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Could Beyoncé’s Country Debut Redefine a Genre as We Know It? [1]
['Claire Carlson', 'The Daily Yonder']
Date: 2024-02-28
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Keep It Rural, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Like what you see? Join the mailing list for more rural news, thoughts, and analysis in your inbox each week.
A long-awaited overhaul of country music is happening before our very eyes, and the latest change is thanks to the one and only Beyoncé.
By now you’ve probably heard at least a snippet of her recent single, “Texas Hold ‘Em,” which has taken the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and the Hot Country Songs chart since its release in mid-February. Her other recent single, “16 Carriages,” is having similar success. The two songs are from her forthcoming album “Act II,” which releases March 29, 2024. Album art for “16 Carriages.” (Photo via Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia Records)
These two singles are catchy as hell and more notably country as hell, which has come as a surprise to some listeners who know Beyoncé for her R&B, hip hop, and pop roots. But like any good music legend, Queen Bey has range, and she’s now making history as the first Black woman to hit number one on the Hot Country Songs chart, a list long held by white, usually male, country artists.
But really, it’s hardly a surprise she’s making country music: Born in Houston, Texas, Beyoncé grew up deeply enmeshed in the cowboy culture country music espouses. In 2016, she included country in her album “Lemonade,” which features foot stomping, hollering, and acoustic guitar on the track “Daddy Lessons.” She even played the song that same year at the Country Music Awards with The Chicks, who have made history in their own right as an all-female country band navigating a male-dominated industry.
Beyoncé and The Chicks (formerly known as the Dixie Chicks) perform “Daddy Lessons” at the 2016 Country Music Awards.
She joins a long line of Black country artists, but what’s different is she’s Beyoncé – her celebrity status guarantees airtime. She has a better go at it than pretty much any other Black artist trying to enter the country music scene. As Howard University professor Pat Parks put it in a recent interview, “An infinitesimal percentage of Black country artists are breaking through, and that is because of systemic discrimination. It’s coming from your programming directors at the radio station and is coming from the executives that refuse to play Black country music artists’ videos. You cannot chart if people are not listening to your music.”
Beyoncé’s celebrity power forces a conversation in country music about the role of Black musicians and the discrimination they’ve faced in this genre. For too long country music has been weighed down by an assumption that it’s about and for white folks from the country, even though country music is inextricably linked to Black culture: the banjo, for example, was brought to the United States on slave ships from Africa. Black folks have been making country music since country music first came about in rural areas of the American South and West.
The cover of “Black Country Music,” by Francesca Royster. (Photo via the University of Texas Press) In Francesca Royster’s book “Black Country Music: Listening for Revolutions,” Royster describes how the categorization of country music as “white music” happened in the 20th century when the recording industry split the music coming from rural Black and white communities into “race records” and “hillbilly music,” respectively. Hillbilly music by white artists was renamed “country music” in the middle of the 20th century, which helped define it as a white genre. The recording industry poured money into country music, while race records were pushed aside and disinvested.
Even though the sounds we associate with country – banjos, fiddles, harmonicas, twang, hollering, foot stomping – were created by white and Black musicians alike, the recording industry only spent money and gave airtime to white, usually male country artists.
But Beyoncé’s new songs practically demand a change to who we associate with country music. They highlight her own country roots and spotlight the long legacy of Black country artists, and promise that at least one Black artist will be played on the local country radio station. Her foray into country music could be seen not as a deviation from her usual sound but a homecoming, of sorts, and a welcome one at that.
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