,” the first song on her full-length country opus. “Can you hear me?/I said, Do you hear me?” Ahead of the album’s arrival in March, Beyoncé shared a statement revealing its origin: a tense and heated experience that left her feeling both unwanted and unheard. “It was born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed…and it was very clear that I wasn’t,” she wrote. “The criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me.” That night in Nashville changed something in her, but the music that emerged wasn’t enough to change the Country Music Association’s mind about her. Nothing was ever going to.
On Monday, it was revealed that Beyoncé didn’t receive any nominations for Cowboy Carter at the 2024 CMA Awards. Not for the honky-tonk single “Texas Hold ‘Em,” which made her the first Black woman with a Number One country song. Not for the crushing ballad “16 Carriages,” where she muses on legacy and sacrifice. Not even for “Blackbiird,” her reimagining of a Beatles classic that features Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer, Tiera Kennedy, and Reyna Roberts — four Black women leading the next generation of country music. Two featured artists from the album did score nods. Shaboozey is a first-time nominee for Best New Artist and “Tipsy (A Bar Song),” which also made history on the country charts before beginning its eight-week reign at the top of the Hot 100. And “Levii’s Jeans” collaborator Post Malone is up for four awards for “I Had Some Help,” his team-up with Morgan Wallen, the controversial country artist whose stats include two all-genre Number One singles and one viral video of him using a racial slur.
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Wallen and Malone performed together at the 2023 CMA Awards, sharing the stage with Hardy for a Joe Diffie tribute. That night, Wallen lost all three of his nominations. After the show, he posted an Instagram story that said: “Walked in tonight a winner, didn’t leave no different.” He later told Billboard that the losses only “bothered me for like five minutes.” It was of no consequence to him either way. It wouldn’t have changed anything, really. But at that same show, Tracy Chapman was awarded Song of the Year for “Fast Car,” released in 1988 and nominated in 2023 thanks to a cover from Luke Combs. The win made her the first Black artist to be awarded in the coveted category — and the first Black woman to ever win a CMA Award in its 57-year history. With each passing year, these long overdue milestones begin to feel less like honorable accomplishments and more like bright red indicators of the sectors of the industry that are most resistant to change.
“These noms set a really interesting precedent. The message is extremely loud,” country musician Rissi Palmer, who in 2007 became the first Black woman to appear on the country charts in two decades, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) in response to the CMA Awards nominations. “I think that a larger conversation should be had about the fact that no other Black woman or woman of color could even qualify for certain CMA awards and why that is.”
Shaboozey also nodded to Beyoncé being passed over, writing on X, “That goes without saying. Thank you @Beyonce for opening a door for us, starting a conversation, and giving us one of the most innovative country albums of all time!”
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If Beyoncé were to have received an Album of the Year nod for Cowboy Carter at the CMA Awards, she would have made history as the first Black woman to be nominated in the category. After nearly six decades, that isn’t a prize worth fighting for. It’s an egregious oversight. Country music’s history is riddled with those.
Linda Martell, a pioneer in the genre, shattered a number of these glass ceilings. In 1969, she became the first Black woman to play the Grand Ole Opry on her own, more than 40 years after the radio program premiered. She was even advertised in the South as the “First Female Negro Country Artist.” If we hold that truth, we must also be burned by the understanding that it also made her the first to be pushed out of the genre by racism. The first to make it through the extensive locks on that door only to be turned around as soon as she was inside. The target of vicious verbal attacks from audiences decades before those assaults were rampant on the internet. Martell only released one album, Color Me Country (1970), before prejudice sealed her fate in the industry — that is, until she rode back in on Cowboy Carter.
