Beyoncé will be on the outside looking in at this fall’s CMA Awards.
The hip-hop, R&B, and pop legend’s much-hyped foray into country music with Cowboy Carter apparently didn’t impress voters at the Country Music Association, who snubbed her of a single nomination in this year’s awards.
It come as a shock decision to many as Cowboy Carter was a huge success by most accounts. It spent weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums at the same time its hit song, “Texas Hold ‘Em,” did the same atop the Hot Country Songs chart.
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While Cowboy Carter leaned heavily into Beyoncé’s roots in Texas, and certainly had some themes of a country album, she asserted herself in a post to Instagram, “This ain’t a country album…this is a Beyoncé album.”
Perhaps it was Beyoncé’s own descriptors of the album that hurt her with voters.
Some might also point to Beyoncé’s status as a newcomer as reason for the snub, but fellow country music newbie Post Malone earned a surprising four nominations at the awards for his hit song with Morgan Wallen, “I Had Some Help.”
Beyoncé has a checkered past with the awards show. She performed at the awards in 2016, which sparked controversy in the country music world and eventually led the CMA’s to remove footage of the performance from its website.
Prior to sharing Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé alluded to that performance eight years prior and how it impacted her.
“This album has been over five years in the making,” she wrote. “It was born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed…and it was very clear that I wasn’t. But, because of that experience, I did a deeper dive into the history of Country music and studied our rich musical archive.”
Beyoncé’s lack of nomination means a Black woman is still yet to be nominated for a CMA award.
