There’s a “lot of talkin’ goin’ on” about Beyoncé’s historic night at the 67th Annual GRAMMY Awards this year. There’s a lot of criticism going on, too, after her album Cowboy Carter won the GRAMMY award for Album of the Year and, perhaps even more polarizing, the GRAMMY award for Best Country Album. This victory, in particular, is what provoked a backlash from the media.
Disgruntled country fans ran to voice their disappointment online, with many arguing that Beyoncé has no business going anywhere near their genre. They dismissed Cowboy Carter as a pop star’s experiment rather than an authentic contribution to country as a genre. Most have claimed that the album didn’t deserve the GRAMMY for Best Country Album because it simply isn’t country. But this begs a question I’ll be revisiting later…What is country music?
The negative response to her GRAMMY win is reminiscent of similar criticisms the singer faced in 2016 when she performed at the Country Music Awards (CMAs) alongside The Chicks, garnering controversy yet again for “not belonging on the country stage.”
In an Instagram post before Cowboy Carter’s release, Beyoncé hinted that it was this very reaction to her 2016 CMAs’ performance that inspired the album. “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 said.
Cowboy Carter’s reception, or lack thereof, at the CMAs in September 2024, where the album received zero nominations, carries this unfortunate pattern of dismissal from the country community even further. With that said, I’d like to return to my earlier question: what is country music? Who gets to make it? Who gets to decide? It’s questions like these that Cowboy Carter seeks to wrangle.
The History of Country Music
To fully explain the significance of Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter as a country album, I want to begin by discussing the genre’s rich history, specifically as it relates to part of the album’s title, the “cowboy.” The country genre was founded upon the racially diverse American West’s cattle industry and has long been shaped by a fusion of colorful musical influences.
Some of these include Appalachian folk, gospel, and blues. The image of the “hillbilly” rose as a manifestation of these sub-genres, an amalgamation of American rural identity that included indigenous, Hispanic, and Black cowboys. Interestingly, historians estimate that one in four cowboys was Black, many of which were freed or escaped slaves. So why does popular culture refuse to acknowledge this?
The answer is simple. Stories of such cowboys, like Bill Pickett or Bass Reeves, for example, were quickly overshadowed in favor of the now-familiar White cowboy narrative. In the 1950s, White southerners popularized the hat-tipping, cattle-driving White cowboy that soon became the indisputable symbol of “country.”
As music evolved alongside romanticized cowboys, the contributions of Black country artists were consequentially pushed aside, despite having played such pivotal roles in both the settlement of the Wild West and the development of the country genre as we know it today. In crafting a country album as a Black woman herself, Beyoncé has taken nothing away from country music. She has simply reminded it of its roots.
Don’t get me wrong, I grew up listening to outlaw country pioneers like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson (who is featured on Cowboy Carter!), and Waylon Jennings. My dad made sure of that. These artists, notably White men, were rebels in their own right, challenging the polished, mainstream Nashville sound with raw, unapologetic lyricism. They sang of heartbreak, troubled faith, and the flaws of the American dream.
These artists were celebrated for breaking the rules and carving out their places in country music history. Rightfully so, of course! But my point here is this: if that’s country, then why shouldn’t Beyoncé, an artist who has spent five years writing Cowboy Carter to defy the music industry’s rules and challenge the boundaries of the country genre, fit into that same legacy?
The Concept of Cowboy Carter
Cowboy Carter is a conceptual album framed as a radio show complete with interludes, station breaks, and spoken-word segments to guide listeners through a beautiful three-act, faux broadcast experience. A cast of some of country’s most influential voices — including Dolly Parton, Linda Martell, and Willie Nelson — act as the album’s “disc jockeys.” I thought this approach was satisfyingly poetic, especially considering the country radio stations that refused to play the album upon its release.
All that to say, Cowboy Carter is country…but it also isn’t. That is the entire point. Beyoncé believes in music’s ability to surpass genre conventions. The album is intended to leave listeners questioning the way we classify genres that place unfair limits on artists, particularly on artists of color. As such, Cowboy Carter refuses to adhere to a single genre.
It’s a country album, first and foremost, with its artful use of fundamentally country instruments like the slide guitar, banjo, fiddle, harmonica, and washboard. But it’s also a rap, pop, hip-hop, bluegrass, and soul album. It has traces of gospel, rock ‘n’ roll, flamenco, and even opera.
Recognizing Black Artists
If Beyoncé, one of the most successful female artists in the world, is struggling to be accepted by country artists and fans, just imagine the difficulty that smaller Black artists face in the genre. Conscious of this, Beyoncé takes advantage of her platform to use Cowboy Carter to recognize underappreciated Black country artists.
One of the most significant examples is the featuring of Linda Martell, the first commercially successful Black female country artist whose career was cut short due to racism within the industry. Martell appears in reference throughout and as a guiding voice, narrating interludes that reinforce one of the album’s recurring themes: “Genres are a funny little concept, aren’t they?”
Beyoncé left the Grammys as the first Black artist to ever win the award for Best Country Album, and during Black History Month, no less. It’s a country album that brings prejudices against people of color that are ingrained within the genre to the surface.
This is why she mixes so many different genres, marrying sounds that have been historically labeled as “Black” music, such as rap or R&B, with country, a genre dominated by White artists.
The album embraces themes of rebellion, perseverance, faith, heartache, family, and troubles with identity as a Black woman in America. She honors country’s past while simultaneously expanding its future, unafraid of scuffing her boots and kicking down the saloon doors to stake her claim in a genre that has so stubbornly tried to shut her out. Well, “If that ain’t country, tell me, what is?”
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