According to stereogum.com, on February 13 fan named Justin McGowan requested a local country station to play “Texas Hold ‘Em,” which is one of Beyoncé’s new singles. The station manager, Roger Harris, of KYKC in Ada, Oklahoma emailed McGowan back by saying: “We do not play Beyoncé at KYKC as we are a country music station.” McGowan posted a screenshot of the email and called it “ridiculous and racist.” The screenshot started a social media storm and now, KYKC has said that the radio station will play “Texas Hold ‘Em.”
Harris, has been KYKC’s station manager for 48 years, tells The New York Times, “I’ve never experienced anything in my career like the amount of communications that we received in support of the song. We haven’t played her on our country station because she’s not a country artist. Well, now I guess she wants to be, and we’re all for it.”
Country music is a closed loop system, with its own songwriters, producers and musicians. It tends to reject artists who do not work within that system. Zach Bryan, one of the biggest artists to come along in any genre in the past few years, does not have the country-radio foothold that people might expect. On the other hand, artists from other genres who embrace the country system do quite well, such as Hootie And The Blowfish’s Darius Rucker.
People also have had some success stories about Black country artists but people have seen more Black artists being locked out of the music industry. What people have not seen is a star on the level of Beyoncé embracing country sounds and aesthetics without working with people from the Nashville system. When Act II is released, people will be able to see and hear what Beyoncé can do in Country music.
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