Beyoncé’s new country songs may have broken the internet on Sunday, but will they break into country radio?
For Chicago’s US 99, the answer is yes. The upbeat “Texas Hold ‘Em” — featuring Rhiannon Giddens on banjo — is currently in rotation at WUSN-FM (99.5), owned by the Philadelphia-based company Audacy. Columbia Records officially shipped the song to country radio on Tuesday, according to Billboard.
“We are spinning it early to gauge listener feedback and reaction,” a representative from US 99 said in an email to the Sun-Times.
That decision is noteworthy, as country radio stations reportedly have been slow to play the new songs. In the roughly 24 hours after Beyoncé released “Texas Hold ‘Em” and the ballad “16 Carriages” to music streaming platforms during the Super Bowl, Billboard tracked the playlists of nearly 150 stations and found only eight had played “Texas Hold ‘Em.” There were no spins at all for “16 Carriages.”
The songs are singles from what appears to be a forthcoming country album, “act ii,” due March 29.
Even as the songs achieve great streaming success — ranking in Apple Music’s top five on Thursday — some have been pondering whether country radio will accept Beyoncé’s songs — given the format’s previous exclusion of artists, such as Lil Nas X, who typically record outside of the genre, and claims of discrimination against Black artists in particular by both fans and scholars.
In a recent SongData study, “Redlining in Country Music 2.0,” University of Ottawa Professor Jada Watson found that just 0.03% of the songs played on country radio in 2022 were by Black and biracial women, whose music was almost never played during the day.
Former US 99 radio personality Ramblin’ Ray Stevens said he isn’t a fan of Beyoncé’s new songs.
“While I love Beyoncé and think she’s awesome, this just doesn’t seem authentic,” said Stevens, who now splits his time between hosting “DriveChicago” on WLS-AM (890) and a midday show on 95.7 KCMO Talk Radio in Kansas City, Missouri
Still, he said she will have a shot on country radio given her star power.
“It’s corporate radio, and if the record label is spending enough money [on marketing] for the radio station to play it, it will get played. And that’s the bottom line.”
Another factor is the Beyhive, which swarmed KYKC 100.1 FM with hundreds of emails after the small Oklahoma station told a fan it didn’t play Beyoncé. KYKC eventually started spinning “Texas Hold ‘Em”; the station didn’t initially know it was a country song, and none of the bigger markets had it in rotation, said Roger Harris, general manager for South Central Oklahoma Radio Enterprises.
“We’re happy to do it,” he said. “If people are passionate about a song, we need to be responsive.”
But listener reception has been mixed.
“We’ve been getting 50% of people saying it’s ridiculous that we’re playing Beyoncé on a country music station, but 50% of people saying, ‘Hey, this is very cool that you’re doing this,’ ” Harris said.
As for US 99, if Facebook is any indication, traditional listeners aren’t happy.
On Monday, the station shared radio personality Scotty Kay’s post, which stated, “If you don’t think Beyoncé has a place in country music, then you don’t understand Beyoncé or country music.”
The majority of people in the comments disagreed, saying Beyoncé doesn’t fit within the genre.
“I think country radio is more wary of crossover acts, as the format has a history of being somewhat maligned from the outside,” said Cameron Coats, online editor at Radio Ink trade magazine.
But as Kane Brown, Mickey Guyton and other Black country artists make inroads, there are calls for more diversity, he said.
“More African American artists have been breaking into country radio in the past decade and enjoying large-scale success,” he said. “Even so, many groups and artists continue to push for more inclusion, especially for African American women.”
In defense of Beyoncé, Houston radio exec Nick Russo said that, as a Texas native, the singer was “raised on country sounds.” He also noted that younger people aren’t hung up on categories.
“The new generations are genre-less,” said Russo, whose station 100.3 KILT-FM is playing both of Beyoncé's singles. “It’s not cut and dry. … Our society is actually moving away from that when you think about artistic taste.”
