3 hours ago
3 
It’s 2025, so perhaps you could be forgiven in thinking the country music genre has advanced beyond its exclusively white, heterosexual, male form. Just look at pop culture: Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter country album topped the charts and Chappell Roan’s The Giver is providing queer country its big moment in the sun.
But you would be wrong.
‘It’s really bad,’ says Dr Jada Watson, who has researched country music, and specifically representation in the genre, for almost two decades.
She explains: ‘We’re seeing artists like Lainey Wilson have remarkable success, and with the induction of June Carter Cash finally into the Hall of Fame, there are these little moments of sunshine for women. But white women.’
For minorities, the big Nashville door is creaking silently shut – even though the sign, now battered and bruised, says everyone’s welcome.
To the uninitiated, Beyoncé appears to have conquered the genre. She won country album of the year at the Grammy’s, after all. Her single Texas Hold’Em topped the Billboard Hot 100 and the Hot Country Songs Chart. But she’s not penetrated Nashville, really.
The Country Music Association (CMA) alongside the Academy of Country Music (ACM) – with the ACM Awards happening this evening – decide who will appear in the country music history books.
Beyoncé, who hails from Texas and has just as much right to be there as any other musician, in the eyes of both the CMA and ACM is still not welcome. Despite the global success of Cowboy Carter, she’s yet to even be nominated.
How the world is reclaiming country music
Sophie Ward, 28, founded the popular country queer night Bonanza at The Boogaloo in Highgate, north London. It’s a safe space for the LGBTQ+ community to meet like-minded people, and have a ‘hoe-down’. It’s also consistently sold out.
It’s ‘free-spirited’ and ‘flirty’, Sophie says.
Nodding to Beyoncé, Chappell Roan, Lil Nas X, Trixie Mattel, and Orville Peck, Sophie says ‘their visibility shows there’s space for queer stories in country music’ which caused the trend to surge.
‘Having listened to Chappell Roan talking about The Giver as someone from the Mid West, in the USA, it all seems to be about nostalgia and reclamation,’ she says.
‘Loads of queer people in America grew up around country music. Especially in southern rural communities. Reconnecting with it as adults can feel like reconnecting with it on your own terms.’
This vibrant Thursday evening in North London is just a drop in an ocean of many others who are reclaiming a genre which has historically excluded them.
But while the world revels in the big sexual and social awakening of country music, Nashville has its eyes tight shut.
At least Shaboozey’s A Bar Song (Tipsy) was nominated twice at the CMA Awards last year – but, despite it being number one on the Billboard Hot Country Songs Chart for 38 weeks, making it the longest-running No. 1 by a single artist ever, he did not win anything.
He’s up for best single and best new male artist this evening.
‘Country so far has just tokenised him and not actually honoured him for breaking these new barriers,’ Dr Watson says.
The same tokenism happened with Beyoncé on country music radio; an engine that also largely comes right out of Nashville’s Music Row, along with the biggest record labels, recording studios and country music giants in the business.
While they were playing Beyoncé on country radio – after some initial push-back from stations refusing to qualify Texas Hold’Em as sufficiently country – they weren’t playing music from any other Black stars.
Of which, by the way, there are many. (Mickey Guyton, Rissi Palmer, Madeline Edwards, Tiera Kennedy, Brittney Spencer, to name a few.)
‘From the outside it looks like there’s so much change. But when you really get down to the inside and what’s going on, you actually see that in 2024 songs by women received 8.39% of the airplay on country format radio. 0.09% were songs by Black women, and almost all of that was for Texas Hold’em,’ Dr Watson explains, having studied SongData statistics.
Why what's happening in Nashville matters
‘[On Music Row] they are all so interconnected, and they’re all making decisions based on what the other is doing. But nobody is actually thinking about change and forward movement,’ Dr Watson says, describing Nashville as seeing itself as ‘one big family’.
‘It’s not about an equal division of a pie. It’s about equitable distribution, so that individuals have the opportunity to move within the industry and have exposure,’ she adds.
‘Because all of this ultimately impacts everything else. If you’re not getting radio airplay, your songs are very unlikely to move forward in streaming algorithms.
‘You’re very unlikely to get playlisted on Spotify or Apple or any of these systems. You’re probably not going to end up on a main stage at a festival, if you end up at a festival at all.
