How Beyoncé's cross-genre album opened doors for Black country artists
Newsy
Beyoncé’s honey-coated touch has reignited the conversation of country’s forgotten history while clearing a place for rising country stars of color.
Beyoncé never said she was releasing a country album. But what the Beyhive wants, the Beyhive gets. And it didn’t take long for her to make history as the first Black woman to top Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart after dropping the first two singles from her album, “Texas Hold 'Em” and “16 Carriages.”
Now that “Cowboy Carter” is out, it’s even more clear the album does not fit perfectly into the seemingly narrow walls of the genre — but the debate on whether or not it is considered country doesn’t reflect the bigger picture of how Beyoncé’s honey-coated touch has reignited the conversation of country’s forgotten history while clearcutting a place for rising country stars of color to shine.
“What I'm hoping is that Beyoncé has a big enough platform and a bold enough presence, that it can shift, a little bit more permanently, perceptions and fan resistances. But she's not the first, she's just in a really wonderfully poised position to make a bigger statement,” said Dr. Jocelyn Neal, a renowned scholar, professor and chair of the Department of Music at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill who has literally written the book on country music’s history.
Neal said musical genres are complicated categories that are always in negotiation. While musical sound, legacy and history certainly play a role in sculpting a genre, audiences have more agency in defining it than many may think.
The rhetoric of debating what is or isn’t country music — or any genre, for that matter — is not a new phenomenon, Neal explained. Part of a fanbase’s bond over their shared taste in music can often include decrying whatever is being popularized at that time in the genre.