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Will Beyoncé’s Country Grammy Wins Help Other Black Artists? Here’s What Nashville Execs Say
Many in the country music community are applauding Beyoncé’s country wins and hope they will help lift up other Black artists in country music today.
Beyoncé made history Sunday night (Feb. 2) when Cowboy Carter won the Grammy for best country album, making the superstar the first Black artist to win in the category since it was reintroduced in 1995, after a nearly three-decade absence. The Grammy voters tend to nominate a wider variety of albums, often including legends who no longer receive commercial airplay, artists who belong to the broader country genre but aren’t in the mainstream, or artists who don’t necessarily, as Carlson said, “play the game.” (In addition to Cowboy Carter, the only country album to win the all-genre Grammy for album of the year and not receive a CMA nomination is The Chicks’ Taking the Long Way in 2006, which came out after much of the country community disavowed the trio for comments Natalie Maines made about then-President George Bush.) Beverly Keel, dean of Middle Tennessee State University’s College of Media and Entertainment, says all eyes will now be on the May 8 ACM Awards, for which first-round voting started Feb. 1 and ends Feb. 18.
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