\n<\/p>\n
With the release of \u201cCowboy Carter,\u201d<\/a> Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s eighth solo album and the one that finds her exploring \u2014 and testing \u2014 the boundaries of country music, much of the early conversation has centered on whether the country music industry would rally around her. Beyonc\u00e9 is one of the most commercially successful and creatively vibrant pop stars of the 21st century \u2014 certainly her arrival would be greeted with hurrahs, no?<\/p>\n Not quite.<\/p>\n Rather than being feted with a welcome party, Beyonc\u00e9 has been met largely with shrugs. \u201cTexas Hold \u2019Em\u201d<\/a> \u2014 one of the two singles she released in advance of the album \u2014 is a savvy blend of old and new. It displays a familiarity with the sonic principles of old-fashioned country, while maintaining the infectiousness of current pop. Nevertheless, it has received extremely modest attention at country radio. Beyonc\u00e9 is Black, and a woman, two groups that contemporary Nashville has consistently marginalized<\/a> and shortchanged. And no amount of built-in celebrity appears to be able to undo that.<\/p>\n Contemporary mainstream country music often feels like a closed loop of white male storytelling. Which is why whether or not Beyonc\u00e9 and Nashville can find common cause is, in every way, a red herring. Neither is particularly interested in the other \u2014 the tradition-shaped country music business will accept certain kinds of outsiders but isn\u2019t set up to accommodate a Black female star of Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s stature, and she is focusing on country as art and inspiration and sociopolitical plaything, not industry. The spurn is mutual.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n On Instagram<\/a> last week, Beyonc\u00e9 spelled it out plainly: \u201cThis ain\u2019t a Country album. This is a \u2018Beyonc\u00e9\u2019 album.\u201d It was a statement that preemptively denied the country music industry the opportunity to stake a claim on her work while also indicating that she had found a creative path around the genre\u2019s confines.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n This is as close as she\u2019s come to leveraging the expectation of the genre\u2019s racism and exclusion as a means of promotion. Beyonc\u00e9 instead made it personal, adding that her exploration of these musical themes was \u201cborn out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed \u2026 and it was very clear that I wasn\u2019t.\u201d This is likely a reference to her appearance at the Country Music Association Awards in 2016<\/a>, where she performed her song \u201cDaddy Lessons\u201d alongside the Dixie Chicks (now the Chicks), another act who intimately understand the experience of being held at arm\u2019s length by the Nashville oligarchy.<\/p>\n That C.M.A.s performance was, of course, rollicking \u2014 a sliding-doors glimpse of a direction for the genre left largely not taken, or shunted to the margins. In its flamboyance, tension and elegance, it underscored what was, and often remains, missing from mainstream country.<\/p>\n So Beyonc\u00e9 instead kept it for herself. On \u201cCowboy Carter,\u201d she\u2019s said that she deployed the frameworks, textures and tricks of country music as an extension of an ongoing musicology project that goes back at least as far as her genre-destabilizing Coachella performance<\/a> in 2018, which, in addition to being an almost unimaginable feat of musical dexterity, choreography and endurance, was also one of the most stylistically and socioculturally rigorous statements made by a pop star made in recent memory.<\/p>\n Since then, Beyonc\u00e9 has evolved from reliable hitmaker to reliable conversation starter, using her massive platform, and the fans who flock to it, to tell a parallel narrative about Black music present and past. Her albums are musical journeys, and they are also history lessons. Similarly themed LPs from lesser stars, or from pointed agitators, might be less effective at making the point Beyonc\u00e9 is, which is that Black creativity fuels all corners of popular music.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n On \u201cRenaissance,\u201d<\/a> her previous album, she spotlighted queer Black communities in dance music. But country music still sidelines its Black roots while making it exceedingly difficult for contemporary Black performers \u2014 of which there are many \u2014 to gain opportunities to develop.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not that country isn\u2019t nimble and porous when it wants to be. Country often makes room for white performers to take on and off the trappings of the genre \u2014 the way Taylor Swift can slip easily in and out of this mode at will, or how Zach Bryan<\/a> has been adopted, in some ways, by Nashville even though he has largely avoided self-identifying that way. Or consider the face-tattooed belter Jelly Roll<\/a>, the biggest breakout country star of last year, who\u2019d spent the better part of the prior two decades as a tough-talking white rapper.<\/p>\n In recent weeks, Post Malone has been dropping hints about his upcoming turn toward country. He\u2019s been photographed alongside Morgan Wallen, and also Hardy and Ernest, members of the extended Wallen universe. Though still living under the shadow<\/a> of the 2021 incident in which he was captured on video using a racial slur, Wallen remains the genre\u2019s reigning superstar, his popularity largely undimmed. While Beyonc\u00e9 and the Nashville firmament eye each other warily, Post Malone and Wallen\u2019s crew are in a state of mutual embrace, both welcoming and reinforcing each other. (Country music has also been something of a soft-landing refuge for white stars from other genres \u2014 think Kid Rock, Aaron Lewis or Bon Jovi \u2014 looking to extend their careers. Even Lana Del Rey has indicated<\/a> she\u2019d be spending some time with the genre on her next album.)<\/p>\n That Beyonc\u00e9 is making \u201cCowboy Carter\u201d not to infiltrate country but rather as an artistic and political statement must come as something of a relief to those inside the genre interested in preserving its norms. (It\u2019s worth asking, though, if a Beyonc\u00e9-equivalent white pop star were making overtures to country \u2014 say, Lady Gaga or Katy Perry at their peak \u2014 would the reception be less frosty?)<\/p>\n But increasingly, the genre is being tested from outside. Radio is ceding power to streaming, and there are myriad entry points for country artists looking to elide the usual gatekeepers. This has been a small boon for artists who aren\u2019t white men, who have been finding their audiences more directly, often via social media, and then letting the country music major labels play catch-up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n