It’s a real life boogie and a real life hoedown.
Beyoncé’s country era has arrived. For some, it was major anticipation that’s finally been rewarded. For others, she’s encroaching on sacred territory she has no right to tread upon. Either way, the release of her two new songs, “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM” and “16 CARRIAGES,” has invited major discourse ranging from the tricky concept of music gatekeeping to the reclamation of certain genres by certain demographics.
Themes across these two songs include freedom, liberation and the return to a former sustenance for rejuvenation. It mirrors the tone of Beyoncé’s 2022 Renaissance, an album dedicated to revival, to making something golden again that had perhaps lost its shimmer. It’s a reclamation, and Beyoncé boldly grasps onto these music styles as if to say “I’ll take these genres (back) and show you music that’s worthy of major accolades.” “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM” is a folky jaunt whose harmonies and plentiful adlibs belie a fraught, anxious life painted in the colorful strokes of a Southern city. It contrasts well with “16 CARRIAGES,” which is heavier in its imagery of longing and comes replete with a delicate but determined balladry.
It’s almost guaranteed that a(nother) cross-cultural phenomenon is on the horizon. People of multiple races and cultural backgrounds find significance in this music, allowing for common ground to be sown. Having the global reach Beyoncé does means having the power to break markets that other artists who make that genre have not been able to do. Personal enjoyment of the music is not necessary to observe the ripple effect happening here.
Beyoncé, as a brand, is like a lightning rod striking in reverse. She attracts people not only to her own light, but to the light that refracts and reflects onto others, illuminating what they do and carrying the potential for much more attention to be paid to it. The fact that Beyoncé is making country music means that a lot more ears will find their way to other Black country artists. A lot of this is word-of-mouth, grassroots buzz, like some social media users sharing their own threads of Black country musicians to keep the buzz alive about what presumably will constitute “Act II” of Renaissance.
This is a significant aftereffect that will serve to highlight not only Beyoncé’s contributions to the genre, but the many, often overlooked Black musicians in country music, past and present. This ripple effect expands categories and opens up the floor for new discovery and discussion. Country music is defined by its storytelling, and was heavily influenced by the blues and curated by Black people telling stories through music. The blues became the parent genre for so many genres that continue to be popular today (namely rock, R&B, and country). Even early on when our music was mocked for entertainment purposes, in an ironic twist of fate, the music was so good that mainstream media began engaging with it seriously rather than mockingly, and it began to evolve and morph into contemporary popular music genres.
The release of “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM” and “16 CARRIAGES” is already divisive. It appears that some people (let’s be honest, overwhelmingly the white conservative type) believe she shouldn’t be in the country genre, despite clearly and explicitly recording country songs. In response to the story of Oklahoma based country radio station KYKC and its initial refusal to play “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM,” another user chimed in about their experience listening to a different Oklahoma radio station who did actually play the song. The radio host apparently said that “the music is country, the instruments are country, but something else about it makes me think it’s not country.” Responses poured in, some hilarious, some a little jarring, but the implication could not have been clearer. Black people and country music are mutually exclusive.
If you are Black, you cannot, by definition, make country music. The perpetual Othering of the genres of music that Black people make into “urban” categories (R&B, hip-hop and rap, mostly) blinds critics and audiences from acknowledging, and respecting, when we make music that’s anywhere outside of that space. It’s an extremely lazy catch-all categorization. KYKC’s response to the individual who requested “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM” was that they “do not play Beyoncé on KYKC as [they] are a country music station.”
There’s a vice grip on the genre from traditionalists (and plenty of outright racists) who refuse to
accept that a Black woman, who is the antithesis to both the Country Music Star and a large swath of the genre’s main demographic, could not only perform well in the genre but have actual roots and a tangible association where many of them merely pretend.
This is a Black woman from Texas who grew up amid cowboy culture, who went to rodeos, who had long term, unfiltered exposure to the culture that many of these dissenters drape themselves in but have no real association to hide behind, no real soapbox from which to stand high and mighty and spit their disdain.
Exhausted of being shut out of spaces whose subject matter was pioneered and popularized by Black people, it seems Beyoncé plans to reclaim this upcoming act of Renaissance in the name of country music. Regardless of whether you are a fan (or opponent) of Beyoncé or country music, her particular vision to adopt and modify the genre will soon be observed on a wide scale. Doubtless there will be more discourse from all sides of the argument.