Will the country music establishment embrace Beyoncé? Here's how to tell, according to experts

Nashville's country music machine is a tightly controlled system that has come under fire in the past for how it treats women and Black artists.

Now, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter has released two new country songs and announced a full "Act II" album, part of her "Renaissance" project, putting a spotlight on country music's entire ecosystem.

Will the global superstar's new music reveal the system's flaws again, or has the industry made strides in recent years?

We dive in.

Unprecedented times

Sixty years after RCA Records marketed Charley Pride's earliest country recordings while making no visual or press mention of his race or skin color, Beyoncé released "Texas Hold 'Em," and "16 Carriages" during Sunday's Super Bowl with her Blackness fully present and accounted for.

In recent years, Black artists such as Jimmie Allen, Blanco Brown, BRELAND, Kane Brown and Darius Rucker have all been marketed as country stars and achieved country radio hits.

But none of these artists are women. The country music establishment's inability to promote women and minorities — namely Black people — on the radio has been troublesome.

Enter Beyoncé.

The 32-time Grammy winner has sold somewhere near a half-billion albums or singles worldwide as a solo artist or member of Destiny's Child.

She's unprecedented.

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Too soon to tell

University of Ottawa musicologist and information scientist Jada Watson — a co-author of the 2023 report "They Won't Play a Lady-O on Country Radio: Examining Back-to-Back Plays by Gender, Race, and Sexual Orientation" — thinks it's simply too soon to tell how the industry is reacting to Beyoncé.

"The media swirl so far is responding faster (and without much thought to context) than the actual situation is developing within the music industry," she said in an email to The Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network. "I've seen headlines that the format has been slow to play her songs — and I find that to be a little disingenuous."

For instance, a country music radio station based in Oklahoma came under fire this week for rejecting a fan's request to play "Texas Hold 'Em."

User @jussatto on X, formerly known as Twitter, shared a post saying he requested the song on his local station (KYKC) but received an email from Southern Central Oklahoma Radio Enterprises (S.C.O.R.E.) that read, "We do not play Beyoncé on KYKC as we are a country music station."

After an outcry from fans, managers at the station suggested that the statement was a misunderstanding. S.C.O.R.E. general manager Roger Harris says that being in a small market, the company usually follows the lead of bigger stations and plays songs based on how well they do on country music charts like Mediabase, which tracks radio plays.

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The station ended up playing the song the same day due to several calls from fans. Country Music Television followed suit by adding "Texas Hold 'Em" to its branded streaming stations.

Harris says he appreciates Beyoncé's fresh take on the genre.

"I think that's cool because we get tired of playing the same old beer drinking, truck driving... things like that," he says. "So, yeah, I'm really excited about somebody different doing a country music song."

Watson says she's been hearing about more radio programmers adding Beyoncé to their rotation.

"For distribution services that move slowly (certainly not at the pace of streaming and digital sales), the song is being played and it’s really in the next two weeks that we’ll get a better picture of how this all plays out," she says.

As of Wednesday, Beyoncé's radio plays jumped from doubled digits to 136 plays, according to U.S. Radio Updater.

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How do country songs get played on the radio?

Traditionally, songs played on country music radio stations are "serviced," which simply means an artist sends the song to stations.

Columbia didn't officially service "Texas Hold 'Em" to country radio until Tuesday afternoon, which means the song's traditional handoff to country stations may have come after the fan requested the song in Oklahoma. But songs can technically be played before being serviced.

After songs are serviced, stations usually pay attention to how well a song performs on Mediabase and Billboard charts. Billboard and Mediabase's country airplay charts measure spins in major versus minor markets and rank records by audience impressions. Country music radio charts are released every Monday.

By comparison, Beyoncé is already dominating modern platforms. On the streaming front, she is topping country music playlists and charts on Apple Music and Spotify. On YouTube, she reached over 2 million views on each song in just two days.

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A retrospective

Three artists provide the best pop-to-country crossover comparisons to this moment in Beyoncé's career: Olivia Newton-John in 1973, Tina Turner in 1974 and Lil Nas X in 2019.

Newton-John's cover of John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads" was a hit, reaching No. 2 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.

In response, country artists formed the Association of Country Entertainers (ACE), dedicated to "preserving and recognizing the basic and traditional country singers."

Newton-John's response?

"It's all music. Country music has a style and I love it for its simplicity," she said. "But I also believe you can't put a passport on music. It doesn't belong to one section of the country. Music is international. The notes, the sounds, belong to anyone who can sing them."

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One year later, Tina Turner released the album "Tina Turns the Country On!" featuring covers of songs by country and folk artists such as Kris Kristofferson, Bob Dylan, Olivia Newton-John, James Taylor and Dolly Parton.

Billboard referred to it as a "fine mix of country, folky and soft rock tunes" with Tina's voice "perfectly [molded] around each cut." However, in the review, the idea of the songs gaining country radio airplay was downplayed, instead focusing on soul and pop airplay.

Then in 2019, Lil Nas X's folk-trap ditty "Old Town Road" debuted at No. 83 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, No. 36 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and No. 19 on Hot Country Songs.

The song was removed and then reinstated on Billboard's country charts. It eventually cleared 17-times-platinum status and was on top of Billboard's all-genre Hot 100 chart for 19 weeks. On Billboard's Country Airplay chart, though? Lil Nas X peaked at No. 50.

Beyoncé wouldn't be the first Black woman to chart on country radio. Mickey Guyton and Rissi Palmer have broken into the top 50 this century. Her sound fits in with an even deeper tradition when you consider artists such as Linda Martell, whose single "Color Him Father" charted in 1969, or the Pointer Sisters, whose single "Fairytale" won them the best country vocal performance by a duo or group at the Grammy awards in 1974.

"It would certainly be a missed opportunity not to play her music, and one that should be actively used to create pathways and opportunities for the many Black women in the Country music community who are otherwise not included on radio playlists," Watson says.

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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: A look into whether Beyoncé will hit a wall with country establishment