By now, every person with a streaming subscription and internet access to press play has had a taste of Beyoncé's 'Cowboy Carter,' an album that's not just reigning over charts, but threatening to turn the very gateposts of "country" inside and out.
The Georgia country musician Gavin Adcock recently caused a stir when he announced his show: Sometimes, you have to laugh to keep from crying. "There are only three people in front of me on the Apple Music country charts, and one of them is Beyoncé. Tell her we're coming for her f####' ass." He didn't quite stop there, doubling down with, "That s### ain't country music, and it ain't never been country music and it ain't never gonna be country music."
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The online response was like a Nashville honky-tonk, fans accusing Adcock of gatekeeping, of even subtly racist undertones. If it weren't for the Beyoncé name, none of us would even know you," one commenter wrote. "That was a local bar you went to? She's at Arenas, sold out, singing country.
Another added a history lesson: "It takes 5 minutes of research to see who came up with country music. Because you gentrify it, doesn't make it yours nor the overseer to of who can make music under said genre."
And then the mic-drop line arrived: "Black folks didn't say shit when Sam Smith, Adele, Pink, Eminem, Paul Wall, Bubba Sparks, Post Malone and all the ones before them showed up on the R&B or rap charts." Why all the hate?"
Adcock attempted to clean up his comments later in an Instagram post, pretending to have enjoyed Beyoncé's music as a child and calling her Super Bowl performance "kick-ass." But he also insisted that with his ability to be "a little bit of both people" in his head, 'Cowboy Carter' "doesn't country, know what I mean," and that it's not fair to force artists like him to compete with it.
Beyoncé didn't just dip her toe in country; she took a cannonball, learned all about the genre's roots, and released a Grammy-winning album that reimagines what 21st-century country music can be. "Cowboy Carter" won Best Country Album and Album of the Year at the 2025 Grammys, sealing its legacy in both the country and pop culture canons.
We must not forget that this is not the first time Beyoncé has ridden right up into resistance. Her CMA performance of "Daddy Lessons" in 2016 encountered much of the same pushback. "It was very clear that Beyoncé was not included," she said. But rather than retreat, she doubled down, delving further into the genre's Black roots and finding her voice to reclaim a place that, historically, Black artists laid the groundwork for.
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