Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter asks: Who does country belong to?

The cover image of Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter. | Beyoncé/Blair Cardwell via Instagram

Her new album seems to have roots in her reception at the 2016 CMA Awards, but the country music establishment can’t stop Beyoncé.

In the lead-up to Friday’s release of Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé gave us a small tidbit about its inspiration. She wrote on Instagram that the album was “over five years in the making” and “born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed…and it was very clear that I wasn’t.” Without naming said experience outright, she added, “I did a deeper dive into the history of country music and studied our rich musical archive.”

Following the breadcrumbs Bey dropped — an event from more than five years ago, country music, not feeling accepted — led many to the 2016 Country Music Association Awards. There, Beyoncé joined the Chicks for a surprise performance of “Daddy Lessons.”

To date, it was one of the most significant performances in CMA history, yet it can’t be found on the CMA’s official channels. That may be the result of a wave of racist and sexist backlash targeting the CMAs for allowing Beyoncé to take their stage. At the time, the CMAs said the lack of video was at Beyoncé’s discretion.

Why the backlash? It seemed a vocal contingent of fans believed Beyoncé — a Black woman unafraid to share her politics — isn’t what country music is.

With Beyoncé poised to reenter the genre with Cowboy Carter this week, it raises some existential questions. What is country music? What should it represent? Who does it belong to? Who gets to make the rules?

And perhaps the most pertinent question of all: Is Beyoncé going to change all of that?

Why the CMAs could have inspired Cowboy Carter

The key message in Beyoncé’s Instagram post is that she didn’t feel welcome and it was clear she wasn’t. Given her status, fame, and talent, the many A-list events that welcome her — the Oscars, the Grammys, the MTV Music Video Awards — absolutely overshadow any that wouldn’t. It could easily be argued that Beyoncé is bigger than the CMA Awards themselves.

But there’s something deeper here.

The CMAs both present and crystallize the identity of country music, as Alice Randall, a Black country songwriter and professor at Vanderbilt University explains to Vox. New stars are born, legends are honored, and legacies are cemented. In front of the genre’s elite, the CMAs determine what is — and, conversely, what isn’t — country music by whom they honor and what performances they spotlight. The backlash Beyoncé has faced is actually part of a larger story about the omission and erasure of Black artists within country music.

Beyoncé/Blair Cardwell via Instagram

An alternate cover of Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter.

“I was at the 20th anniversary of the Country Music Association, and it was an absolute turning point for me, because they talked about country music always being a family,” says Randall. “XXX’s and OOO’s,” which Randall cowrote, went to No. 1 on the country charts when Trisha Yearwood released her recording of the song in 1994.

“But they only spoke of white people, even though many of the people on the stage that night had their career started by DeFord Bailey, the Opry’s first star. He was completely erased from the story. So this gatekeeping has been going on in different ways, and to the present moment, and often crystallizes around CMA performances,” she added.

[Related: Beyoncé, the CMAs, and the fight over country music’s politics, explained]

The CMA Awards have the power to define mainstream culture’s perception of country music, of that family. Omitting Bailey sets a tone about what this genre looks like and who gets to be a part of it. Erasing his contributions makes country music’s history seem whiter and more homogenous than it is. What about the contributions of Black artists like Lillian Hardin Armstrong, Charley Pride, and Linda Martell? Whitewashing the genre and implicitly making it unwelcome and difficult for Black artists to break through is what Randall refers to as the “cultural redlining” of country music, comparing it to the exclusionary tactic by which Black people were denied housing and mortgages through the 20th century.

Randall frames Beyoncé’s 2016 performance as a powerful challenge to the status quo of the time, saying that’s why it struck such a nerve: a Black woman on stage with the Chicks (then the Dixie Chicks), who themselves had been iced out of the genre. “Here was a change they could not control. She was connecting to this audience in such unexpected and powerful ways. I think some people had resistance because it was a power they could not control, had not predicted, and perhaps are not poised to benefit by,” Randall said.

Interestingly, since 2016, the CMAs have become more diverse. At the most recent awards in November 2023, Tracy Chapman made history as the first Black woman to win Song of the Year for “Fast Car,” and K. Michelle was lauded as one of the most exciting artists of the night for her performance of “Love Can Build a Bridge’’ with Jelly Roll. But the show now faces a different criticism: The CMA Awards, and the governing body that organizes them, paint a picture of country music as being more inclusive than the genre actually is today.

Who gets to define country music?

As my colleague Aja Romano pointed out last summer, right-wing musicians have created some of country’s biggest hits of late. Artists like Morgan Wallen, who infamously used the n-word, and Jason Aldean, who made a song that critics say insinuates lynching, have found a sturdy, loyal audience and chart-topping success. It seems that politically, the genre has been embracing more and more conservative territory.

Country music isn’t a monolith, but for artists, it doesn’t exactly pay to be different.

This was painfully reinforced in the wake of Beyoncé releasing “Texas Hold ’Em” in February of this year, when an Oklahoma radio station refused to play the song and implied that Beyoncé was not or could not be a country artist.

Beyoncé/Instagram

The track listing for Cowboy Carter.

Beyoncé coming back to country, and bringing the spotlight and her fans with her, feels less like an exploration of the genre and more like a revolution. Not unlike how Renaissance highlighted the history of people of color helping to create and perpetuate house music, Cowboy Carter offers up the same opportunity for mainstream culture to acknowledge just how much country music owes its sound and history to Black artists.

Beyoncé is taking up space in a place where she isn’t “supposed” to be — challenging the presumptions of who she is, what music she makes, what country music is, and who gets to make it.

Judging by how unwelcome the genre made her feel in 2016, the right-wing nature of some of its current stars, and the current status quo, that act of resistance is likely going to be met with friction.

“It’s what I call the metaphorical leash,” says Gheni Platenburg, a professor at the University of Houston. Platenburg studies race in media, and part of her research has focused on how Black female celebrities and entertainers are portrayed. She tells Vox that across every industry, Black women often find themselves in a trap of sorts where they’re encouraged and even expected to be their authentic selves, but never in a way that threatens the fragility of those in power.

“Authenticity is something that we say that we want, but if it goes a bit too far or pushes against the sensibilities of those who were in positions of power, then it’s seen as a problem. And Beyoncé is not the first Black woman to walk this tightrope,” Platenburg notes. She adds that in her and Beyoncé’s native Houston, country and cowboy culture is multicultural.

In the sphere of country music, female artists, and Black female artists especially, have found it difficult to ascend to the top of the charts and get plays on country radio. There isn’t just racism, but also inherent sexism within country music’s design.

“Country radio has always had a problem with female artists, period. And there’s an idea that the male audience is only listening to male performers. That’s why you are getting so many more of them, because they appeal to a broader audience,” says Randall, the songwriter and professor.

The numbers are relative, but Black men have, despite a system that doesn’t work in their favor, made it to the top of the country charts and seen their songs played in a way few Black women have. The likes of Jimmie Allen, Kane Brown, and Darius Rucker have held the top spot on Billboard’s country songs chart, but it wasn’t until late February of this year that Bey became the first Black woman in history to do the same.

“And the question is: Who is the audience for Black women?” Randall asks. “Are they willing to see a Black woman as their surrogate?”

They should.

Country has thematically embraced the ideas of the difficulty of life, family hardships, persevering through self-minded toughness, faith in God, and self-taught rebellion. Wouldn’t an American Black woman be able to speak to those things firsthand? Beyoncé already knows the answer and is ready to show us.