Dolly Parton defended Beyoncé amid backlash for making country music. Dolly praised Beyoncé’s redemption of “Jolene”, opening up about the Country Music Awards’ decision to snub Queen Bey’s 2024 Cowboy Carter album. The awards ceremony’s cold shoulder follows Beyoncé’s eighth studio album breaking streaming records on several platforms.
Controversy unfolded following the 58th Annual Country Music Association Awards’ (CMA) decision not to nominate Beyoncé and Cowboy Carter, as well as the lead single “Texas Hold ‘Em”, despite it topping charts worldwide.
As a result, country music legend Dolly was questioned about CMA’s highly debated choice to snub Beyoncé.
“I’ve been fortunate enough to be on both those albums,” Dolly told Variety on Tuesday (September 17).
Dolly Parton defended Beyoncé amid backlash for making country music
Cowboy Carter features Beyoncé‘s version of Dolly’s iconic 1973 hit “Jolene”. Moreover, Dolly duetted on the album’s “Dolly P” and “Tyrant”.
“Well, ‘Jolene’ was in Beyoncé’s, and I thought that was a great album,” Dolly said. “She’s a country girl in Texas and Louisiana, so she grew up with that base. It wasn’t like she just appeared out of nowhere.”
On CMA’s controversial decision to exclude Beyoncé, the 78-year-old philanthropist said: “Well, you never know.
“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.
“But I didn’t even realize that until somebody asked me that question. 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.
Dolly praised Beyoncé’s redemption of “Jolene”
“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 went on to reveal that she would enthusiastically accept duetting “Jolene” live with Beyoncé, stating: “Oh yeah. I’m open to anything.”
The CMA nominees and winners are voted on each year by the 7,300 individuals in the Country Music Association trade group, after three rounds of balloting, The Guardian reported on September 10.
@countrymusicassociation We are thrilled to present to you the 2024 #CMAawards Nominees ✨ @ABC ♬ original sound – Country Music Association
Cowboy Carter reportedly became the first album by a Black woman to reach number one on the Billboard top country albums chart.
The single “Texas Hold ’Em” also became the first by a Black woman to claim the top spot on Billboard’s country song chart, as well as the all-genre Hot 100 chart.
But despite this success, Cowboy Carter was given limited promotion on country radio stations, which is more important in shaping the industry’s preferences than mainstream avenues, according to The Guardian.
Dolly also opened up about the Country Music Awards’ decision to snub Queen Bey’s 2024 Cowboy Carter album
In February, a country music radio station in the USA made headlines after it initially refused to play a listener’s Beyoncé request, but added her tracks to rotation after a huge online backlash, the British news outlet reported.
Cowboy Carter was reportedly widely framed by experts and fans as a reclamation and homage to an overlooked legacy of Black Americans within country music and culture.
Country music is a genre founded, molded, and upheld by the Black community, The Harvard Crimson explained in March. Starting from the banjo, an instrument within the lineage of the West African lute, Africans sparked the creation of the genre.
African Americans fail to receive credit for their creativity in engineering the sounds we know and love as country music, the publication argued.
The Crimson further stated that today, the Black community still lacks recognition for their contributions, and their talents are not recognized by the country industry.
According to the publication, African American musicians who dare to enter the country scene, regardless of whether they were born and raised in the South, are faced with extreme backlash for simply honoring their artistry, as exemplified by CMA’s snub of Beyoncé.
The Crimson further pointed out that some of the most widely recognized country performers, like Shania Twain and Keith Urban, are not from the USA and have no heritage connected to the American South, yet they face no backlash for their country music.
The awards ceremony’s cold shoulder follows Beyoncé’s eighth album studio breaking streaming records on several platforms
Beyoncé reportedly said that Cowboy Carter was born out of an experience in which she “did not feel welcomed … and it was very clear that I wasn’t. But, because of that experience, I did a deeper dive into the history of country music and studied our rich musical archive.”
However, one of Beyoncé’s collaborators on Cowboy Carter, the singer Shaboozey, is nominated for Best New Artist and Single of the Year with “A Bar Song (Tipsy)”, which has been the number one country song for the past 12 weeks and also topped the Hot 100 chart for eight, The Guardian reported.
Shaboozey is the first Black male artist to top the country chart and the Billboard Hot 100 simultaneously. Winners of the CMAs will be announced at a ceremony broadcast live on ABC on 20 November.
Dolly’s interview left some readers divided
