Dolly Parton has spoken out in support of Beyoncé after the singer was totally snubbed by Country Music Awards.
Earlier this year, the 9 To 5 singer made a guest appearance on Beyoncé’s latest album Cowboy Carter, which also featured a cover of Dolly’s classic hit Jolene, along with a host of other major figures from the country music genre.
However, despite the huge success of Cowboy Carter and its lead single Texas Hold ’Em, Beyoncé didn’t receive a single nomination at this year’s Country Music Awards, which did not go down well among music fans.
Asked about the snub by Variety, Dolly admitted she was only just hearing about it, initially suggesting: “You never know. There’s so many wonderful country artists that, I guess probably the country music field, they probably thought, well, we can’t really leave out some of the ones that spend their whole life doing that.”
However, she was quick to insist that Cowboy Carter is a “wonderful album” that Beyoncé can be “very, very proud of”.
“I think everybody in country music welcomed her and thought that [the album] was good. 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,” Dolly claimed.
It’s worth pointing out that other artists not traditionally associated with country music – most notably Post Malone – did secure nods at the CMAs.
Dolly also said of Beyoncé: “She’s a country girl in Texas and Louisiana, so she grew up with that base. It wasn’t like she just appeared out of nowhere.”
Beyoncé performed at the CMAs once before in 2016, when she and country icons The Chicks delivered a live version of the Grammy winner’s hit Daddy Lessons.
It was noted at the time that Bey didn’t exactly receive a warm response from the audience, and although she didn’t mention it explicitly, the record-breaking singer has claimed that Cowboy Carter 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”.
“Because of that experience, I did a deeper dive into the history of Country music and studied our rich musical archive,” she explained.