Beyonce fans forced a country music radio station to make a dramatic about-face this week after refusing to play the singer’s new single, Texas Hold ‘Em.
The 42-year-old singer surprisingly dropped the country song, which is also the name of one of the most popular variants of poker, during the Super Bowl on Sunday.
She also announced the release date of the eighth studio album, the second of the Renaissance trilogy, Act II, which is expected to be entirely country-influenced.
But on X, formerly Twitter, user Justin McGowan revealed Tuesday that his local country music station, Oklahoma’s 100.1 KYKC, refused to play the song.
He wrote: ‘I requested Texas Hold ‘Em from my local country radio station (KYKC) and after my request I received an email from the radio station stating, “We don’t play Beyonce on KYKC because we are a country music station.” @BeyLegion.’
Beyonce fans forced a country music radio station to make a dramatic about-face this week after refusing to play the singer’s new single, Texas Hold ‘Em
The singer (pictured on Tuesday) surprisingly dropped the country song during Sunday’s Super Bowl, but one radio station refused to play the artist
On Tuesday, X user Justin McGowan took to the platform to reveal that his local country music station, Oklahoma’s 100.1 KYKC, refused to play Texas Hold ‘Em
Justin tagged Beyoncé Legion at the end of his tweet, Beyoncé’s biggest fan club, and wrote a thread accusing the station of racism and encouraging his fellow fans to email the station as well.
This pleased many fans, namely attorney Keaton Grant who joked, “They had my attorney from Oklahoma type an email,” adding the damning evidence to his tweet via a screenshot.
Others flooded Justin’s replies, quoting tweets with anger about KYKC and frustration that what was clearly a country song had been ignored because Beyoncé was known for her work in other genres.
Four hours and 3.2 million impressions later, KYKC took to their X account and wrote, “A lot of calls are coming in for Beyoncé’s Texas Hold ‘Em. It will appear in a few minutes, with an image of the song in the queue.
Beyoncé fans were divided in their response, with some pleased with the channel’s quick action and jokingly saying they should prepare for the rest of the album, while others wondered why it took internet bashing to make it happen .
Country music usually has a simple form and folk lyrics. The harmonies are generally accompanied by instruments such as banjos, violins, harmonicas, and many types of guitars (including acoustic, electric, steel, and resonator guitars).
Texas Hold ‘Em is considered uptempo country pop.
Although it contains elements of soul, it also contains elements of folk and is set to a ‘quick-picked’ banjo and acoustic guitar melody.
Justin tagged Beyoncé Legion at the end of his tweet, Beyoncé’s biggest fan club, and wrote a thread accusing the channel of racism and encouraging his fellow fans to email the channel as well
This pleased many fans, namely attorney Keaton Grant who joked, “They had my attorney from Oklahoma type an email,” adding the damning evidence to his tweet via a screenshot
Fans flooded Justin’s replies and quoted tweets with anger about KYKC and frustration that what was clearly a country song had been ignored because Beyoncé was known for her work in other genres
It was clear that the ‘Beyhive’ will be ready to fight for Beyoncé’s right to country music, as many of them did for Lil Nas
Fans wrote: ‘Did they listen to the song? Or do they deny the request based on you know what?”
‘Beyoncé just released a CONTRY song, your station is about this kind of music, that’s why you can and SHOULD play Beyoncé! please @1001KYKC, could you play Beyoncé’s “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM” on your station? Thank you.’
“Is it because they don’t play Beyoncé or they don’t play black people???”
“I guess we have to teach them the hard way. again. You’d think they’d learn it after the incident on Old Town Road and the protest led to it becoming the biggest billboard song of all time.”
‘This won’t be the first and certainly won’t be the last. Y’all better get ready to get ready, these white country people aren’t going to like this war, they’re about to get in our faces. It’s bad enough that these charts STILL call it “Pop/R&B.”
“I can only imagine what other black country artists they don’t play.”
‘The racism starts so early. ‘TEXAS HOLD ‘EM’ AND ’16 CARRIAGES’ are COUNTRY SONGS.’
“Give me one VALID reason why you wouldn’t play these country songs on your country music station???? This is simply racism.’
“Lol, the racism we’re going to witness as Beyoncé digs into her country’s roots is going to be intergalactic.”
In 2019, Lil Nas X and his song Old Town Road Ft. Initially rejected as a country song, Billy Ray Cyrus officially became Billboard’s longest-running number one song at 17 weeks, a big day for black country music
A representative for KYKC owner (South Central Oklahoma Radio Enterprises (SCORE) told MailOnline: ‘We didn’t even know she was releasing a country song at first.
‘When we started getting requests for it, we literally didn’t have it. No label or distributor could get it to us. So we literally couldn’t play it.
“Finally, after many phone calls and emails, we finally got the song and added it to not only our country station, KYKC, but it is also on our Top 40 station KXFC, and our classic hits station, KADA-FM.
“We’ve been playing Beyoncé for twenty years, so we’re fans.”
Addressing the accusations of racism, they continued: “First of all, we are owned by a minority-owned company, so there’s that.
‘Secondly, we make music when it’s good. We don’t care who they are or what they look like.
“Third, we embraced Beyoncé” when she burst onto the scene decades ago. She has always been a core artist for us, especially on two of our stations.
“We honestly didn’t know she had released a ‘country’ song, and no distributor sent it to us. As soon as we finally got it in, we added it to our playlist.”
In addition to Texas Hold ‘Em, Beyoncé released 16 Carriages ahead of the full album’s release on March 24.
Part II follows Renaissance, which was released in July 2022. Beyoncé’s six previous albums are Dangerably in Love (2003), B’Day (2006), I Am… Sasha Fierce (2008), 4 (2011), Beyoncé (2013), and Lemonade (2016).
Beyonce announced that the album would be part of a trilogy conceived during the pandemic, hours before the album’s release.