Beyoncé goes country
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 31 March 2024
⏱️ 35 minutes
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Summary
On Friday, Beyoncé dropped “Cowboy Carter,” her highly anticipated salute to country music. The album sparked new conversations about the forces that define country music and about whether Beyoncé’s turn to country could reshape the industry.
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Beyoncé’s turn to country came from her personal experience of not feeling welcome at the 2016 CMA Awards. Beyoncé’s album, “Cowboy Carter,” has reignited conversations about what country music is, who gets to define the country genre, and if this move for Beyoncé helps to shape and expand the country genre for other Black artists.
In this episode of “Post Reports,” we talk to Black country artist Rissi Palmer about her experience in the country music industry, the forces that define country music and what Beyoncé’s country music moment means for Black country artists.
Today’s show was produced by Peter Bresnan and Taylor White with help from Rennie Svirnovskiy. It was edited by Lucy Perkins and mixed by Sean Carter.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just a note before we start, this episode has a swear word that you'll hear early on, so please keep that in mind while listening. |
| 0:12.0 | Tanner Davenport has loved country music ever since he was a kid. |
| 0:17.0 | Nashville was home for me. |
| 0:19.0 | I grew up right next to a farm like my next door neighbor was a legitimate farmer |
| 0:26.7 | and I would spend my weekends outside kind of like talking to the horses and the cows |
| 0:31.6 | on the weekends because I'm an only child growing up. |
| 0:34.9 | Like I don't have any siblings and so there was a lot of solitude growing up and so my right |
| 0:40.9 | hand person essentially was music. |
| 0:44.0 | Tanner listened to artists like Jody Messina, Leanne Womack, and The Chicks. |
| 0:50.0 | Their music struck a chord with him. |
| 0:52.4 | He would hear these songs about dirt roads and loneliness, |
| 0:56.7 | and he would feel like the details were pulled directly |
| 0:59.2 | from the world that he lived in. |
| 1:01.7 | But then, in 2016, Tanner had an experience that really shook his relationship to country |
| 1:08.1 | music. Tanner was a few years out of college at this point working at a Christian radio station in |
| 1:14.0 | Nashville and he had heard rumors that something big was going to go down at the |
| 1:19.8 | 2016 Country Music Association Awards. |
| 1:23.4 | Welcome to the 50th annual CMA Awards. |
| 1:27.8 | What a beautiful sight. |
| 1:30.8 | The CMA Awards are like the Oscars of country music and Tanner had managed to score |
| 1:36.3 | tickets just before the show started he checked his phone and he saw that |
| 1:40.8 | Beyoncé had arrived on the red carpet. |
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