‘All of these things are linked to awards. And while awards might be meaningless to some, they mean something to history, opportunity and exposure to artists who’ve spent their entire lives building a career.
‘They don’t do it for awards, but if the only people being awarded are men, who gets remembered in history?’
Racial segregation has evolved into gatekeeping
When the recording industry was developed in the 1920s, there was no racial separation in the kinds of music artists were creating.
Two categories were then developed to market music – ‘hilbilly’ records, for and by white people, and ‘race’ records – for and by Black people. It was racial segregation – and it stuck.
These names evolved over time into ‘country’ and ‘R&B’.
‘They are really just code for hillbilly and race,’ Dr Watson says. ‘These genres that have come to mean something stylistically are deeply rooted in a non stylistic discussion. They are deeply rooted in race and racism.’
These beliefs from 100 years ago are still very much alive today.
When Instagram page Country Central posted about Ed Sheeran saying he’s considering making country music, the response was wholly positive. And if not positive, comments were at least mostly reasonable.
‘He’s already better than Beyoncé,’ said one country music fan, while another reasoned: ‘I personally don’t think he will make it as a country singer but who knows he could surprise us.’
Another pointed out: ‘Broadens the music base. Increases the demand. End result = more country music.’
Someone else commented: ‘Amazing. He is a very talented writer. Can’t wait to hear where he goes.’
But whenever Beyonce is mentioned by the page, the reaction is quite different.
‘Following the announcement of the @cma Awards nominees, we asked followers if #beyonce should have received any nominations. These are the results,’ said the page, sharing that 5% said, ‘yes’, while 95% responded, ‘no’.
‘@beyonce ‘s “COWBOY CARTER” has claimed the top spot on Apple Music’s Top Country Albums chart,’ announced another post.
‘She’s not country. Get off the stage,’ chimed in one follower, while another unintentionally nailed the point: ‘I will never buy this. This woman hates America and what it stands for.’
‘Country music is a microcosm of the USA’
‘For me, country music is like a microcosm of the United States of America,’ says Dr Watson.
These defensive commentators online and in the real world either, a) don’t understand the history of the genre, or b) don’t understand systemic racism, she says.
‘They’ve come to believe Black artists aren’t present in country music because they don’t like it, because they don’t make it, because they’re not fans of it, because it’s not part of their cultural heritage.
‘They think it is white because white people have historically made it, but nobody is willing to put in the effort and the thought into considering why Black people are absent… And are they really absent, or are they just not here because “here” won’t let them in?’
The more mainstream the discussion about country music becomes, the more political and therefore polarised it gets – and the more Nashville folds in on itself protectively.
‘Country recedes into itself, and it’s like, “We don’t have this problem. Look at all these Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) committees that we’ve created. We’re doing the work,”‘ Dr Watson says.
In a post-Trump world trans people, women, and Black and other racial communities have all been the target of attacks from The White House in the form of efforts to eradicate ‘gender ideology’, anti-abortion laws, and forced closures of EDI programmes.
These controversial policies are emboldening hateful language on the world’s stage, and this is flowing out in the country music genre.
One of country’s biggest stars Morgan Wallen enjoyed 16 weeks in the top Billboard spot with his hit Last Night a few years after he was filmed using the n-word. Last year Wallen took home the 2024 CMA entertainer of the year award, despite the controversy.
It’s not all silence and doom, though. Progressive country musicians are speaking out.
Country music star Maren Morris – known for tracks including The Middle and The Bones – announced in 2023 she was distancing herself from the genre.
‘After the Trump years, people’s biases were on full display,’ she told the Los Angeles Times in an interview. ‘It just revealed who people really were and that they were proud to be misogynistic and racist and homophobic and transphobic.’
On the ground in Nashville, voices like Morris’ are being muted.
‘This last year we’ve seen a lot of people, positions and programmes shutter,’ Dr Watson explains.
‘In the fall, Apple country radio shows that were dedicated to diverse and equitable programming were all cancelled,’ she adds.
‘Nashville doesn’t actually want the industry to change, because then they start to lose control.’
Got a story?
If you’ve got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the Metro.co.uk entertainment team by emailing us [email protected], calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we’d love to hear from you.
Bengali (Bangladesh) · 
English (United States) ·