When the nominations for the 2024 Country Music Awards were released, everyone was expected to see one name: Beyoncé. The pop megastar released her Country album Cowboy Carter on March 29th of this year. The album is a meditation on the meaning of Country music and a comprehensive study of the genre that takes Beyoncé back to her Texas roots.
Yet, despite Cowboy Carter being one of the best albums of the year, it received a grand total of 0 nominations.
Fans were outraged, saying Beyoncé had been “snubbed.” But this was no oversight. It was a clear message to Beyoncé saying: you are not welcome here. It’s the same message she received for that famed performance with The Chicks (more on that later), and the same message that spurred her to write the album.
But the album is not some meek request for acceptance. It’s a defiant assertion that the gatekeepers of the Country music industry can’t bar her from the genre. So, of course, the Academy of Country Music didn’t like it. It was a diss track about them. Nominating her would be like Drake cheering for Kenrick Lamar at the 2025 Super Bowl. So, the CMA’s shutout isn’t surprising, but the deeper questions it provokes are intriguing.
Why didn’t Beyoncé get nominated for the CMA awards?
Simply put, the 2024 CMA Awards were never going to nominate an album that so blatantly calls them out. And it’s not just the Academy that shut out Cowboy Carter. Despite the commercial and critical success of the album literally everywhere else, Country music radio pretty much refused to play it.
They were the only ones. Cowboy Carter spent four weeks on top of Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart — a historic achievement that marked her as the first Black woman to accomplish that. The album’s lead single “Texas Hold ‘Em,” which she surprised us with after the 2024 Super Bowl, was also a record-setter. It made her the first Black woman to hit the top spot on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart ever — where she stayed for 10 whole weeks. The single and album also dominated the all-genre Billboard chart, with 7 other songs on the 28-track album landing on the Country charts.
Yet, many Country radio stations refused to play it. To me, that’s a sign that Beyoncé is on the right side of history (as if we needed proof) — Country music radio stations refused to play The Chicks, too, but look at them now.
So, when it came down to voting for the CMAs, the jury was out. The process works like this: The CMAs nominations and subsequent wins are voted on by members of the Country Music Association. This committee includes artists, executives, songwriters, musicians, publicists, touring personnel, and assorted members of the Country music mafia. To qualify, the work must have been first released or reached peak national prominence during the eligibility period (July 1, 2023 through June 30, 2024).
Beyoncé qualified to be nominated for categories like: Single of the Year, Song of the Year, Album of the Year, Female Vocalist of the Year, and Music Event of the Year. It was clear that she deserved to win all of these categories, but would she? Would she even be nominated, we asked? The main contention was whether or not she would nab a nomination for Entertainer of the Year. This is the CMAs biggest award and is typically awarded to Country acts who have held a strong presence in the genre for years. But with this blazing album and the Country tinges of songs like “Daddy Lessons,” which landed her that fateful spot with The Chicks in 2016, Beyoncé was in the running for a nod at the very least.
Would the Country Music Association side with the critics and the culture? Or with … racism.
Unsurprisingly, they chose to continue the tradition of excluding Black women from the halls of Country music. In the words of social media realtor and cultural critic Blakely Thornton, “Duh.”
“No numerical achievement could make these people want us in a room,” said Thornton in a recent video reacting to the news. “And quite frankly, f**k ‘em, because I don’t want to be there.”
Beyoncé has been there and done that — singing at the CMAs was what traumatized her enough to write this album in the first place. But Cowboy Carter is not merely a protracted diss about the CMAs and the genre’s current gatekeepers. It’s about something the Country Music Academy probably wants to pretend doesn’t exist: institutionalized racism and a Black woman’s lived experience.
What is Cowboy Carter about?
Cowboy Carter is Beyoncé’s pettiest project yet. The first track is a masterclass in storytelling, a compelling abstract for the album that is to come. In “American Requiem,” Beyoncé begins with the lyrics: “It’s a lot of talkin’ goin’ on / While I sing my song.” This direct address makes it clear who and what the album is criticizing. Here’s the context.
