Did Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter get snubbed? Well, duh

When Beyoncé released her country music pivot, Cowboy Carter, back in March – that grand achievement outlining her personal and political struggle with a genre that had so thoroughly shunned her and black artists in general in the past – the intriguing question for those of us obsessed with the idea of a defining musical canon was this: “lol, I wonder how awards shows are gonna deal with this?”

We’ve finally got our first answer: predictably and hilariously, they’re fumbling it big time.

Beyoncé’s country album failed to receive a single nod from the Country Music Awards when nominations were announced this week.Credit: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

The Country Music Association Awards, better known as the CMAs, Nashville’s biggest awards night celebrating country music, are the first culprits. In a decision that’s a veritable line in the sand, they failed to nominate Beyoncé for any awards at all this year, sending the words “Beyoncé” and “snubbed” trending across the globe.

For an album that so thoroughly dealt with a country institution that historically sidelined black talent, or any talent at all that didn’t fit their very conservative image of “country” (Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, et al), it’s all very on the nose. And it’s not at all surprising.

This is the CMAs, an awards show at which the then-Dixie Chicks were booed following their criticism of George W. Bush’s War in Iraq. It’s an institution that routinely shuts out Zach Bryan, clap-stomp country’s reigning superstar, just because he works outside the Nashville industry and refuses to do traditional country press. And those artists are extremely white!

Cowboy Carter – an experimental shot at Nashville’s closed-mindedness and racist exclusion, that dared to suggest regional hip-hop had as much claim to the “country” signifier as anything involving a white guy in blue jeans with a lap steel – was never going to get a look in. As a Nashville executive told Billboard of Beyoncé’s blanket exclusion: “It doesn’t surprise me … She really didn’t embrace the genre, unlike what Post Malone has done with his album.”

It’s a specifically country sort of bullishness. But their gambit sets up a more intriguing issue: what the heck are the Grammys gonna do now? The music industry’s major awards, the main historical record of what’s deemed most artistically significant in music at any time, must be having a collective freak-out.

Here are the industry’s biggest country awards essentially deciding that Cowboy Carter is not a country album. Will the Grammys buck that and give her some country nods? It seems unlikely considering their voting groups surely overlap. Or do they sideline Beyoncé to the R&B categories instead, as they’ve often done, risking further accusations of racism? It’s obvious Cowboy Carter deserves to be nominated, but where can it go?

Adding to all this is the fact that the Grammys have a soiled history with Beyoncé, as her husband Jay-Z bluntly told them to their faces this past February. They love to mention she’s the most-winning artist of all time (32 trophies), but only one of those came in the key categories (her 2010 song of the year win for Single Ladies). If people are already yelling snub at the CMAs, I can’t wait to see what happens on November 8 when the Grammy nominations are announced.

Even so, lost among the discussion of the CMA snub is a significant win: look at their nominations for new artist of the year and single of the year, and you’ll find nods for Shaboozey and his worldwide smash, A Bar Song (Tipsy). It’s a rare sign of the CMAs loosening their conservative grip and celebrating a young black artist (whose hit interpolated a 2004 J-Kwon hip-hop classic, at that).

The singer was largely unknown before Beyoncé put him on multiple tracks on Cowboy Carter. Do you get those Shaboozey nominations at the CMAs without Cowboy Carter? Not a chance. Even when she loses, Beyoncé pushes things forward.

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