The Olympics are over, but if there were an event called “missing the point,” you can go ahead and give the entire Country Music Association a gold medal for it.
Despite creating her new album, Cowboy Carter, with the intent of highlighting Black Americans’ cultural contributions to the country genre (and American music as a whole), Beyoncé was nominated for exactly zero of the upcoming 58th CMA Awards.
Maybe their fee-fees were hurt by being called out for snubbing Beyoncé at the 2016 CMA Awards ahead of Cowboy Carter‘s release. In a statement on her social media, Beyoncé revealed the album was inspired by “an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed…and it was very clear that I wasn’t.”
It wasn’t hard for music listeners to put two and two together and figure out that the experience in question was Bey’s foray into Nashville to perform her Lemonade song “Daddy Lessons” with The Chicks (then called Dixie Chicks); while the performance was well-received on some corners of the internet but hated in others, the CMA was accused of scrubbing the performance from its social media accounts after racist backlash (some of the posts were later restored after fans called out the CMA).
Of course, the CMA will issue its usual mealy-mouthed response about Beyoncé not being a “traditional country artist,” and the world will keep spinning. By the way, Post Malone, who started his music career in cornrows and a gold grill, is nominated for four awards, while Jelly Roll, who most extensively collaborated with Lil Wyte, Haystak, and Tech N9ne before switching to crooning less than three years ago, is nominated for three. On the bright side, Beyoncé collaborator Shaboozey’s nominated for two.
The CMA Awards will be on November 20 and air on ABC at 8 PM PT/ET — two weeks later due to the election.
