Luke Bryan reacts to the lack of CMA Awards nominations for Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’: ‘If you’re gonna make country albums, come into our world.’
Luke Bryan is venturing a guess at why Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” was snubbed by the Country Music Assn. Awards.
Despite the album debuting at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart — making Beyoncé the first Black woman ever to top the chart — it was shut out of the 2024 CMA Awards nominations, which were announced last month.
“It’s a tricky question,” the “Play It Again” singer said Tuesday on the “Andy Cohen Live” radio show. “Obviously, Beyoncé made a country album and Beyoncé has a lot of fans out there that have her back.”
But, as is true for himself, Bryan continued, “Just because she made one [album],” she wasn’t guaranteed any awards.
The “American Idol” host went on to defend the CMA voting body, saying, “They vote what they think should make it” and inevitably “a lot of great music’s overlooked.”
Dolly Parton, who is featured on “Cowboy Carter” in a track titled “Dolly P,” similarly suggested to Variety last month that the snub was nothing personal but instead a byproduct of an awards race in a highly saturated genre.
“I don’t think it was a matter of shutting out, like doing that on purpose. I think it was just more of what the country charts and the country artists were doing, that do that all the time, not just a specialty album,” Parton said.
But while the “Jolene” singer insisted that “everybody in country music welcomed” Beyoncé, Bryan implied that the “Texas Hold ‘Em” singer has continued to keep her distance from the genre — and the “family” formed around it.
“Everybody loved that Beyoncé made a country album.
