With the release of ‘Cowboy Carter,’ Beyoncé’s eighth solo album and one that finds her exploring – and testing – the boundaries of country music, much of the early talk has focused on whether the country music industry will rally around her . Beyoncé is one of the most commercially successful and creatively vibrant pop stars of the 21st century — surely her arrival would be greeted with a tailspin, wouldn’t she?
Not exactly.
Instead of receiving a welcome party, Beyoncé was largely met with shrugs. “Texas Hold ‘Em” – one of two singles released before the album – is a clever mix of old and new. It shows a familiarity with the sonic principles of old-fashioned country while maintaining the infectiousness of current pop. However, it has received extremely modest attention on country radio. Beyoncé is black and a woman, two groups that contemporary Nashville constantly marginalizes and limits. And no amount of built-in celebrity can seem to undo that.
Contemporary mainstream country music often feels like a closed-loop white male narrative. So whether or not Beyoncé and Nashville can find common cause is, by all accounts, a red herring. Neither cares much about the other — the traditional country music business will accept certain kinds of outsiders, but it’s not built to accommodate a black Beyoncé star, and it focuses on country as art and inspiration and sociopolitical play, not industry. The rejection is mutual.
On Instagram last week, Beyoncé made it clear: “This is not a country album. This is a ‘Beyoncé’ album. It was a statement that preemptively denied the country music industry a chance to claim her work, while also showing that she had found a creative way around the boundaries of the genre.
It’s as close as he’s come to leveraging the expectation of racism and genre exclusion as a means of promotion. Instead, Beyoncé made it personal, adding that exploring these musical themes “was born out of an experience I had years ago where I didn’t feel welcome… and it was very clear that I wasn’t.” This is likely a reference to her appearance at the Country Music Association Awards in 2016, where she performed her song “Daddy Lessons” with the Dixie Chicks (now the Chicks), another act who understands all too well the experience of being kept at a distance out of hand by the Nashville oligarchy.
This CMA performance was, of course, incredible—a one-way sliding-door look at the genre that’s been largely ignored or sidelined. With his swagger, intensity and elegance, he highlighted what was missing, and often remains, from mainstream country.
So Beyoncé kept it to herself. On “Cowboy Carter,” she said she developed the frameworks, textures, and tricks of country music as an extension of an ongoing musicological project dating back at least to her genre-shattering Coachella performance in 2018, which, in addition to being an almost an unimaginable feat of musical dexterity, choreography and stamina, it was also one of the most stylistically and socioculturally rigorous statements by a pop star in recent memory.
Since then, Beyoncé has gone from reliable blockbuster to trusted conversation starter, using her massive platform, and the fans who flock to it, to tell a parallel narrative about black music present and past. Her albums are musical journeys, but also history lessons. Similarly themed LPs by lesser stars or pointed troublemakers may be less effective at making Beyoncé’s point, which is that Black creativity fuels all corners of popular music.
On ‘Renaissance’, her previous album, she highlighted queer black communities in dance music. But country music continues to sideline its black roots while making it extremely difficult for contemporary black performers—of which there are many—to gain opportunities to grow.
It’s not like the country isn’t agile and porous when it wants to be. Country often leaves room for white performers to take on and break away from the genre’s hallmarks — the way Taylor Swift can easily slip in and out of that mode at will, or how Zach Bryan has, in a way, adopted from Nashville, though he has largely avoided identifying himself as such. Or consider the tattooed Jelly Roll, last year’s biggest country star, who had spent most of the previous two decades as a hard-nosed white rapper.
For the past few weeks, Post Malone has been dropping hints about his upcoming turn to country. He has been photographed alongside Morgan Wallen, as well as Hardy and Ernest, members of the extended Wallen universe. Although he still lives under the shadow of the 2021 incident in which he was caught on video using a racial slur, Wallen remains the genre’s reigning superstar, his popularity largely undiminished. While Beyoncé and the Nashville staple eye each other warily, Post Malone and Wallen’s crew are in a state of mutual embrace, welcoming and empowering each other. (Country music has also been a soft haven for white stars from other genres—think Kid Rock, Aaron Lewis, or Bon Jovi—looking to expand their careers. Even Lana Del Rey has said she’d spend some time with genre on her next album.)
The fact that Beyoncé is making “Cowboy Carter” not to infiltrate country, but as an artistic and political statement should come as something of a relief to those concerned with preserving the genre’s norms. (It’s worth asking, though, if a white pop star on the equivalent of Beyoncé were queuing up in country — say, Lady Gaga or Katy Perry in their prime — would the reception be any less frosty?)
But increasingly, the genre is being tested from the outside. Radio is ceding power to streaming, and there are myriad entry points for country artists looking to escape the usual gatekeepers. That’s been a small boon for non-white artists, who find their audiences more directly, often through social media, and then let major country music labels play along.
That’s been the path of Tanner Adell, perhaps the most promising black country artist working right now, and the best-placed to capitalize on any fringe interest Beyoncé has generated because of her intuitive blend of country, R&B, and pop. Adell has more than 650,000 followers on TikTok, 480,000 on Instagram, a knack for viral catchphrases, and a healthy appreciation for country music’s signifiers as well as a savvy understanding of when to disrupt them.
Perhaps more revealing, however, is the recent viral success of “Austin,” by Dasha—a virtually unknown white singer—a catchy, self-consciously “country” crooner who has spurred a line-dancing trend on TikTok. A song “Austin” has enough in common with? “Texas Hold’Em.” Both develop a banjo and wear their nod to country tradition very consciously. Often, contemporary mainstream country music bears little sonic resemblance to the genre’s roots, but these songs strongly highlight that connection. (The words “Old Town Road” come to mind.)
The country music business doesn’t often seem too busy with country music’s most well-known signifiers: “Texas Hold ‘Em” currently sits atop Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, which represents genre-agnostic streaming activity, but it hasn’t climbed very high on the Country Airplay chart, which tracks radio airplay, the true measure of the genre’s embrace.
A scroll through Dasha’s back catalog suggests that country is a mode, if not a costume — almost none of her music before she got a nod this year. And yet, “Austin” has quickly become one of this year’s signature country songs. Its startup is still relatively new and it is likely to quickly grow in attention. Will Dasha be welcomed as a country artist or shunned as an interloper? The answer, when it arrives, may not surprise you.
