On the heels of Beyoncé’s CMA Awards shutout, country singer Luke Bryan thinks the pop icon should “be country with us a little bit.” During an interview on Sirius XM’s Andy Cohen Live, the multi-platinum singer said he feels that Beyoncé, who released the country-tinged Act ii: Cowboy Carter in March, should ingratiate herself into the country scene. “Beyoncé can do it exactly what she wants to. She’s probably the biggest star in music. But come to an award show and high five us. And have fun and get in the family too,” he suggested, before adding, “And I’m not saying she didn’t do that.” Cohen told him he “understood” where he was coming from.
Bryan’s comments are similar to sentiments shared by Dolly Parton about Beyoncé’s CMA snubs (Beyoncé covered Parton’s “Jolene” on Cowboy Carter). In September, Parton told Variety that she thought Cowboy Carter was a “wonderful album” that Beyoncé should be “very, very proud of.” But she also speculated that “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.’”
Bryan may have forgotten that the last time Beyoncé attended the CMAs in 2016, the announcement of her performance spurred a #BoycottCMA trend and her “Daddy Lessons” performance with the Chicks (formerly the Dixie Chicks) polarized country music fans. Tanner Davenport of Black Opry attended the show and claimed they heard a woman say, “Get that Black b**ch off the stage!” during the performance; that person probably didn’t want her offstage to give her a high five.
On Cowboy Carter opener “Ameriican Reqiuem,” Beyoncé harkens to the moment when singing, “It’s a lot of talkin’ goin’ on/While I sing my song/Can you hear me?/I said, Do you hear me?”
While explaining Cowboy Carter’s creative genesis, Beyoncé implied that her 2016 appearance was the opposite of “fun.” She noted, “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. The criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me.”
Beyoncé’s lack of CMA nominations, which some expected, continue her somewhat controversial relationship with major award shows. Despite winning more Grammy awards than any other act in history, she has yet to win the Album of the Year Grammy, a fact her husband Jay-Z called out during an extended Grammy speech earlier this year. “I don’t want to embarrass this young lady, but she has more Grammys than anyone and never won Album of the Year. So even by your own metrics, that doesn’t work,” he said. Cowboy Carter’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” made her the first Black woman to top Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, yet it received no CMA nominations.