On Wednesday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast:
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Dana Taylor:
Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I’m Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, February 21st, 2024, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt.
Beyonce showed up at this year’s Grammy Awards dressed in rhinestones and an oil barren sized white cowboy hat. That night she made the surprise announcement that she would be releasing a new album soon, and an even bigger surprise that it would be a country music album. The first two singles, Texas Holden, and 16 carriages dropped on Super Bowl Sunday. So far, Beyonce’s fan base known as the Beehive, has embraced her new sound. Will the country music establishment follow suit? Here to discuss that with me as USA Today Music reporter, Melissa Ruggieri. Melissa, thanks for being on The Excerpt.
Melissa Ruggieri:
You got it. Anytime.
Dana Taylor:
Beyonce’s already racked up extraordinary achievements in music. She has more Grammys than any other recording artist. Her two new country songs have topped the charts on streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. Does she need country radio, whose response so far has been tepid?
Melissa Ruggieri:
I would say Beyonce doesn’t need anyone, anything, any format, any radio station, anything. I mean, Beyonce has already gone and proved herself far beyond that she would ever need anybody’s support like that. Also, look, if she wants to make Act two an homage to her Texas roots and she wants to do that type of music, then that’s exactly what she should do. She’s earned that right. And when you listen to Texas Holden, and when you listen to 16 Carriages, you’re hearing a lot of the soulfulness that comes from the background of her music. I mean, you’re hearing banjos and you’re hearing fiddles and you’re hearing pedal steel guitar, which are all hallmarks of country songs.
But you also have to remember, and a lot of people tend to forget this, that country actually originated with black musicians, that the banjo is a descendant of a traditional African instrument that many of the early country songs use choruses that came from hymns in black churches. So Beyonce doesn’t have to go out there and say, I’ve been a pop star, I’ve been an R&B star, and now I want to be a country star. So you’re going to have to accept me. If they respond to her with tepidness, so be it. She has earned the right to do whatever it is she wants to do musically and otherwise.
Dana Taylor:
Let’s talk about the infamous country music machine. It can be difficult for female artists in general to break through. What can you tell us about the way Nashville operates?
Melissa Ruggieri:
I had a really good friend who from being a top 40 radio programmer to a country music radio programmer. So we used to talk about this a lot. And there really is no definitive answer other than country music listeners tend to like their brand, and they don’t tend to like anything that’s different. And when you hear country and you hear brand, there is that image of the macho guy with the cowboy hat. You look back at the Willies and the Merle’s and the Waylands and all of the earlier country stalwarts that became just the symbols of country music. You also have to think back to when Shania Twain and Faith Hill and LeAnn Rimes were trying to break into country music, and you were hearing things like, oh, Shania Twain’s husband is the producer for Def Leppard. She can’t possibly be a country artist. So it’s a stigma that has not really lessened much over the decades, but I think it’s all just rooted in what people are used to hearing. And that’s why it has remained the way that it has remained.
Dana Taylor:
Mickey Guyton’s nomination for Best Country solo performance. The 2021 Grammy Awards marked an historic moment for black women in country music. Melissa, I know that you spoke with Mickey about a year ago on the topic of black women in country music. What did she share with you?
Melissa Ruggieri:
Well, for starters, she reminded me that Tina Turner’s first solo album in 1974 was a lot of covers by country artists, including Kris Kristofferson and Dolly Parton. It was called Tina Turns the Country On, and the only Grammy that it was nominated for best female R&B vocal. So even though it was a country album, they just immediately went, oh, Tina Turner, she’s an RB singer, we’re just going to stick her in this category. And so Mickey used that sort of as a framework to what she’s had to fight against in her career. And as a black female artist, she said that when she first got to Nashville, she sort of lost sight of herself and who she was. Because they wanted to put her in this genre box, and she really didn’t want to be in that box and also didn’t necessarily fit in that box and wasn’t really sure what she should be doing.
