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Musician Beyoncé

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The Super Bowl 2024 revolved not only around one pop star, Taylor Swift, but briefly also around Beyoncé. The 42-year-old singer released new music at the event that is heavily influenced by country. This obviously also causes irritation: Several US media outlets - such as "Entertainment Weekly" - unanimously report that a country radio station in the US state of Oklahoma initially did not want to play one of the new songs, "Texas Hold 'Em". . It was only after protests from the BeyHives, i.e. Beyoncé's fans, that the decision was made to do so.

According to Entertainment Weekly, a fan requested "Texas Hold 'Em" on country station KYKC. The station's managing director responded by email: "We don't play Beyoncé on KYKC because we are a country station." The fan posted a screenshot of the response on the social network X, and the whole thing went viral.

As a representative from SCORE, the parent company of the station KYKC, explained to Entertainment Weekly, the managing director is said to have simply not known that Beyoncé was now also doing country music. The managing director himself said that he reacted the same way he would have reacted to the request to play a Rolling Stones song on the country station. The station later wrote on This also applies to Beyoncé's second new song, "16 Carriages," a representative from the station told Entertainment Weekly.

more on the subject

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  • In the Super Bowl commercial: Beyoncé announces new album – with country overtones

  • Beyoncé live in Hamburg: Glittering by Jurek Skrobala

This isn't the first time there's been a controversy surrounding music by an African-American artist in the country music scene. In 2019, Billboard magazine, which publishes the US charts, removed Lil Nas The reason given was that the song did not contain enough country elements. When Beyoncé performed her song "Daddy Lessons" with the Dixie Chicks at the Country Music Awards in 2016, some audience members complained that a non-country musician shouldn't be part of the event, according to Entertainment Weekly. Others saw racism in such comments.

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