Megyn Kelly, Take Your Beyoncé Call Out as a Victory

Random Notes 39 Comments


Megyn Kelly. Babe. Take the win. What are you doing acting like an aggrieved party here? Beyoncé’s calling you out on the big video boards of her current world tour? Well congratulations then. It’s free promotion. Celebrate it, don’t kvetch about it.

Doesn’t anyone know how to beef anymore beyond Trump and Elon? Hell, who’s been more revealing of Beyoncé’s foray into country music than myself? If I’d been called out on Big Bad Bey’s video board, I’d be throwing a damn party. Yet I can’t even get a social media mention from Mrs. Knowles. It’s been nearly two years since Luke Bryan told me to kiss his ass. I need heat!

Recently, political commentator Megyn Kelly published a video called “Beyonce Tries Playing Victim” where she starts off by saying, “Beyoncé, who’s on some world tour right now reinventing herself as a country star, is running videotape during the show of yours truly.”

First off, Beyoncé is not trying to “reinvent herself as a country star.” Even her closest fans know that her album Cowboy Carter will be a one-off project as part of her 3-part Renaissance album project. There’s no reason to believe Beyoncé’s next album will be country.

If you want to worry about someone reinventing themselves as country, that’s Post Malone. He’s already got a second country album on the way, and now he’s apparently planning to open a venue on Lower Broadway. Granted, Post Malone’s country foray with F1-Trillion was a lot more “country” than Cowboy Carter. He actually collaborated with country musicians and songwriters, and there were a lot of straight country songs on it.

Apparently the “call out” of Megyn Kelly by Beyoncé comes in the form of a video clip from an interview Kelly gave with Sky News out of Australia where she calls out Bey for “sticking her big toe” into country music, which more accurately, is about the extent of Beyoncé’s country involvement.

Meanwhile with Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé herself said “This ain’t a country album.” Along with all sorts of other indications like the quotes from Linda Martell on the album, it corroborates that Beyoncé was trying to “bend and blend genres” on the album (again, Beyoncé’s words), not make a big country record. Claiming she made a country record insults Beyoncé’s artistic intent.

But so many have gotten this important point wrong. Even when reporting on the beef between Beyoncé and Megyn Kelly, Billboard claims in the article that Cowboy Carter “found Bey exploring her love for country music across 27 tracks, including collaborations with icons such as Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton.”

Beyoncé most certainly did not “collaborate” with Willie and Dolly. They literally appear in 20-second autonomous voice memos on the album in isolated tracks. A “collaboration” would have been Beyoncé actually singing with them, or them contributing instrumentation to a track like Rhiannon Giddens did on the song “Texas Hold ‘Em.” Calling some iMessage a “collaboration” is misleading at best.

But that’s not the worst of it. Billboard also claims, “Many parts of the industry were unwelcoming — the album earned zero nominations at the CMA Awards and country radio did not embrace any tracks.”

The second part of this is an outright lie. On February 20th, 2024 when the song “Texas Hold ‘Em” was officially given and “adds” date on country radio, it became the most added track on country radio with 79 adds from country radio stations. This was good enough for the track to debut at #33 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart. Beyoncé’s label also ran a whole add in Billboard’s Country Update trade magazine celebrating the achievement.


Granted, by May on 2024, Beyoncé’s label had pulled all radio support from the track—in country and pop—and it never got higher than #33 on the Country Airplay charts, or #7 on pop. “Texas Hold ‘Em would have been #1 on both charts eventually if the label had continued to promote it. The continued false reporting on Cowboy Carter by Billboard and others who should know better (after all, it’s Billboard who charts this stuff) is the reason there’s still so much continued conflict and confusion around this album.

But back to Megyn Kelly. Girl, don’t play the victim by acting like it’s a bad thing Beyoncé is calling you out. It’s moments like these that should be added to your resume, pinned to the top of your social media pages, and embraced.

A few years from now, Beyoncé herself will probably further clarify how her intent with Cowboy Carter was never to make a country album, but an album that blended some country influences in with pop, hip-hop, and R&B to subvert genre as opposed to adhere to it. Like so many other subjects of this era, the falsehoods have prevailed. But time has a way of sifting the truth to the surface, even if some are slow to recognize it.

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