In 2016, Beyoncé shocked the crowd at the CMAs by singing “Daddy Lessons” from her acclaimed surprise album Lemonade. Alongside The Chicks, she graced the CMA Awards stage and was met with utter disrespect. While most of us would do pretty much anything to snag a Beyoncé ticket — people liquidated their 401ks to go to Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour — this crowd was downright rude, talking through her performance.
But the backlash didn’t end there. Country music fans were in uproar for weeks after the event and to this day, the performance is scrubbed from the CMA website. Some people even threatened to boycott Beyoncé, which she mocked by making “Boycott Beyoncé” tee shirts for her fans.
But clearly, our Virgo queen had much more to say. And she’s saying it through this album.
When she announced Cowboy Carter in March, she said: “This album has been over five years in the making. 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.”
With meditations on what the genre is or means and a deep exploration of the rich roots of Country music, the album was a hit for Country and non-Country fans alike, except for the CMA.
That’s because its definition of Country music is tied up in the politics of race and Black womanhood. We live in an era where half the states streaming Morgan Wallen are trying to ban Black history, and some of the Country musicians being honored in Beyoncé’s place have been documented using racial slurs. Of course, Beyoncé’s deep dive into race theory didn’t resonate with them.
The New York Times called Cowboy Carter a “Rosetta Stone for the hidden racial politics in Country’s aw-shucks exclusion that the C.M.A. performance put on display.”
But despite its deeper concerns, Cowboy Carter does what all Beyoncé albums since Lemonade have mastered: blend the personal and historical into something infectiously fun to listen to. Cowboy Carter makes me want to learn line dancing. It makes me want to pull a Bella Hadid, wear a Cowboy hat and move to Texas. It’s also bursting with features from Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Linda Martell, Miley Cyrus, Post Malone, Shaboozey, and more, and interpolations of classics like The Beatles’ “Blackbird” and Parton’s “Jolene.”
It’s a smart album, a heart-stirring album, a dance-ready album, and arguably the best damn Country album of all time. The CMAs were never going to get that. And at this point, I don’t think the Grammys will recognize it either. But the culture does. And that’s what matters.
Who got nominated for the CMAs?
If Beyoncé didn’t snag a CMA nomination, who did?
Unsurprisingly, a whole lot of white men. The most nominated artist was Morgan Wallen, with the white boy song of the summer: “I Had Some Help,” featuring Post Malone. Wallen racked up 7 nominations overall, closely followed by Chris Stapleton and Cody Johnson, who each earned 5 nods, while Malone and last year’s Entertainer of the Year Lainey Wilson picked up 4 apiece.
The question of who will be Entertainer of the Year is still at the top of people’s minds. Four of five nominees went up for the title last year: returning champion Wilson, plus Combs (who won in 2021 and 2022), Stapleton (who’s been nominated seven times but never won), and Wallen. The dark horse is Jelly Roll, the newcomer on the block who’s had an explosive year.
While Post Malone’s song with Wallen, “I Had Some Help,” is the most-nominated song, his debut Country album, “F-1 Trillion,” was released too late to qualify for this year’s awards. However, despite being a rap artist first, Malone has been embraced by the Country community far more than mainstream radio. I wonder why…
There’s one beacon of light: the undeniable talent of Shaboozey. Beyoncé collaborator Shaboozey — who got a major boost in streaming numbers after appearing on two Cowboy Carter tracks — scored his first-ever CMA nominations. He’s having an amazing year. Nominated for best new artist and single of the year for “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” which has been at the top of the Hot 100 chart for 9 weeks and the top of the Country chart for 13 weeks. And he’s Dolly Parton’s godson — some people have it all.
Since Beyoncé wasn’t nominated, I can only hope Shaboozey brings her out to sing during his performance at the CMAs. But either way, in the words of Issa Rae, I’m rooting for everybody Black.