Only if you are living under a rock would you not know that Beyoncé not only won Album of the Year for ‘Cowboy Carter,’ her country album, but also won Country Album of the Year at the 67th annual Grammy Awards and, of course—as with most award shows—someone went home empty-handed and white country music fans have groaned in protest, stating that a Texan cannot make real country music, simply because she has made real R&B, pop and even rock music in the past.
Congratulations Album Of The Year winner – ‘COWBOY CARTER’ @Beyonce 🎶 #GRAMMYs pic.twitter.com/7hp2HwCyXG
— Recording Academy / GRAMMYs (@RecordingAcad) February 4, 2025
Beyoncé has also sung a little opera as well, but according to The Opry, a woman who uses the same hair dye as Carrie Underwood is not really country.
One August night in 1959, a-one Eileen Regina Edwards was born in Windsor, Ontario. At age two, Eileen’s family moved to Timmins, Ontario. Neither Timmins nor Windsor was known for their southern rodeo culture, but they were both former residences of Eileen Edwards, who would later become the largest-selling female country musician of all time; the world would come to know her as Shania Twain. While Shania’s sound was rejected by country music purists, she was not asked to go through a gauntlet of acceptance due to her Canadian upbringing. Her music was criticized for its heavy rock influence, not because she had Dolly Parton or one of the Cyruses on her albums. Fortunately, Keith “just bump the ends,” Urban, an Australian, has remained unscathed.
Beyoncé’s album may not be country, but the artists she had on her album surely are.
Beyoncé, despite having the largest-selling country album, was completely shut out of the CMAs last year. Luke Bryan’s excuse was that she needed to shake hands with country music folk and ingratiate herself with the community. Still, when she did that very thing by singing with the Dixie Chicks on the CMAs, she was treated poorly, which became the catalyst for the album even happening.
Additionally, Shaboozey’s “Bar Song (Tipsy)” spent the most weeks at the top of the country music charts, and he was not accepted. His song broke the previous record for weeks spent at the top of the country charts, which had been set by Lil Nas X, whose song, “Old Town Road,” was stripped of its ‘countriness,’ so that it could receive no further accolades or claims to the country charts. Purists deemed his song not country enough as if country itself isn’t an amalgamation of musical genres, including the introduction of the banjo, an instrument invented by African descendants.
Beyoncé is a former pageant girl from Houston, Texas, and it don’t get much more country than that.
The problem is not where Beyoncé is from but who she is. She is a Black woman who was shunned at the Country Music Awards, so she was stunned and stunted at the Grammy’s. After having been the most nominated artist of all time, she finally won the coveted Album of the Year award because sometimes you gotta cross the country to get where you are going.
