Yesterday the Country Music Association announced all of the nominees for this year’s 58th award show. Among those names were Luke Combs, Jelly Roll, Morgan Wallen, Megan Moroney, and Lainey Wilson. Yet one pretty popular name did not make the list, Beyoncé.
In March, Beyonce released an all-country album for the first time. The record titled “COWBOY CARTER”, featured legendary artists like Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, and Linda Martell. Despite these appearances and several hits on the album, most notably ‘TEXAS HOLD ‘EM’, the record did not even get nominated at the CMA awards.
You may be thinking this is because she isn’t necessarily a country artist and is too new to the genre to be seriously considered for one of these awards. And that would make sense, except for the fact that Post Malone, who also recently made the switch to country, is nominated not once, but four times for his new country record.
I find it odd that Malone was kindly accepted into the genre so quickly, and an artist who has been around for decades like Beyonce was not. One of Beyonce’s largest fan pages on X, under the name ‘BEYONCÉ LEGION’ took to social media to voice their complaints. They posted, “The CMA’s have once again deferred to those in the industry who prefer to deny Black artists the recognition they deserve, failing to nominate Beyoncé in a single category this year despite her record-breaking success with TEXAS HOLD ‘EM and #COWBOYCARTER. The CC era received overwhelming critical acclaim, commercially outperformed nearly all other releases this year, and brought millions of new listeners and engagements to the genre. These are the same @CountryMusic. Awards that wiped all video and editorial evidence of Beyoncé’s 2016 CMA performance from existence after caving to pressure from snowflake racists who took issue with a Black female artist successfully crossing over into the genre, a genre that originated with Black Americans.”
