On Beyoncé’s Best Country Album Grammy for “Cowboy Carter”

Random Notes 258 Comments


Unequivocally, Beyoncé told us herself about her 2024 album Cowboy Carter, “This ain’t a country album.”

But apparently, Grammy voters disagree.

It was a very mediocre showing for Beyoncé during the Grammy pre-telecast ceremony on Sunday (2-2). She she lost three of the four awards she was nominated for in country and roots categories, as well as suffering losses in multiple other genre categories. But it didn’t seem to much matter when she walked away with the 2025 Grammy for Best Country Album just after 8 pm on the televised portion of the awards.

In many respects, the real story of the 2025 Grammy Awards in country music feels like it should be Sierra Ferrell, even though she didn’t win a single country Grammy, and didn’t even make it on the evening telecast. What she did do is sweep all the American Roots song categories in country’s cousin genre, as well as win Best Americana Album for 2024’s Trail of Flowers, making her a very rare 4-time Grammy winner all on the same day.

The country song Grammys that were given out earlier in the day didn’t include the same electricity, surprise, suspense, and buzz as the roots categories did due to Sierra, and didn’t even include a lot of controversy to stir conversation. Instead they felt incredibly predictable, though the winners were not necessarily undeserving.

Chris Stapleton won Best Country Solo Performance for his song “It Takes A Woman.” It’s a fine song from Stapleton, and definitely a great performance, but hard to claim as defining of the country genre over the last year or so. As a favorite of awards shows, any time Stapleton is nominated, he’s always the front runner, and his win can’t surprise anybody.

Best Country Song went to Kacey Musgraves and her co-writer Shane McAnally for “The Architect.” Though it’s easily the greatest song from Kacey’s latest album Deeper Well, it also doesn’t feel like a song that defines country music in 2024, or the best of what the genre had to offer. But “The Architect” is well-written, and worst songs could have won. Similar to Stapleton, Musgraves is an awards show and Grammy darling, and her win can’t surprise anyone. If anything, it was again a boring, uneventful pick.

Beyoncé’s early win for Best Country Duo/Group Performance with Miley Cyrus on “II Most Wanted” gave Queen Bey the country Grammy she’d been craving. But Beyoncé was also denied the sweep of the country categories that she very well could have pulled off. She was nominated in all four country categories, as well as Best Americana Performance for “Ya Ya,” which she lost to Sierra Ferrell’s “American Dreaming.”

Beyoncé was nominated for a field-leading 11 Grammy awards going into Grammy Sunday 2025, but was losing left and right. Until she didn’t. Beyoncé winning Best Country Album meant her taking the biggest prize in country music for an album that she says unequivocally isn’t.

As Beyoncé she said in her speech, echoing numerous inferences on her Cowboy Carter album, “I think sometimes genre is a code word to keep us in our place as artists.”

But that is the reason for genre-specific Grammy categories. They are there to make sure pop stars worth $800 million dollars who are married to billionaires can’t come in and abscond with attention meant for performers who don’t feel like genre is something to “keep them in their place,” but instead feel it’s something to honor and respect.

There are Grammy awards for albums, artists, and songs that defy genre. It’s called pop. The point of genre specific categories is to highlight works that adhere to the respective genres.

As much as Beyoncé’s win for Best Country Album will be celebrated, it knocks every little girl and boy who grew up wanting to be a country star and devoted their lives to the genre one notch down. It robs the genre of an opportunity to fete a performer who will be in the country genre next year, and the year after, and the year after that. It sets a dubious precedent that if you simply declare yourself “country” (or in Beyoncé’s case, you don’t), you can win a country Grammy.

Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter was a commercial disaster. It fell to #50 in the albums charts in just 13 weeks, and out of the Billboard 200 completely after 28 weeks—staggering numbers for Billboard‘s recently-named “Pop Star of the Century.” But the media and Beyoncé Stans successfully launched a canard that Cowboy Carter was country, and a great album, despite nobody listening to it.

Ultimately though, it might not much matter. The Grammy Awards will take a big credibility hit with country fans. But the true story in country music continues to be the resurgence of actual country artists, actual country sounds, and meaningful songwriting. Beyoncé is simply an epiphenomenal anomaly with little lasting effect.

Cowboy Carter‘s Best Country Album win wasn’t earned, it was compelled. With a gun to its head, Grammy voters did what they had to do to ensure the institution wasn’t called racist. And even though it’s a big win for Beyoncé, it feels like a bad loss for all genres that try to present the unadulterated expressions of culture that come from all people of all races and walks of life, and that go into presenting the brilliant tapestry that is American music.

Some will celebrate what this means for diversity in country music. But in truth, it represents the death of diversity in music. When the same artist worth $800 million can win Grammy Awards in pop, hip-hop, R&B, dance, and EDM, it represents the widening of the gulf between the have’s and the have not’s, and how an elite level of performers can walk away with all the spoils, especially since Beyoncé would go on to also win the all-genre Grammy for Album of the Year.

Country does have a race problem, both historically, and today. But if it is ever going to solve that problem, it has to grow artists from within. Those artists also must be country, not imported from pop. Then and only then will a win by a Black woman for Best Country Album have meaning.

Until then, all of this is just a big distraction from the things that matter, and overshadows artists who worked their lives to scale the mountain, and did by celebrating the modes of country and roots music as opposed to trying to defy them—artists like Sierra Ferrell, who despite being relegated to the pre-telecast presentation and the “American Roots” Grammy categories, is the true winner in country music in 2025. Because her wins weren’t compelled. They were earned.

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