Why Cowboy Carter’s Grammys win was so important

Grammys graphic (Lauren Chavez/ The Puma Prensa)

Written By: Lauren Chavez, staff writter

There’s a saying thrown around when describing the first Sunday in February every year: “The best and worst night for the music industry.” As millions of fans, music enthusiasts, and those who don’t have anything better to do with their Sunday night gather around their TV to watch the Grammy Awards, a collective breath is held, only to be released once the coveted title for Album of the Year has been awarded at the end of the evening. 

What follows is a firestorm of blunt commentary, opinion tweets, and hate spewed from all sides as fans realize that the album was not commemorated in the way they wished. 

Album of the Year has long been a revered category at the Grammys, first awarded in 1954 at the first Grammy Awards. According to the Recording Academy’s website, choosing Album of the Year goes far beyond popular opinion and general excitement. Who the award is given to is selected by the current 13,000 voting members of the Academy, which is composed of performers, songwriters, producers, engineers, and other people involved in the recording industry.

This year’s Grammy Awards were no different, taking place at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles and hosted by comedian and talk show host Trevor Noah, who has presented for the iconic night five times now. 

The night was marked by enthusiastic performances by artists such as Sabrina Carpenter, Doechii, and Benson Boone, who swept audiences to their feet with choreographed dance numbers and detailed sets. The night culminated with the Los Angeles Fire Department presenting the Album of the Year as a nod to their work on the recent wildfires plaguing the city. 

The award was awaited with baited breath, as Billie Eilish’s recent album Hit Me Hard and Soft was widely regarded as the best candidate to win because of its raw, vulnerable, and deeply relatable lyrics, which touched the hearts of millions and broke countless records in 2024. 

The audience's hush was broken when Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé’s breakthrough country album, was announced as the winner. Immediately, the social media floodgates opened, with millions of people taking to Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok to voice their disapproval of this decision. This seems to become a problem every year, but multiple factors amplified this particular rage toward Cowboy Carter.

Many felt the album wasn’t “real country,” compared to what people are used to with the genre, specifically through artists like Zach Bryan or Chris Stapleton. A common complaint was also that people didn’t think many listened to the album and therefore shouldn’t have won, which is another theme seen time and time again. To the general public, popularity is synonymous with anything good, no matter the meaning or quality behind the body of work. 

With Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft’s production quality, extremely relatable and personal lyrics, and range of sounds and genres contributing to its overall vibe, it’s no wonder so many people were cheering it on. 

What they choose to ignore when discussing Cowboy Carter, however, is the deep symbolism and meaning behind something that many people view as “boring.”

Country music has long been associated with the American South, and while this is true, the genre's origins are different than most people realize. The banjo was created by enslaved Black people who made the instrument from gourds. They taught their enslavers how to play it, and they then appropriated it and began playing it in minstrel shows. 

The instrument became so popular through minstrelsy that it led to a genre called “hillbilly” music. “Hillbilly” artists used Black hymns and field songs in their work, working multiculturally and collaborating with Black artists. However, once the 1920s and hillbilly music began to be recorded professionally, record labels removed Black artists from the process, stripping them of their credit and refusing to exalt them for their work on the genre.

The sound was marketed as a sound for the white rural South, and today, the country music industry is largely dominated by white people. Although Black country artists have made progress in recent years, namely in artists like Shaboozey, many continue to be overlooked and criticized. 

Cowboy Carter was Beyoncé’s attempt at mixing the country genre with Black culture, and there are multiple examples of this throughout the album. In the song “Smoke Hour,” featuring Willie Nelson, multiple radio clips are played at the beginning of the song featuring notable Black musicians who helped pioneer combining genres, such as “Maybellene” by Chuck Berry. A “rodeo Chitlin Circuit” is mentioned in the song “Yaya”, connecting country aspects with the Chitlin Circuit, a collection of entertainment venues that Black musicians could perform at without fear in the segregated South during the 1940s and 50s. Finally, the horse that Beyonce is pictured sitting on on the album cover is called a Lipizzan, a rare breed of white stallion born black but eventually lightens to white. This could represent the whitewashing of country music throughout the years.

This album was significant, and despite having different sounds than what many people think of as country, it incorporated widely known references to country music that most people know and Black trailblazers in country music. Aside from the Album of the Year category, Beyonce became the first Black artist to win Best Country Album in Grammy’s history. 

While some Album of the Year awards seem to have been given because of popularity, it’s clear that the Recording Academy believed that, while Hit Me Hard and Soft is essential as well, Cowboy Carter was necessary in a way that hadn’t been seen in the category in a long time, if ever.