So when she wrote Black Like Me in 2018 and played it for her publishers and her record label, she said, they all looked at her, what is this and what are we supposed to do with this? But she ultimately just made that decision within herself to say, you know what? This is me. That’s what this is, and you can either accept it or not, but I have to be true to myself. And regardless of how it was going to shape her success, and that’s exactly what she did.
Dana Taylor:
In 2019, Lil Nas X faced pushback from country radio when his song Old Town Road became a smash hit across multiple genres on the billboard charts. You may recall Billy Ray Cyrus calling out Country Radio on that one. How did that whole thing play out?
Melissa Ruggieri:
Well, to me, I think Old Town Road is just a little slice of nothing, regardless if you want to call it pop or country. But I was clearly the outlier there because hey, look, it got to number 19 on the country charts on Billboard before the magazine said, Nope, sorry, not the country song. Went over to Pop spent 19 weeks at number one, displaced Mariah Carey and Louis Fonzi for having the longest number one song. So clearly it found an audience.
Yeah, Billy Ray decided to jump on board and say like, Hey, I’m a country guy and I’m accepting this, so this is cool country people. You should really take a listen to it. And it worked great for Lil Nas X, but I think what it really did mostly is sort of repave that road for artists like Jelly Roll that we’re seeing now who’s really just kind of mishmash all over the place, whether you want to call it country, hip hop, rock, he’s doing a little bit of everything. Morgan Wallen, I hear him all the time on Sirius’s the Pulse, which is basically a hot AC station. So I think that pop radio seems to really welcome country artists who want to come over, but Country Radio doesn’t necessarily want to play that game, and they draw this line in the sand and say, this is it, and either you’re going to come over and be exactly like us or you’re going to stay on your side of it, but we’re not going to play in the same sandbox.
Dana Taylor:
On the 1950s, Ray Charles released his groundbreaking album, modern Sounds in Country and Western Music. Charlie Pride achieved major success in mainstream country music in the sixties and the 1970s. Is it surprising to you, Melissa, that decades later we’re still talking about a small list of black artists who found a place in country music?
Melissa Ruggieri:
It is and it isn’t. I mean, this is a debate that’s been going on for as long as there have been radio formats. And as long as record stores were around putting things into sections in the record store, you would go to the country section or the classical section or the jazz section or the pop section, and it sort of had to be done that way because at the time, especially when there was no internet, there was no way to hear different kinds of music. People kind of knew what they liked and they wanted to just gravitate toward that. But now, even Lionel Richie told me in an interview a couple of years ago that he endured so many issues with the Commodores and some of those songs like Sail On and Oh No, because he was told that they weren’t R&B enough, and he was a guy from Alabama.
So it’s almost sort of the you can’t really win. And when I talked to him, it was actually when his Tuskegee album came out, and he said that he had to tell his label, I’m not going country. I am country. But for a long time, even when he had a solo career and he had to hit Stuck on You, which was very much a country tinge song, he was still being told that this sounds like a country song, but you’re not a country artist, so therefore you probably really shouldn’t be doing it. But at that point in his career, much like Beyonce, he had earned enough clout that he could say, look, this is what I want to record, and I don’t really care who plays it, whether it’s pop or country. That’s just the way it is.
So it’s just something that I think is always going to be, not an issue, but just something that’s always going to be some sort of contention with black artists and country music. Because as we’re seeing with Beyonce, there really isn’t a willingness to open the door to somebody who hasn’t, as they see it, followed the path of a country artist. And someone like Beyonce, they’re very much going to look at as just a pop and R&B star.
Dana Taylor:
Darius Rucker’s successful transition from pop rock to country music in the 2000s challenged industry norms. How significant has Darius’s Crossover success been?
