Beyoncé has put her cowgirl hat on and is shaking up the country music world with her new music. This has all eyes on country radio and the genre as a whole as folks wonder if the music will be embraced by the very white country establishment.

On Sunday, Queen Bey dropped two singles, “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages,” before the release of her new album, Renaissance: Act II, on March 29. The album is the second of three projects in the Renaissance trilogy. The BeyHive has called to request her new tracks on country radio stations nationwide. 

On Tuesday, X (formerly Twitter) user @jussato shared, “I requested Texas Hold’ Em at my local country radio station (KYKC) and after requesting, i received an email from the radio station stating “We do not play Beyoncé on KYKC as we are a country music station,” with a screenshot of the email response from S.C.O.R.E. (South Central Oklahoma Radio Enterprises) Broadcasting, which the Chickasaw Nation owns.

Following additional requests for the song, KYKC added “Texas Hold ‘Em” to its rotation and even highlighted the track’s addition on X.

While the country music station fixed this dilemma, it asks how bigger stations will receive the Houston legend’s transition to country music. The verdict is undetermined, as the song was released days ago.

“Even when you’re seeing streaming playlists add a record to the top of their playlist, it takes radio a little while to catch up,” Country Insider editor Brian Mansfield told Variety. “We saw that with Oliver Anthony [and his viral sensation “Rich Men North of Richmond”]. That was putting up insane consumption numbers, and it took radio forever to get on board with that.” 

Even though KYKC was apprehensive, some country radio stations have embraced Beyoncé’s new music with open arms.

“I can’t speak for the industry,” San Francisco’s KBAY’s program director and operations manager Bo Matthews told Variety, “but we’re gonna play it. What everybody else will do, I have no idea. I can only tell you that history will show we were early with things like Zach Bryan, whose music is some of the biggest in the world. Country radio has been slow to adopt that, for some reason I can’t figure. I think for most country stations, they really want (the signal) to come from Nashville, and I have no idea what Columbia will do.”

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