Despite receiving the most nominations for the 2025 Grammys—a majority in the country music category—Beyonce received zero for the Country Music Awards. Now, sources have confirmed she will not be attending in response to the snub.
Beyonce had four songs among the top five entries on the Hot Country Songs Chart, and Cowboy Carter spent weeks atop the Billboard Country Charts—the first album by a Black woman to do so.
Following the release of “Texas Hold’ Em,” a radio station in Oklahoma refused to play the hit. They responded to a fan with an email that read, “Hi – we do not play Beyonce on KYKC as we are a country music station.” They weren’t the only ones; only eight of the 150 stations that report to the Billboard Country Charts played the song.
This wasn’t the first time the country music community failed Beyonce. In 2016, she was criticized for performing alongside The Chicks at the CMAs. The genre has a history of gatekeeping from Black artists. In 2018, country fans responded in uproar when Lil Nas X released the “Old Town Road.” Despite the song featuring the same elements of a Florida Georgia Line anthem, it was removed from the Billboard Country Music Charts.
It’s not just that Beyonce is a pop artist who released a country album—Post Malone did the same thing and earned four nominations. The CMAs have a history of excluding Black artists, particularly women. It wasn’t until 2023 that a Black woman earned CMA recognition, when Tracy Chapman won Song of the Year for Luke Combs’s cover of “Fast Car.” She was the first Black person to win the award and only did so after a white man sang her song.
The CMA nomination process considers Top 10 Billboard Hot Country Charts and radio airplay. This makes it hard for Black women, who are often overlooked by labels and underplayed on stations.
Luke Bryan weighed in on the snub, telling radio host Andy Cohen that Beyonce needed to “come into our world and be country with us for a little bit.” The problem with his logic is Black women have much higher hurdles to climb before they are welcome.
