'Just not country' How Houston saloons rate Beyoncé's latest hit
The Guardian|March 05, 2024
The Shady Acres saloon is a hole-in-the-wall country dive bar about eight miles northwest of Beyoncé's childhood home in T Houston, Texas. On a Wednesday evening, a few pickup trucks are parked out front.
Dina Gachman
'Just not country' How Houston saloons rate Beyoncé's latest hit

Inside there is a wooden bar with dollar bills stapled to the ceiling. Texas beers such as Shiner Bock and Lone Star are on tap and a jukebox near the pool table plays Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Jeannie C Riley's Harper Valley PTA. Beyoncé's new song, the cheeky hoedown Texas Hold 'Em - which recently made her the first Black woman to top Billboard's country music chart and is currently in its second week at UK No 1 - isn't on the playlist.

Beyoncé has never been shy about voicing her Texas pride, but what some people perceive as her sudden switch to country on her forthcoming album, after the house music history lesson of her 2022 album Renaissance, has country radio stations refusing to play her new song - though one in Oklahoma had to back down after an online campaign. Some diehard country music lovers are questioning Beyoncé's devotion to the genre and whether her new songs should even be considered country, reactions that overlook the Black roots of country - and Beyoncé's history with the genre, from the song Daddy Lessons, from her 2016 album Lemonade, to the stetsons worn by Destiny's Child.

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