“Genres are a funny little concept, aren’t they?” Martell asks on “Spaghettii,” which also features Shaboozey. “In theory, they have a simple definition that’s easy to understand/But in practice, well, some may feel confined.” When she appears again later on the album, on the interlude “The Linda Martell Show,” it’s with another mention of genre: “This particular tune stretches across a range of genres/And that’s what makes it a unique listening experience.” In the same statement where Beyoncé recounted the lingering sting of country music attempting to close the door on her just as it did with Martell, she made an essential distinction. “This ain’t a country album,” she wrote. “This is a Beyoncé album.” That could be used as a rebuttal for why an institution like the Country Music Association didn’t bother recognizing her. It’s better framed as the reason why she never needed it to in the first place.
Cowboy Carter is the result of a thesis-level study of country music history, filtered through the lens of a Black woman whose links to the genre stretched back years before she brought those influences to the studio. The lessons of those interrogations are laced throughout the sound of the album, alongside traditional hip-hop, pop, and R&B structures. But they’re also in the content — in the sinister storytelling on “Daughter”; in the voices of Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, and Chuck Berry; in the highway cruising with Miley Cyrus on “II Most Wanted” and the denim sweet talk with Malone on “Levii’s Jeans.” Malone has been welcomed into country in the same way he was welcomed into both pop and hip-hop: with open arms as a genre-spanning artist with a knack for a sticky melody. Wherever he goes sonically, space is made for him. Beyoncé has been able to move through these spaces pretty seamlessly throughout her career, too, and quite successfully when she celebrated dance and house music across Renaissance. But country music’s old guard remains stationed at its doorway.
There’s another lesson in the shot Beyoncé takes at the Recording Academy on “Sweet Honey Buckin,” spitting: “A-O-T-Y, I ain’t win/I ain’t stuntin’ ’bout them/Take that shit on the chin/Come back and fuck up the pen.” When “Daddy Lessons” was submitted for the country categories at the 2017 Grammy Awards, it was rejected by the institution’s country music committee. It wasn’t the first, nor the last, entry in a timeline of the singer’s contentious relationship with the Recording Academy. Beyoncé is the most decorated artist in Grammys history with 32 wins. The fine print of that accomplishment is that she’s only won once in the Big Four categories, with three back-to-back Album of the Year losses being the harshest sting. Her own husband Jay-Z pointed out at this year’s ceremony that these two pieces of information — that the music is notable enough to earn nearly three dozen golden gramophones, but not remarkable enough to be deemed the best album of the year — don’t make sense together.
The Recording Academy’s attempt at placating its audience whenever it comes under fire for its perceived racial bias only makes its continued inequity more glaring. The Recording Academy has never said: “Go away Beyoncé, we don’t want you here.” Its messaging has been more along the lines of: “Of course we want you here, just not in that way. But please keep showing up.” And apart from a brief blip from 2018 until 2021, she has. Her legacy as one of the great performers in history was cemented years ago, but she hasn’t been able to shake that particular craving for recognition yet. This is where the Country Music Association, in some ways, actually played it smart. The institution has barely made an effort to recognize Black artists to begin with, so at some point the snubs begin to register as expected rather than surprising. (The Recording Academy is approaching this point, too, but we’ll reserve that conversation for after the 2025 Grammy Awards nominations are revealed in November.)
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But in 2016, Beyoncé heard the CMA Awards loud and clear, even if they didn’t hear her. Even if they didn’t see her. “Because of that experience, I did a deeper dive into the history of Country music and studied our rich musical archive,” she wrote on Instagram. “It feels good to see how music can unite so many people around the world, while also amplifying the voices of some of the people who have dedicated so much of their lives educating on our musical history.” The rising talent featured on Cowboy Carter saw their streaming numbers boosted between 31 percent and 59 percent following the album’s release, according to Billboard. The country veterans on the record — like Nelson, Parton, and Martell — also saw significant increases in the online consumption of their catalogs. Cowboy Carter brought in 300.41 million on-demand official streams in its first week, surpassing all of her previous albums and marking the fourth-largest opening week for a country album.
The people who want to hear the music and receive its message are listening. As far as the Country Music Association goes, there isn’t a volume loud enough to bring hearing to deaf ears.
