Beyoncé wouldn't do country music.
This response from Oklahoma-based radio station KYKC to a fan who wanted to know if the station would play Beyoncé's new country song “Texas Hold 'Em” caused a stir among the singer's admirers and beyond. Accusations of racism quickly arose.
The director of KYKC, which broadcasts exclusively country music, responded via email: “We do not carry Beyoncé on KYKC because we are a country music station.”
The statement sparked accusations of racism and discrimination from Beyoncé admirers, who said not recognizing the singer's new music as country amounted to racial exclusion. “The refusal to play these songs raises concerns about the station’s attitude towards artists of color. Whether intentional or not, such actions contribute to the narrative of racial bias within the state community,” one user wrote on X.
At first, the general manager of SCORE, the station's parent company, Roger Harris, tried to justify himself: “We love Beyoncé here, we play her on our other stations (Top 40 and adult hits), but we don't play her on ours yet.” Country station because it just came out.”
He went on to explain that the original email was a “standard response” to inquiries about artists who don't make country music. “If someone calls and asks for the Rolling Stones to be played on this station, we’ll say the same thing,” he said.
The station wouldn't have noticed Beyoncé's new turn to country music… But then the radio did a U-turn. After “receiving the file” for the song, she decided to release it. “We literally just found out about the new song. “We usually wait to see how a song performs on the charts before releasing it,” he explains.
However, he doesn't hide that the pressure movement has sped up the process: “We were apparently targeted in a major campaign to add the song. Once we received the file, we added it to the mailing list.
The same goes for 16 Carriages, the second track from Beyoncé's next album, which is already online.
It remains to be seen whether the world of country music will open up a little more. Lil Nas