Oh, So Now Country Music Slighted Beyonce Via Grammy Nominations? (A Rant)

beyonce

WARNING: Language

I’ve got two words for you, and two words only if you feel that at any point, for anything, at any time, for any reason, that Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter, known throughout popular culture simply as Beyoncé, has somehow been screwed, disrespected, disenfranchised, or otherwise slighted by country music in any capacity. You know what those two words are?

FUCK OFF!

I am sick and damn tired of having to sit here at the helm of Saving Country Music and defend the country genre from unilateral attacks due to perceived slights against Beyoncé from country music, when all popular country music has done has been to unnecessarily ensconce her on a pedestal and help perpetuate her bloated and unjustified cult of personality just like the rest of popular culture has done in degrees that are in no way parallel with her talent level or contributions to music, especially for an artist that has absolutely positively nothing to do with country music in any capacity, and never has.

What is the issue now? It’s the news from the Associated Press—which is supposed to be America’s most unbiased news source, but is on record as being a bastion for pro-Beyonce asshole-licking sycophants and surrogates who will outright lie if necessary to protect and perpetuate the popularity of their Queen Bey—that the Grammy committee in country music denied Beyoncé’s request to be included on the country ballots for Grammy nominations.

This is how diseased the Beyoncé camp and her slavish, sycophantical, bordering on psychopathic fans are: On Tuesday morning (12-6) when the Grammy nominations were revealed, Beyoncé not only led all contenders with an incredible nine nominations, she also set a record for the entire 60 year history of the awards by being nominated in four separate genre categories in the same year.

But Beyoncé fans, and Beyoncé fans only, including many high-profile members of the entertainment press, are the only ones who could immediately find slights against Beyoncé behind these incredible, historic nominations, and immediately put pen to paper to complain about these clear injustices. What a miserable existence it must be when your favorite music artist pulls off something historic, and your first reaction is to complain.

Clearly Sturgill Simpson’s nomination for Album of the Year was nothing more than white America’s way to get a racist, white country star to somehow abscond with the Album of the Year from Beyoncé, who clearly deserves it more than anybody—said scores of Twitter accounts with strains of Beyoncé nicknames and song titles for their screen names, and Beyoncé as their avatar, as if that isn’t a creepy enough signifyer of the Stan Culture run rampant.

And of course, Beyoncé was clearly screwed because she didn’t receive any nominations in country.

You want to talk about getting screwed? Which one of the five nominees for the Grammy’s 2017 Album of the Year got to play the 2016 CMA Awards? Which one was given a predominant, headliner-level, marquee performance slot on the CMA stage? Was it Adele, Drake, or Justin Bieber? Was it Sturgill Simpson, who has turned country music upside down through the sheer power of his creative veracity and completely shifted the paradigm in the genre where the power over the music is finally moving back into the hands of the artists themselves, and has done all of this while scoring a #1 record and selling out rooms all across the country without a lick of radio play?

No, it was Beyoncé. It was Beyoncé.

That’s right. Beyoncé got to play the CMA’s, and Sturgill didn’t.

And you know what Beyoncé’s fans did after she got the incredible boon from country music, including her fans in the press, and specifically from The Associated Press?

The bitched. And they bitched some more. They bitched that she didn’t open the show, even though nobody said she would. They bitched because a few hick racists piped up on Twitter and in some comments sections. And by the way, fuck those racist assholes who truly left racist comments about Beyoncé’s CMA performance more than anybody. Don’t think for a second I’m trying to defend those pieces of shit.

But now once again the blanket of racism is being laid over country music for denying Queen Bey her clear mandate to be nominated and awarded every single fucking trophy in music in the country genre and beyond.

You want to know what’s racist? Here’s the line The Associated Press uses to justify why “Daddy Lessons” is a country song: “The lyrics include references to the Second Amendment, the Bible and shooting guns.”

…as if that’s all country music is about. By posting this, The Associated Press is clearly broadcasting how they perceive country music fans, and how ignorant they are about what country music is about. To them, country music is all about politics, all about white demographics. It’s all about Toby Keith putting a boot in your ass, and that represents the alpha and omega of the genre’s contributions to culture.

Every single day we have young black men and women getting shot and dying face down in the streets, getting systematically denied housing, employment, education, and opportunity because of the color of their skin. And it is an atrocity that the attention and vehemence for these very real issues of racism is getting watered down by the continued parade of accusations of race playing into perceived slights against a pop star by country.

Country music rolled out the red carpet for Beyoncé, and it continues to have its face spit in for it.

Let that be a lesson.

 

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