Melissa Ruggieri:
I mean, it’s really significant. He had four number one albums. He had 10 number one singles. His country debut album sold more than a million copies, which hardly anybody does anymore. But of course, that was 15 years ago. He toured with Brad Paisley, he toured with Lady A, he toured with a lot of accepted country artists. So I think that that helped welcome him to a country audience. But also, you know what? If you listen to Hootie in the Blowfish songs, when you listen to, Only Want To Be With You or Hold my Hand, there are some country elements in there. It’s a little bit of a rootier or sound. They were never a really polished, slick pop band or rock band. So I think he was already trending that way, which is why it may have been a slightly easier transition.
Those songs had some country pacing to them when you heard the choruses and things like that. And also he’s a guy. And I think that that actually had something to do with it too like we’ve been talking about. I mean, I think it’s easier for male artists to be accepted in country just because of those stereotypes that have just belonged to the genre since the very beginning.
Dana Taylor:
We can’t talk about country music without bringing up the Grand Ole Opry Deford Bailey known as the Harmonica Wizard, was the first black performer to appear on the Grand Ole Opry He performed from the late 1920s to the mid 1940s. What do you think, Melissa? Is Beyonce going to get an invite to perform? And do I get to join you since you’ll probably get to go and cover it
Melissa Ruggieri:
If she’s invited, and if I get invited, yes, you could absolutely be my plus one. But that’s a really good question. Mickey Guyton was invited to play in 2015. Darius Rucker was invited in 2008. So, I don’t think it’s a matter of will the Opry invite black artists to play or not. I think it’s more of are we going to commit to Beyonce as a country artist when she has spent the majority of her career in pop and in R&B? So I wouldn’t expect to see her get an invite next week. I don’t think it’s something that’s going to happen immediately. But when her album does come out, and if it really is truly country and not just some pop glazed fiddles or things like that, then I think the opera’s going to have to recognize that. And I mean, there’s no way that they can look at the success that she may have with this record and say, nope, you don’t belong on this stage, if it really is truly a country record.
And I think from what we’ve heard from these first two singles, I think the intention is genuine. I mean, I think it’s authentic what she’s trying to do. Again, Beyonce doesn’t need to do anything. So I mean, I think this is something from her heart that she felt like she wanted to just make something that was more in line with her Texas roots. And she’s a student of music as well. She’s listened to all types of music her whole career. And then go back to Tina Turner. She was a huge influence on Beyonce. Country music was something that Tina Turner was interested in from the very beginning. So there’s a lot of historical references there too.
Dana Taylor:
And then finally, if Beyonce achieves significant crossover success specifically with making inroads in country radio, do you think we’ll see a seismic shift in the industry?
Melissa Ruggieri:
Honestly, no, I don’t. I think it’ll be looked at as an anomaly like Old Town Road was, although I would of course argue that there’s a lot more substance lyrically and musically to these Beyonce songs so far. But I think also, I mean, I’ve known a lot of radio programmers in my career, and I know how those playlists are determined. And it’s not like it was 30, 40 years ago when a DJ could go with his or her gut and hear something and say, this sounds great. Let’s put it on. I mean, I just heard Billy Joel talking the other day about how when Piano Man came out, no radio station wanted to touch that, but some disc jockey in Long Island or somewhere in New York had heard it and said, yeah, let’s put this on. That doesn’t happen anymore. I mean, it’s all dictated by listener research, by corporate politics, by corporate policies, by all of those things.
And there’s so much stringency surrounding all of that, that even if you are working in country radio right now and you love these Beyonce songs and you think that this is certainly country music regardless of the artist, there’s just a lot out there that’s going to say, yeah, but… There’s a lot of, yeah, but. Now I do think that Beyonce’s fans are certainly going to be calling all the stations and making their voice heard and making sure that she is getting the attention from the listener. So I think there’s going to come a point where a lot of these stations have to play it because they are hearing from listeners saying that we want to hear it. But honestly, I think it’s going to be more of a begrudging obligation than any type of enlightenment and something that we’re going to see being much easier going forward.
Dana Taylor:
Melissa, thank you for joining us on The Excerpt.
Melissa Ruggieri:
Thank you. Anytime.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks to our senior producer, Shannon Marie Green and Bradley Glance Rock for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I’m Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.
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