The Country Format Is Bullish on Beyoncé’s ‘Texas Hold ‘Em,’ Top Radio Execs Say
Is country radio an easy, inevitable home for Beyoncé’s new single, “Texas Hold ‘Em”? That’s what some top radio executives are saying, contrary to some early speculation about how a crossover record from the superstar might fare.
Although these execs point out that it will be up to listeners to ultimately decide, they’re saying that they see no reason why a song that’s in the pocket musically from one of the world’s biggest superstars should be cause for a showdown instead of hoedown.
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“Why wouldn’t we play this? This is a gift,” says Brian Philips, chief content officer at Cumulus Media, who just oversaw a Zoom call Wednesday with programmers at the chain’s major country stations, during which he said everyone spoke enthusiastically about “Texas.”
“It was like, ‘How can we not give this a try?’ This adds a completely unforeseen, unimagined new angle to country radio. We’ll get calls, we’ll get response, and some of the old school (listeners) will probably reject it and then everybody else will love it, and that’ll be the outcome. We have 55 major country stations and it’s very hard to get them to agree on anything. But everybody at country wants to play it. We don’t have guys who are like, ‘It doesn’t fit our core sound.’ We have people who want to be part of the story and they’re all gonna do the same thing: play it and talk it up and get all the negative and all the positive out of the audience and see what the reaction is. It sounds like a really simple, catchy, hit pop-country song to me.”
iHeartMedia is on board too. In a statement provided to Variety, Tom Poleman, the chain’s chief programming officer & president, says, “Beyoncé is an innovator who continues to push the creative boundaries in music. Many of our country and Top 40 programmers began playing the new single earlier this week, and now that it’s officially rolled out, we’re excited to share her new song with our listeners across the country, including the entire iHeartCountry platform.”
Audacy’s Tim Roberts, VP of programming and country format captain, also provided a statement, saying, “We think it’s a good record, and country is so popular right now, it’s great that she wants to be here. Just like we do with any song on our playlist, now the listeners will decide.”
Coleman’s use of the phrase “officially rolled out” presumably refers to Sony Music sending the song to country stations and actively promoting it there — something that had been left uncertain in the immediate wake of Beyoncé doing a surprise drop Sunday night after a reveal in a Super Bowl commercial. Sony Nashville did begin that promotional push to the format late Tuesday, after the song had gotten an official push to pop stations. Prior to that, in a Variety story on Tuesday, Country Insider tipsheet editor Brian Mansfield said most country stations might be reluctant to playlist the tune without yet having gotten assurance that it would be getting an official format push. Some radio people theorized that the company’s Nashville promo team might have been caught as unaware as the rest of the world when the superstar sprang her new look and sound on the world, given the closely protected nature of all her launches. In any case, when the word that it was being officially promoted did come on late Tuesday and Wednesday, then it was off to the races. (Sony Nashville reps have not responded to requests for comment on the rollout or plans for the tune.)
Some say they were bullish on the tune before getting the promotional Batsignal. “It didn’t matter to me that they didn’t ship it” right off the bat, says Philips. “Everything’s ubiquitous, everything’s available. I don’t care who services what; I go on the internet and there it is — that means I’ve been serviced, if I can find a WAV file! I don’t care what their marketing plan is. If somebody at Sony made a miscalculation that country wouldn’t be interested in this, that was a mistake. It just sounded to me like it hit that Dixie Chicks chord of kind of fun, hand-clapping reckless abandon, and it just sounded like a natural country song to me. I’ll be very surprised if there’s any backlash, except from very old, calcified country fans who say, ‘Well, I came here to hear a George Strait song, not this hand-clapping, woo-woo-woo business.’
“If the audience rejects it, we’ll know. But we can’t imagine that, because everybody we’ve played the song for has liked it. My job is to break down this idea that country programmers are gatekeepers who keep things away from people that they might otherwise like, because that could not be further from the truth. We’re gonna hit it hard and fast and see what the reaction is. In top 40, it’s called a reaction record, where you say, ‘Look, just put this on the air and see what happens,’ and that’s where we are.”
The perception of a possible standoff was driven on Monday by reports of a station in a small Oklahoma town that had reacted to an emailed request for the song with a response that said Beyonce would not be played on the outlet, because she is not a country artist. Tens of thousands of tweets followed that called the station racist. As it turned out, the person sending that email had not watched the second half of the Super Bowl and still had no idea after sleeping in the next morning that the singer had a true country song out. The tiny station quickly added the tune and apologized, but not before inadvertently stirring a national tempest.
