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Wednesday, February 14, 2024
Today’s Paper
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Music|Beyoncé Fan’s Radio Request Reignites Country Music Debate

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BEYONCÉ FAN’S RADIO REQUEST REIGNITES COUNTRY MUSIC DEBATE

A fan asked his Oklahoma radio station to play a new Beyoncé song. The request
was rejected, spurring hundreds of calls and emails about the exclusion of Black
musicians from the genre.

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Beyoncé released two new songs from her upcoming country-rock album after the
Super Bowl, diving deeper into a genre that has Black musicians at its roots.
Credit...Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Recording Academy


By Emily Schmall

Feb. 14, 2024Updated 9:13 p.m. ET

In Oklahoma, a small country music station that initially refused a listener’s
request to play a new song by Beyoncé was forced to change its tune after an
uproar from fans who say that Black artists are too often excluded from the
genre.

On Tuesday morning, Justin McGowan requested that the D.J.s at KYKC, a country
music radio station in Ada, play “Texas Hold ’Em,” one of two new songs Beyoncé
released as announced in a Super Bowl commercial on Sunday.

Beyoncé, who grew up in Houston, sings about hoedowns, and the twangy song also
features a fellow Black Grammy winner, Rhiannon Giddens, on banjo and viola.

The station manager, Roger Harris, emailed Mr. McGowan back with a concise
rejection: “We do not play Beyoncé at KYKC as we are a country music station.”
In sending the email, Mr. Harris unwittingly ignited a new flame in a
long-simmering debate over how Black artists fit into a genre that has Black
music at its roots.



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In the Super Bowl ad, Beyoncé joked that her new release would “break the
internet.” She wasn’t kidding.

Mr. McGowan put a screenshot of the rejection on social media, tagging a Beyoncé
fan group in a post that drew 3.4 million views on X and sparked conversations
on Reddit and TikTok.

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Emily Schmall is a correspondent for The Times. More about Emily Schmall

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