When Beyoncé's country album dropped earlier this year, she said, "This ain’t a country album. This is a ‘Beyoncé’ album."
The pop diva made the distinction clear — that even if "Cowboy Carter" could be confided to a genre, it would still be a Beyoncé album. However, Beyoncé's individuality and genre-hopping skills have not bent the ear of the Country Music Awards. Despite the musician having the biggest country album of the year, she has been completely shut out from nominations for the 58th CMA Awards.
During "Cowboy Carter's" run, Beyoncé became the first Black woman to hit the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Country charts. It spent 22 weeks on the Billboard Top 200 and featured traditional white country stars like Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson, who both gave her more respect than the CMAs have managed to muster.
While "Cowboy Carter" smashed records and even catapulted Black country collaborators like Shaboozey, who has been nominated for best new artist and single of the year for the song "A Bar Song (Tipsey)," the CMAs still did not nominate the industry veteran and pop music shaper.
Unfortunately, this rejection from the traditional country music industry is one Beyoncé is familiar with. When she released "Texas Hold 'Em" earlier this year, a country music station in Oklahoma shut down a request from a fan to play the song. Only after an outcry from Beyoncé's BeyHive did the station relent and agree to play the new country single. According to the New York Times, the song itself faired well but "was given only limited promotion on country radio stations, where the industry often signals its preferences and choices."
However, the biggest rejection Beyoncé faced in the country music space was in 2016 after the performance of "Daddy Lessons" with the Chicks from the genre-bending album "Lemonade." The performance was eventually scrubbed from all of the CMAs' social media accounts after it was met with a cold reaction from audience members and conservative America.
That experience left a lasting impression on the musician — so she created "Cowboy Carter." Before the release of the album, Beyoncé said in a statement that "Cowboy Carter" 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. But, because of that experience, I did a deeper dive into the history of country music and studied our rich musical archive.”
In her album opener, "American Requiem," Beyoncé sang about this experience of alienation from the country world. She sang, "Used to say I spoke, 'Too country'/And the rejection came, said 'I wasn't country 'nough.'"
Outside of the CMAs, fans and music critics await the 2024 Grammy Awards nominations where Beyoncé holds the historic title for most winning artist. However, the artist has been shut out of winning album of the year four times, including for her albums "Lemonade" and "Renaissance."
The singer's husband and rapper, Jay-Z called out the Grammys this year for its snub of Beyoncé in 2023 saying, "I don't want to embarrass this young lady, but she has more Grammys than anyone and never won album of the year. So even by your own metrics, that doesn't work."
In the song "Sweet Honey Buckin," Beyoncé mentioned the snub, singing "A-O-T-Y, I ain’t win (Let’s go) / I ain’t stung by them / Take that s**t on the chin / Come back and f**k up the pen."
