This past weekend, Beyoncé closed out her Cowboy Carter tour, which supported her 2024 album of the same name. Her Cowboy Carter era was a record-breaking run for country music: The album made Beyoncé the first Black woman to win a Grammy for Best Country Album (she also won Album of the Year for the work, a first for Knowles-Carter herself). And the tour itself made more than $400 million, making it the highest-grossing country tour of all time. Artists featured on the album went on to top the country charts as well, like Shaboozey, whose features on CC preceded his own solo hit “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” which went on to match Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” as the longest-running No. 1 song of all time on the Billboard Hot 100.

One would think that after such a historic run, an artist like Beyoncé would end up on something resembling country music’s Mt. Rushmore. This was not the case. During this entire country run, Beyoncé faced criticisms from country’s gatekeepers over whether the music was really country, whether she should be welcomed in Nashville, and what country music is supposed to sound like. She acknowledged those critiques, even if she didn’t directly speak to them: Interstitial imagery from the CC tour included videos of conservative news pundits critiquing her for daring to make country music.

My guest this week – McArthur Genius, New York Times columnist, and UNC-Chapel Hill sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom – thinks a lot of that critique was racialized, which makes sense when she also explains why country music is actually America’s last bastion of what she calls “race music.” 

“Does country music still have a race problem?” Tressie asks during our interview this week. She answers her own question: “Country music is a race problem. If we didn't have a race problem, we wouldn't have country music. They would just be pop stars.”

In our chat she elaborates, in detail, on the racialized way in which country music came to be. Listen for a history lesson! But I want to point out a different part of our conversation this week, which I’ve been thinking about a lot: The way pop stars like Beyoncé have increasingly gone silent, even as their cultural powers, popularity, and ubiquity continue to ascend to new heights. 

Beyoncé rarely gives traditional interviews to the press. One of the last times she got close, in Vogue a few years ago, she and her team just wrote the article themselves. She isn’t alone in this. Megastars like Taylor Swift employ the same tactics, leading The New York Times’ Taffy Brodesser-Akner to profile Swift at the height of her Eras tour by… going to a bunch of concerts and just interviewing fans, wondering in the piece itself whether the art of the celebrity profile is actually dying. 

Why won’t our biggest pop stars talk to us? And what do we lose when they don’t? In Beyoncé’s case, hearing her speak on country, its complicated racial legacy, and the struggles she’s endured in the genre – even as one of the most celebrated pop stars of all time! – could move the needle as much, or maybe even more, than her groundbreaking country album did. Tressie also points out that Beyoncé speaking on all of this, or any of this, isn’t just good for the industry or our national conversation on race. It’s good for her legacy. 

She writes in her NYT op-ed on Cowboy Carter: “Legacy requires legibility. It is almost imperative for a pop artist to do a bit more than gesture toward the textuality in her work if she wants that text to be legible. When she doesn’t, the audience fills in the gaps… letting fans litigate your artistic statement in this fragmented media culture leads to a chaotic message… she will have to do more than gesture to her legacy for us to help her fulfill it.”

When we talked, Tressie compared Beyoncé’s current moment to a brilliant run Stevie Wonder had in the ’70s, a time in which Stevie cranked out albums, in rapid succession, that were both critically-acclaimed and commercially successful, and cemented his status as a music icon, not just a star. 

“Stevie Wonder has always articulated his political vision,” Tressie says. She pointed to his outspoken support of Palestine, and his lobbying for a federal MLK holiday (and he did that lobbying through SONG!). “He does not leave it up to audience interpretation. That’s some of the reasons why we consider him a cultural great.” 

“It's not that the culture is poor because Beyonce isn't in it [in this way],” she said. “That is one thing, but as someone who cares about Black women getting their artistic due, I think she's poorer for not being able to do it.”

Check out the rest of our interview to hear Tressie be brilliant on Beyoncé, country, and a lot of other things. And if you’re so inclined, write me back with your thoughts: Why are the biggest pop stars so quiet these days? And does this matter nearly as much as I think?

Alright, till next week!

-Sam  

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