Despite having one of the best-selling country albums of the year, Beyonce didn’t receive any nominations for the upcoming CMA Awards. And Dolly Parton thinks she knows why.
Cowboy Carter, Beyonce’s first full-length album foray into the country genre, was released in March 2024. The album shattered records as Beyonce became the first black woman to top the Top Country Albums chart. She also debuted atop the Billboard 200 chart and broke the record for the most first-day streams on Amazon Music for a country album by a female.
The album’s lead single, “Texas Hold ‘Em,” topped the Billboard Hot 100 for several weeks, making it one of the most successful singles of the year. But, despite Beyonce’s crossover success, she didn’t receive any nominations for the upcoming CMA Awards. The exclusion led many to believe it was intentional based on the fact that she has had incredible success as a pop star and isn’t a career country artist.
Others claim that Beyonce isn’t welcome in the genre, which is seemingly a contradiction since country music has warmly embraced rapper Post Malone, another crossover artist who has found great success in Music City.
Beyonce has long expressed feelings of being unwelcome in country music. In 2016 she released “Daddy Lessons” and performed it alongside The Chicks at that year’s CMA Awards. The performance wasn’t accepted by fans and some country artists who reportedly walked out of the venue during the song.
Some claim that Beyonce’s exclusion from this year’s CMA Awards nominations was due to race, but experts surmise that it has more to do with artists being “expected to pay their dues by playing honky-tonks, participating in writers rounds and showcasing their work around the city in order to build a successful career in the genre.”
Country Music Legend Dolly Parton Has Her Own Theory
In a recent interview with Variety, Dolly Parton was asked what she thought about Beyonce being shut out of this year’s nominations. She told the outlet that the “Single Ladies” singer produced an album she should be very proud of, but thinks she was left out due to not being a full-time country artist.
“There’s so many wonderful country artists that, I guess probably the country music field, they probably thought, well, we can’t really leave out some of the ones that spend their whole life doing that,” Dolly said. “But it was a wonderful album. She can be very, very proud of, and I think everybody in country music welcomed her and thought that, that was good. So I don’t think it was a matter of shutting out, like doing that on purpose. I think it was just more of what the country charts and the country artists were doing, that do that all the time, not just a specialty album.”
Dolly Parton was a guest artist on Cowboy Carter, having teamed up with Beyonce for a new rendition of her 1973 hit, “Jolene.” Upon the song’s release, Parton said that she was surprised that the pop star didn’t record Parton’s original version, but did her own rendition. Parton shared that while she loved Beyonce’s remake, she would have loved to hear how her voice sounded on the original.
“I was just happy she did ‘Jolene.’ I, of course, would have loved to have heard how she would have done it in its original way. But of course, you know, it’s Beyoncé. Yeah, her life is different than mine,” Dolly told the Hollywood Reporter.
Hear Beyonce’s new rendition of “Jolene” in the video below.
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