SiriusXM’s country stations have been on top of it. Says Johnny Chiang, SiriusXM Pandora’s senior director of country programming, “When I first heard that there was a possibility of Beyoncé dropping a country song, a real country song, I was stoked. She’s one of four or five artists worldwide that, when she speaks, you stop and listen. So on Sunday night during the Super Bowl, I was sitting there on my laptop on our backend system and kept hitting refresh, waiting for the song to drop. I immediately added to added the song to multiple Pandora country stations, and then we also played it on ‘The Highway’ for the first time Sunday night. Then the next morning, the morning show played it, and we immediately made it a full add on ‘The Highway,’ so it’s in full rotation.”
Chiang sees only upside in a Beyoncé/country marriage. “First of all, it’s a good song, and a legit modern country song. And she’s iconic, so it’s a no brainer,” says the SiriusXM exec, who used to program a top country station in Beyoncé’s native Houston. “I can’t speak for the terrestrial country PDs, and I can imagine there will probably be some trepidation. But I think this is nothing but good for our format. Whether it is terrestrial or satellite or on the DSPs, the core country audience is still that 35-to-45-year-old soccer mom, and they don’t just listen to country, they listen to pop, where Beyoncé has a huge impact. So why wouldn’t it work?”
Chiang continues, “Over the past 10, 15 years, country has evolved into one of the most diverse-sounding genres out there. Hell, probably our highest-profile male artist in country today is Jelly Roll. Everyone knows his background — hip-hop, with the face tats — and he’s embraced. So why not Beyoncé? With ‘Texas Hold ‘Em,’ if you didn’t know it was Beyoncé and you just heard it, you’d think it sounds pretty country compared to some of the other stuff that’s in the genre today.”
Cumulus’ Philips makes the same comparison in explaining why he thinks country will be a welcoming format for Beyoncé today. “In general, the new crop of people coming in shows a better side of country fans. I think a guy like Jelly Roll is the embodiment of the good will and good spirit of Everyman country that elevates everybody when he is around them. And, it’s a good time… Our 55 country stations are all of a mind that this is an interesting new wrinkle in country. And country is in a phase where it seems to enjoy an interesting new twist, so it’s not really that far a leap. Country’s been set up for a couple years of being the hottest format, so I think by nature it’s gonna be a little more experimental, a little more welcoming. It’s a much different format than it was even in 2017 or 2015.”
One thing that does remain true since a decade ago is the complete absence of Black women who’ve had hit records in the country format, even as Black men like Kane Brown, Darius Rucker and Breland have enjoyed big chart successes. Programmers have been prone to say, year after year, that the format is eager to welcome a Black female star, but the right singer with the right charisma with the right, undeniable song has not come along… a contention that Mickey Guyton fans and others would argue against, of course. It’s the backdrop against which an introduction into the format by Beyoncé is inevitably viewed by many, even if her sudden entree as an existing megastar introduces a whole different set of variables.
Yet it sure sounds like country radio would love it if their audience loved the song. One programmer thinks “Texas Hold Em” will go over better in country than in the superstar’s native formats. “The Top 40s don’t know what to do with it because their audience doesn’t know how to react to it. Which makes sense,” says the programmer. “So they’re the ones who should be written about as having a quandary.”
Philips says genre distinctions matter less to the average listener than ever, whatever the format, including the traditionally more provincial country. “We’ve all have all this doctrine and dogma that comes with country, and I think a lot of those layers are getting stripped away with the new consumer, who simply doesn’t have any concept of why one thing doesn’t belong with the other. Beyoncé fits in the world of most 18-to-49-year-olds. And if she comes with a catchy country song, why should there be a social standoff about what to do about it? I’m not sure (the idea of resistance) isn’t a little bit of a tempest in a teapot, at least from the standpoint of Cumulus.”
Whether fans of these stations are truly welcoming of a new wrinkle or want that airtime devoted to still more spins for Kane Brown, Cody Johnson and Thomas Rhett remains to be seen. In the country format, it typically takes several months for a song to become a top 10 hit; stations may show their cards (as it were) on “Texas Hold ‘Em” with less of a lag time. With real playlist additions for Beyoncé just starting to come in from reporting stations as of Thursday, prevailing winds may become apparent by the time the tipsheets’ add charts are published next week.
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