CMA Awards snub Beyoncé, proving Black women are still unwelcome in country music

Word on the street is that country is cool again. The industry is, indeed, in the midst of a surge in popularity, indicated as much by the flow of noncountry artists into the genre as current sales and streaming numbers. In 2024 alone, we’ve gotten new country music from Lana Del Ray and Post Malone, as well as an album announcement from R&B star Monica.  

And then there was Beyoncé, whose release of singles “Texas Hold 'Em” and “16 Carriages” during the Super Bowl last February shook the internet and appeared to usher in a new era for both the international icon and the country music industry itself.

Since then, her success in the genre has been unparalleled and unprecedented: “Cowboy Carter,” which rose to No. 1 on the Top Country Albums Chart, spawned four top-five entries on the Hot Country Songs chart: “Hold ‘Em,” “II Most Wanted,” “Jolene” and “Levii’s Jeans,” the latter featuring the aforementioned Malone.

But last week, when the Country Music Association announced the nominees for its 2024 awards ceremony, to be held in November, Beyoncé had none. It’s a reality check for everyone who credited “Cowboy Carter” with busting down industry doors that had previously been locked to Black artists, Black women in particular.

Because if you truly thought Beyoncé would be celebrated by the same CMA that didn’t give a Black woman an award until 2023 – and for a white man’s cover of a 35-year-old song, no less – you haven’t been paying attention.

CMA eligibility criteria uphold industry exclusion

The CMA has long been able to exclude most Black creatives, and all Black women not named Tracy Chapman, because of eligibility rules that function as intangible gatekeepers, silently reinforcing those of flesh and blood.

Single of the Year nominations must have reached the top 10 of Billboard’s Hot Country Songs, Billboard’s Country Airplay or Country Aircheck’s charts. Song of the Year is “eligible based upon the song’s activity during the eligibility period.” And while Album of the Year, Musical Event of the Year and Female Vocalist of the Year are less explicit about nomination criteria, they make nods to “national prominence,” “chart position” and “overall contribution to Country Music,” respectively.

Labels and publishers, radio and the industry trade organizations (the CMA as well as the Academy of Country Music) represent the three pillars of country music, working together to construct and maintain a genre that has a very specific sound, a very specific look and a very specific fanbase.

Outliers (who are always Black men) aside: Understanding that Black women are rarely signed to publisher and/or label deals, and are rarely played at country radio even when they are, helps explain the overwhelming whiteness of CMA Awards history.

But Beyoncé, by virtue of being Beyoncé, was successful in spite of the industry’s rigid systems. She wasn’t reliant on a country label to take a chance on her and then flounder when attempting to market her outside of its prebuilt, homogenous audience. Neither did she need a radio tour or the connections of a well-paid radio promoter to garner spins. “Texas Hold 'Em” climbed the charts and stayed there, largely on the strength of Beyoncé’s brand and Beyhive.

Those successes were great for Beyoncé stans, as well as the folks who value “firsts” more than “many.” But for everybody else who knows better – including and especially the Black creatives you’ve never heard of, who are still struggling to eke out a career in the country music industry – Beyoncé’s success was never going to knock down the walls that have been barring Black entry for a hundred years.

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Country music has rules, you see, and even though she recruited industry legends Dolly Parton and Willie “Charley Pride is a Super(N-word)” Nelson for “Cowboy Carter,” Beyoncé didn’t play by enough of them.

First, the list of collaborators she curated didn’t include the industry heavyweights who lend immediate credibility and keep music business profits in the hands of chosen few. Nashville is a songwriters’ town, and there weren’t enough Nashville songwriters, or their publishers, getting paid from the tracks on “Cowboy Carter.”

Second, while most artists ‒ especially women new to the genre ‒ are forced to slog through grueling, expensive radio tours to promote their music and beg for a few spins, “Texas Hold ‘Em” appeared on the charts virtually overnight. In a Feb. 15 Variety article, titled “The Country Format is Bullish on Beyoncé’s ‘Texas Hold ‘Em,’ Top Radio Execs Say,” Brian Philips of Cumulus Media called the single “a gift.” He also seemed willing to eschew all preestablished ways of doing country music business.

“I don’t care who services what,” Philips said of the traditional process of a label officially “sending” a new song to country radio. “I go on the internet and there it is – that means I’ve been serviced, if I can find a WAV file! I don’t care what their marketing plan is.”

What read like a perfectly benign statement (especially to people outside the industry, who have no idea how it works), may have very well sealed the mainstream industry fate of “Cowboy Carter.” It also facilitated the need to send a clear message to anyone else who would dare to make country music outside of the Nashville Way and still expect Nashville support.

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Country music couldn’t pull Beyoncé’s country music from the charts – not after the Lil Nas X debacle that resulted in a rerelease of “Old Town Road” featuring Billy Ray Cyrus’ stamp of Nashville approval. But that doesn’t mean country music couldn’t simply ignore Beyoncé’s placement on the charts, denying her the earned opportunity to even be nominated for the industry’s most prestigious awards.  

Women in general are relegated to the margins of country music radio play

I have a friend, a white woman, who laughed when she told me about her thoughts on the country music industry before moving to Nashville to try her hand as an artist. She could see the genre’s issue with women from afar, even if the lack of racial diversity didn’t sound immediate alarms.

Yet she assuaged the nagging in her gut by telling herself that women in country music weren’t achieving the same level of success as the men because the women weren’t smart enough, or talented enough, or something enough.

It had to be the women, she thought. Surely, the problem couldn’t be with the industry itself.

Even when she learned the truth – via the rampant sexual harassment on radio tours and in Music Row offices alike, and in the way labels choose one woman at a time, happily cannibalizing its own product to adhere to industry norms that keep even white women relegated to the margins of radio play and, subsequently, earned revenue – she kept her head down and her mouth shut. She couldn’t risk torpedoing her shot at success.

Later, I had a meeting with a high-ranking executive in country music. She wanted me to know that, despite the industry’s myriad sins and her organization’s role in upholding them, she was from Chicago. Chicago is a very progressive city, she reminded me. And she always, always voted Democrat.

What she didn’t say – and what I can only assume – is that she, like all the other women in town, needed her job, needed her paycheck, and needed to not stick her neck out in an industry in which people with anything to lose rarely, if ever, do.

It's a familiar refrain for all of the industry’s marginalized – the women and, especially, the non-white. And while the intentions might be rooted in self-preservation or self-promotion or some combination of the two, the result is the same: an industry allowed to run afoul of anything that could even closely resemble fairness or inclusion.

Country music is as country music does because all the people involved – and even some who hope to be – allow it. Beyoncé got snubbed, but at least she’s Beyoncé.

That’s more than any of the other Black creatives in town can say.

Andrea Williams is an opinion columnist for The Tennessean, where this column originally appeared, and curator of the Black Tennessee Voices initiative. She has an extensive background covering country music, sports, race and society. Email her at [email protected] or follow her on X (formerly known as Twitter): @AndreaWillWrite