Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ album snubbed at Country Music Awards
The nominees for the 2024 Country Music Awards have been shared, with Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ album not receiving any industry nods.
The CMA is the most prestigious award ceremony in the country music genre, and those nominated – and those who win – are decided by a group of 7,300 people in the Country Music Association trade group after three rounds of balloting.
Arriving at the start of 2024, Bey took over the album charts and made countless headlines for the huge success of her country-inspired record ‘Cowboy Carter’.
It also hit some huge milestones in the genre, including making Beyoncé the first Black woman to reach Number One on the US country chart with ‘Texas Hold ‘Em’, the first Black woman to score a Number One country album in the US charts, and gathering support from huge names including Michelle Obama and Paul McCartney.
However, despite these accolades, the record has been snubbed at the 2024 CMAs, not receiving any nominations in any categories.
This may be due to the limited promotion of the record in the country’s music sphere. While it took over mainstream charts earlier this year, country radio stations in the US gave it limited airplay.
Similarly, a country music station in Oklahoma made international headlines after it outright refused to play any songs from the tracklist, even upon listener request. Following huge backlash, however, it later overturned this decision (via Guardian).
While Bey has no nominations this time around, Morgan Wallen is leading the way when it comes to this year’s awards – receiving seven nominations.
These include four nominations for his Post Malone collaboration ‘I Had Some Help’, and a shot at winning the Entertainer Of The Year prize, which sees him go up against Jelly Roll, Chris Stapleton, Lainey Wilson and Luke Combs.
Although Beyoncé has seen ‘Cowboy Carter’ snubbed, one of her collaborators on the record, Shaboozey, is up for two awards. These are nominations for Best New Artist and Single Of The Year with ‘A Bar Song (Tipsy)’. As well as topping the country charts and Hot 100 charts for the past 12 weeks and eight weeks respectively, the singer is also the first Black male artist to top both simultaneously.
The winners for the 2024 CMAs will be announced at a ceremony on November 20, and the event will be broadcast live on US network ABC.
For Beyoncé, following the initial release of ‘Cowboy Carter’, the singer then shared a remix of ‘Texas Hold ‘Em’, and revealed that she kept much of the original backing track from the original 1968 version of ‘Blackbird’ in her cover. She also confirmed that Stevie Wonder played harmonica on ‘Jolene’, and RAYE was credited as a co-writer on one ‘Cowboy Carter’ song.
Outside of music, the ‘Single Ladies’ singer recently showed her support of renowned US gymnast Simone Biles amid the 2024 Paris Olympics – recording a promotional video for NBC Sports, hailing her as both “inspiring” and “brilliant”, and launched a new brand of whiskey, inspired by her grandfather.
‘Cowboy Carter’ was given a five-star review by NME, which read: “In the age of stan culture, sceptics will argue that objective criticism of Beyoncé can feel hard to come by. Those who don’t already love country may find some of ‘Cowboy Carter’s balladeering sections to be a little long, or query whether an artist of Beyoncé’s stature is invoking certain ironies when she rallies her audience to “stand for something”, given her own relative quiet on recent political affairs.
“But even if interpreted only on the grounds of artistic spectacle, it’s an undeniable thrill to see her swing so big on a project that dares her to be so intimate and vocal-focused, while making way for country’s up-and-comers too.”
The post Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ album snubbed at Country Music Awards appeared first on NME.
Liberty Dunworth
NME
