Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter is a country album.
However, the global superstar’s album received no nominations at the Country Music Awards (CMAs) and wasn’t even acknowledged by the award show, despite later winning Best Country Album and Album of the Year at the 2025 Grammys.
It’s time for Cowboy Carter to be recognized as the country album that it is. The Grammys illustrated that Beyoncé’s eighth studio album deserves the attention it received, including a designation as a country album.
In the history of the award, the winner of Best Country Album has only won Album of the Year two times prior to Beyoncé’s win this year. So despite being one of only three highly acclaimed country albums (in terms of awards), Cowboy Carter wasn’t recognized by the CMAs.
Despite trying and failing to find other reasons why the album was snubbed in the running for the CMAs, it ultimately came back to the failure of Cowboy Carter to display traditional “country” themes in its songs and a bias towards Beyoncé’s genre-shifting abilities.
A trend throughout country music, many songs gaining recent popularity, such as Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” incorporate typical country themes such as alcohol, love, trucks, and hunting.
Many of the songs on Cowboy Carter are more introspective than typical country music, with themes ranging from her own personal experiences of motherhood to the history of Black cowboys in the United States.
Although not incorporating “trucks and beer,” Cowboy Carter is without a doubt a country album. Songs like “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM” and “LEVII’S JEANS” have country tunes, and the album featured country singers such as Dolly Parton and Shaboozey. Cowboy Carter even featured Beyoncé’s cover of “Jolene,” perhaps one of the most recognizable tunes in country music.
While many have been critiquing the singer as not being authentically “country,” Beyoncé has only proved them wrong with this album. She created a unique blend of her voice and style with heart-penetrating lyrics and references to influential Black cowboys and country artists. The use of acoustic guitar, ukulele, accordion, and other similar instruments help solidify this album in the country genre as they provide the musical backdrop for Beyoncé’s stunning vocals.
Typically a pop and R&B singer, Beyoncé demonstrated impressive range with Cowboy Carter. Unfortunately, critics allowed prejudices and preconceived notions to interfere with the truth of Cowboy Carter’s genre.
Beyoncé clearly deserves the appropriate accolades for what she was able to accomplish with Cowboy Carter and the impressive range that she displayed with this album.
Other artists who have changed genres throughout their careers, such as Post Malone or Taylor Swift, have received much less attention and criticism than Beyoncé has with Cowboy Carter.
The CMAs should have recognized Cowboy Carter as the country album that it is.
Beyoncé defied expectations by creating Cowboy Carter, and the Grammys awarded the album appropriately, clearly recognizing it for the genre it represents, if in a less conventional way.
If we stick to existing ideas and pre-held conventions, progress will never be made. Cowboy Carter is the perfect example of the range an artist can demonstrate and the lesson that music genres are not inherently a certain way.
