Saving the awards for actual country artists? I mean I'm not sure the CMAs are actually worried about only including country artists. Wasn't Justin Bieber nominated for 3 CMA Awards a few years ago? And doesn't Walker Hayes always seem to show up at those shows? Regardless, I get what Dolly's saying when she defended the CMA Awards for not including Beyoncé in the nominations this year. Of course
Beyoncé created quite the frenzy when she dropped her country-inspired album
Cowboy Carter back in March. At the time, the pop superstar made clear that the album wasn't a "country" album, despite featuring collaborations with Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton, along with a reimagined version of "Jolene." Speaking on
Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé said it was inspired by an experience where she didn't feel welcome in country music, though she said it wasn't a country album:
"It was born out of an experience that I had years ago where I 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... This ain’t a Country album. This is a ‘Beyoncé’ album." Despite the proclamation from Bey herself, the album hit #1 on both the all-genre
Billboard 200 album chart, as well as the Top Country Albums chart, with Beyoncé becoming the first black woman to have the top album on the country chart. Since the album's release though, we haven't really heard much from Beyoncé. Fans were hoping for a
Cowboy Carter tour, but so far nothing has been announced, and it seems like there hasn't really been any promotion for the album since it was initially released. But last week, the Country Music Association announced their
nominees for the 2024 CMA Awards - and fans quickly noticed that Beyoncé was left off the list, receiving no nominations despite her wildly successful album. Now, could that be because she didn't submit her album to the CMA for consideration? For sure. In fact, after speaking out about her bad experience in country music that many assume to have been when she performed at the CMA Awards in 2016 with the Dixie Chicks, it's entirely possible that Beyoncé specifically asked NOT to be considered for any awards after feeling slighted by her last experience. But that didn't stop fans, and even the singer's own father, from calling out the CMAs for not recognizing Beyoncé or
Cowboy Carter. Of course the reflex from many was to blame racism for the snub. But
Dolly Parton , who has spoken many times about how much she respects Beyoncé, this time defended the CMA Awards for leaving the pop star out of the nominations this year. During an interview with
Variety , Dolly was asked how she felt about
Cowboy Carter not being nominated:
"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." Dolly also praised country music for welcoming Beyoncé, and says she doesn't think it was so much a "snub" that she wasn't nominated but more of a feeling that there were other country artists who were more deserving:
"I think everybody in country music welcomed her and thought that, that was good. 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."
Leave it to Dolly to manage to praise everybody to keep from talking down on either side - even when it would be easy to criticize the CMA Awards these days.
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