Beyoncé is getting played on country radio. Could her success help other Black women?

When an employee of the KYKC, a country music radio station based in a small Southern Oklahoma town, hit send on an email earlier this week responding to a listener’s request to hear a new song, they probably didn’t expect to make national headlines. The employee later claimed they had not watched the second half of the Super Bowl and were not aware that one of the world’s biggest pop stars had released a new single that opens with a banjo riff when they sent the reply. But soon, that disappointed listener was posting a screenshot of the email response, which read: “Hi — we do not play Beyoncé on KYKC as we are a country music station.”

The response set off a rapid chain of events: Beyoncé fans who had seen the screenshot wrote or called KYKC to request the song in droves. Within a few hours, the station was playing the song, “Texas Hold ‘Em,” on its air. Beyoncé’s team serviced the single widely to country radio, and by the end of the week it had become the singer’s first single to appear on Billboard’s country airplay chart, having gotten spins on 100 stations nationwide.

But that initial exchange reignited long-running conversations about racism in country music, and the backlash solidified a complaint against country radio stations in particular: that they act as gatekeepers of a stereotype that the genre is limited to white artists. That complaint has proven valid and meaningful. And the efforts of Beyoncé’s fans to challenge that perception offer the chance to demystify the crucial role that format plays in the careers of musicians chasing commercial success. Country radio continues to be the most effective way to obtain listeners for artists working in the genre. Success within the format also determines eligibility for Country Music Association (CMA) awards. In short, it’s both the surest pathway to legitimacy in a tight-knit industry as well as a source of financial benefit.