In April Beyonce was the first black artist to reach number one on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart with her eighth solo studio album. Cowboy Carter. According to the Country Music Association’s written standards, their inclusion on this list would qualify them for the Album of the Year award at the 2024 CMA Awards on Nov. 20. When the CMA announced its nominations on Monday, the candidates for this category included some of the biggest names in the genre, including Kacey Musgraves, Luke Combs, Chris Stapleton, Jelly Roll, And Cody Johnson. But Cowboy Carter did not make the list, nor did the first single, “Texas Hold ‘Em,” which held the number one spot on the Hot Country Songs chart for ten weeks.

However, Shaboozey, one of Beyoncé’s collaborators on the album, received nominations for the first time. “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” which still tops the Billboard Hot 100, was nominated for Single of the Year, and the singer-songwriter is in the running for New Artist of the Year alongside other rising stars, including Megan Moroney, Mitchell Tenpenny, And Bailey Carpenter. In a social media post after the nominations were announced, Shaboozey noted the impact Beyoncé had on the genre. “It goes without saying,” he wrote. “Thank you @Beyonce for opening a door, starting a conversation, and giving us one of the most innovative country albums of all time!”

The exclusion of Cowboy Carter has caused a stir, but Beyoncé’s comments before the album’s release may have foreshadowed it: She began working on music with country roots more than five years ago. “It grew out of an experience I had years ago when I didn’t feel welcome… and it was very clear that I wasn’t,” she wrote. “But because of that experience, I dove deeper into the history of country music and studied our rich music archive.” (A spokesperson for Beyoncé did not immediately respond to Vanity Fair’s questions about the CMAs.)

Fans and critics widely interpreted the message as a veiled reference to her experience performing with the Chicks at the November 2016 CMA Awards, days before the vote that year. Although some stars of the genre praised her for taking the stage with the band, attendees later said the crowd booed her. At least one fellow musician complained – some felt this was clearly racist – that a pop star had stolen the show from the genre’s leaders. Meanwhile, on the CMA’s Facebook page, hordes of commenters attacked the organization for hosting Beyoncé, pointing to her past of speaking out against police brutality.

In a comment to TMZ about this year’s nominations, the singer’s father said, Matthew Knowles, said he believed the CMA never apologized to Beyoncé after their experience in 2016. Ultimately, the organization’s decision to Cowboy Carter “In the current state of American culture,” that makes sense, he added. “There are more white people in America, and unfortunately they don’t vote based on ability and achievement. Sometimes it’s still a white versus black thing.”

Founded in the late 1950s, the CMA is a Nashville-based trade association with categories for members from across the industry, including artists, publishers, managers, record labels, radio representatives, trade publications and composers. It tends to reflect the conventional wisdom of the city’s Music Row. Voting members must be “professionals who work full-time and derive their income primarily from the country music industry” and belong to one of those groups. Although the CMA has some public eligibility requirements, nominations for the CMA Awards, also known as “Country Music’s Biggest Night,” can seem opaque. The association’s more than 6,000 members submit their nominations by email, which those members then rank in a second round.

Frustration with one’s choices is nothing new, and in 1964 a group of musicians and club owners in California founded the Academy of Country Music with the intention of providing representation and recognition for West Coast artists. Even in the modern era, judgments about genres continue to be a problem. In 2021, Musgraves released Pursued by misfortune, an album that moved away from traditional country music instrumentation, although the songwriting was not too dissimilar to that of their 2018 album, Golden hour, which was named Album of the Year at the CMAs. Not long after the release of Pursued by misfortune, The Recording Academy’s Country Screening Committee decided that it should be submitted for the 2022 Grammy Awards as a Pop Album, and instead it was accepted by the Pop Screening Committee.

The Grammys’ decisions do not affect country groups, and the CMA has never made a similar announcement. Yet Musgraves, a former favorite of the group, was absent from the nominations list the following year. Three years after that release, their latest album Deeper well, features more folk inspirations and was nominated for this year’s awards ceremony.

In an interview for GQIn the October cover story of “The 40 Years of the 40 Years,” Beyoncé said that genre boundaries and rules have never been of much importance to her. “From the beginning of my career and on every album, I’ve always mixed genres. Whether it’s R&B, dance, country, rap, zydeco, blues, opera, gospel, they’ve all influenced me in one way or another. I have favorite artists from every genre you can imagine. I believe genres are traps that imprison and divide us. I’ve seen that for 25 years in the music industry. Black artists and other artists of color have always created and mastered multiple genres.”