Luke Bryan weighed on Beyoncé being shut out of the CMA Awards nominations despite her debut country album, “Cowboy Carter,” topping the charts.
“Everybody loved that Beyoncé made a country album. Nobody’s mad about it. But where things get a little tricky … if you’re gonna make country albums, come into our world and be country with us a little bit,” the singer said on SiriusXM’s “Andy Cohen Live” Monday.
“Beyoncé can do exactly what she wants to. She’s probably the biggest star in music,” he went on.
“But come to an award show and high-five us, and have fun and get in the family, too. And I’m not saying she didn’t do that. … But country music’s a lot about family.”
Bryan, 48, also said, “I’m all for everybody coming in and making country albums and all that. But just by declaring that, just because she made one — just ’cause I make one, I don’t get any nominations.”
The “American Idol” judge also referenced the pop star’s fans, known as the Beyhive, for criticizing her Country Music Association’s snub.
“Beyoncé has a lot of fans out there that have her back,” Bryan noted. “And if she doesn’t get something they want, man, they come at you — as fans should do.”
The “Drunk on You” singer isn’t the first to address Beyoncé’s lack of CMA nominations.
Last month, Dolly Parton — who’s notably featured on “Cowboy Carter” — defended the association’s voting committee during an interview with Variety.
“There’s so many wonderful country artists that … they probably thought, well, we can’t really leave out some of the ones that spend their whole life doing that,” Parton, 78, said.
“But it was a wonderful album. She can be very, very proud of, and I think everybody in country music welcomed her and thought that, that was good.”
The music icon continued, “So I don’t think it was a matter of shutting out, like doing that on purpose. I think it was just more of what the country charts and the country artists were doing, that do that all the time, not just a specialty album.”
Meanwhile, Kelly Clarkson sympathized with Beyoncé’s situation in a recent interview with NBC10 Boston as she recalled the country music genre being “hard” to break into.
“I was told at a lunch if I didn’t quit pop music and just go country, I would not be played,” she said.
“I was literally told that to my face at a lunch, and I was like, ‘OK, no offense, but I’m not ever gonna just pick one.’”
Following the backlash to her 2016 CMAs performance of “Daddy Lessons” with The Chicks, Beyoncé explained that she was prepared for the pushback when she discussed her motivation to release a country album back in March.
“This album has been over five years in the making. It was born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed…and it was very clear that I wasn’t,” she wrote on Instagram at the time.
“But, because of that experience, I did a deeper dive into the history of Country music and studied our rich musical archive.”
“The criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me,” she continued.
“act ii is a result of challenging myself, and taking my time to bend and blend genres together to create this body of work.”
The 32-time Grammy winner added, “This ain’t a Country album. This is a ‘Beyoncé’ album.”
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