Beyonce’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” Is A Country Song- And A Damn Good One
As of last week, the most popular song in America was Beyonce’s “Texas Hold ‘Em”- the first time a country song by a Black artist has ever topped the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and/or Country charts. And it absolutely deserves to be there. It’s a sultry uptempo celebration of dive bars and boogies, anchored by a banjo and ending in a flourish of fiddle, but the real star here is Beyonce’s voice. She’s always been one of the most talented vocalists of our generation; it’s been a pleasure to hear her grow from a young ingenue in Destiny’s Child to the mature and confident singer she is today, but admittedly it’s rare that a performer has the versatility to switch gears across such vastly different genres as R&B and modern country. So how exactly did she bridge the gap?
With soul, the predecessor to both styles. She’s not quite the first to use soul as a crossover- Chris Stapleton’s transition from bluegrass to pop country is a notable example- but she’s the first Black female artist to do it and she made a much bigger jump than Stapleton did. In the process, she released one of the year’s best country songs- breathing life into a failing genre mired in six-packs, pickup trucks, and overt racism.
It’s no secret that country music has turned into slick corporate pop garbage, an endless parade of nasal whining by Kenny Chesney clones churned out by the Nashville machine. Part of this stems from the major labels’ desire to expand their audience by marketing their acts as “mainstream.” I grew up listening to ‘80s and ‘90s country- Alabama, Garth Brooks, Reba McEntire, Mary Chapin Carpenter, George Strait- and they not only sounded country, but they looked like hillbillies. If you were flipping through clearance CDs at Tower Records and found one with some yokel in a mullet, wifebeater, and flannel shirt, you knew which genre it was. Contrast this with today’s carefully curated and Photoshopped images of male stars in tailored jeans and pristine boots looking like Houston club promoters.
Despite spending umpteen millions revamping its image, modern country music somehow wound up as inbred and ingrown as a toenail- and equally as painful. A quick glance at today’s charts show a slew of nearly-identical song titles more fitting for an early-2000s emo band: “Save Me,” “Can’t Break Up Now,” “Burn it Down,” “Last Night,” “Thinkin’ Bout Me.” Cringe. It’s also become more of a boys’ club, which is why Taylor Swift gracefully exited, and feisty feminist late-90s singers like Shania Twain and Natalie Maines wouldn’t find their footing today. Last of all, it’s had more than a few instances of blatant racism; one singer’s album sales shot up after he used the n-word and superstar Jason Aldean filmed his most recent video at a courthouse previously used for lynchings.
Which begs the question: why did Beyonce- one of the most successful musicians of our time- want to enter a genre with such a piss-poor attitude towards women and minorities?
Because she’s a native Texan and it’s part of her heritage.
I grew up going to the Houston rodeo every year. It was this amazing diverse and multicultural experience where there was something for every member of the family, including great performances, Houston-style fried Snickers, and fried turkey legs. One of my inspirations came from the overlooked history of the American Black cowboy. Many of them were originally called cowhands, who experienced great discrimination. . . these Black rodeos showcased incredible performers and helped us reclaim our place in Western history and culture.
-Beyonce, 2021
As I’ve written about before, American roots music- which includes folk, bluegrass, and country- gets whitewashed all too often. Its most popular instrument, the banjo, was developed by Black African slaves on sugar plantations in the West Indies but modeled after a much earlier predecessor first recorded around 1520 in the Gambia (although it likely existed much earlier than that.) Due to the strict prohibition on traditional African ceremonies or languages, slaves kept their musical heritage alive by mixing West African patterns and structures with Anglo-American verses and European harmony to create a catalog that ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax described as “intensely functional. . . spirituals, reels, work songs, ballads and blues.” A brilliant piece of scholarship by researcher Sylviane Diouf recently examined the link between early American blues and Muslim West African features- such as melisma, wavy intonation, and call-and-response patterns- that date back as far as the 7th century.
[Beyonce] discovered that 50 per cent of cowboys were Black, in the 19th and early 20th century, and country music, of course, has been largely appropriated. She wanted to reappropriate Americana and country music from a Black perspective. . .
-Es Devlin, Beyonce’s set designer, 2023
This isn’t Beyonce’s first foray into the genre; she had a 2016 track called “Daddy Lessons,” sung at the CMAs with the Chicks, that was praised by critics but poorly received by regular country listeners and rejected by the Grammys. This made her even more determined to release a country album- but one that also reflected Black Western heritage and culture. While Queen Bey may have co-authored “Texas Hold ‘Em” with a few seasoned writers, the inspiration, determination, and sassy swag are all hers. (If you’re not familiar with Nashville: many country artists don’t write their own material, let alone provide any kind of creative direction at all.) And we’re thankful for Beyonce’s persistence, because she’s just put out one hell of a tune.
It almost didn’t get played.
Within 24 hours of its release, only 8 out of 150 country stations nationwide put the song on rotation. When a listener requested “Texas Hold ’Em” on Oklahoma’s KYKC 100.1 FM, the manager wrote back, “We do not play Beyoncé on KYKC as we are a country music station.” They later tried to furiously backpedal by claiming that staff were unaware it was a country song- despite fiddle, banjo, four-on-the-floor rhythm, and lyrics referencing “Texas,” “cards,” “boogie,” and “dive bars”- but they’d already sparked a national outcry. A petition demanding that Beyonce receive country radio airplay gathered 28,000 signatures by early March 2024, along with a trending Twitter hashtag of #Beyonceiscountry. Any remaining dissent was soundly trounced by country’s grand dame, Dolly Parton, who came out swinging in support of Beyonce (and even hinted that her full album might contain a cover of “Jolene.”)
One of the most amazing things about Beyonce’s upcoming country album is that she knew she’d catch flak from racist haters; as one of the world’s most successful musicians, she had nothing to prove; and she’d already failed to break into the genre once before- but she did it anyway. That, my friends, is the mark of a true artist: when the drive to create, to tell a story, to convey a feeling, surpasses any doubts or derision that might arise.
And so far, the results have been overwhelmingly positive. “Texas Hold ‘Em” has been hailed by music critics, journalists, and commentators as a landmark single, a tipping point, and a major cultural shift that finally opened up country music to a wider audience. Nashville studio execs had spent two decades and millions’ worth of glossy concert posters, hair gel, and image consultant fees trying to achieve that last one- and then a Black female artist did it virtually overnight through the power of her music. Beyonce’s had a lot of successes over her stellar 27-year career, but this definitely ranks as one of the most important.
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