Since Florida Georgia Line arrived in 2012, the ongoing, oft-exhausted debate over what ought and ought not to be within the bounds of “country” has reached a frustrating fever pitch. Mainstream artists like HARDY love to chide their detractors for their close-minded dismissal of “boundary-pushing” in the mainstream. At the same time, traditionally-minded outcasts get their kicks apart from country music’s hallowed institutions, like the radio and annual award shows.
Throughout the 2010s, neither camp wanted much to do with one another, until country music caught up with the more democratized streaming world, and slowly sewed up a lot of its divisions with the help of collaboratively minded acts like Luke Combs and Parker McCollum. Smack in the middle of the 2020s, most country fans would agree that the tent is big enough for your Zach Tops and your Morgan Wallens.
However, earlier this month, two of country music’s most enigmatic stars brought the whole ugly squabble to light once more, but did so in a way that really put the whole argument in perspective. As most of you know, it all began when country-rock provocateur Gavin Adcock took exception to Beyoncé’s dominating run across Billboard’s country albums charts.
In response, the more sophisticated balladeer Charley Crockett shared a lengthy, back-handed statement on Instagram; he dismissively addressed Adcock’s concerns, arguing that hard-working, independent country artists have more pressing issues to worry about than a pop star’s appearance on the country music scene.
We’ll dig deeper into the merit of each artist’s argument shortly, but aside from the snippy back-and-forth, the most interesting aspect of this debate is how Adcock and Crockett so perfectly epitomize the two aforementioned camps of country music listeners.
On the one hand, Adcock identifies with simple, agrarian folk whose understanding of what is and isn’t country is more about upbringing & lifestyle than adherence to the traditions of the format. These are the guys who will casually put on their local country radio station in the car, just like their parents did when they were young. They’re not music historians, but they have a special place in their hearts for Garth Brooks, Rascal Flatts, or whoever else defined country music in their childhood.
Indeed, it’s passive listeners like this that keep the whole “small town pride” trope afloat; These folks might be inclined to give Morgan Wallen a pass for his pop and hip-hop flirtations, but turn their nose up at Beyoncé’s dubiously country output. Why? They see Wallen as a down-home good ol’ boy who listens to a little bit of everything, just like them. Conversely, Beyoncé is a fraudulent interloper with whom they have little in common, come to conquer a less competitive market at the expense of “real country artists.”
On the flipside, Charley Crockett and his ilk are cosmopolitan students of the game, raised on their grandparents’ old Willie and Waylon vinyls or initiated into the country fandom through the online neo-traditional movement. For them, country music is a sound, regardless of what the songs are about or who’s singing them. They may have nothing in common with Tyler Childers’s Appalachian upbringing, but they love the grounded, unphased commitment to storytelling and twang.
Ultimately, there’s merit to both points of view; country music has always been about tradition, and for decades, it’s been the art form of choice for the unsung “fly over states.” It’s also a style of music unlike any other, and just because a nominally country artist declares a trap-laden hip-hop foray like “You Proof” as a “country song,” it certainly does not make it so.
While there’s room to discuss the semantics of what is and isn’t qualifiably country, in 2025, we should be well beyond this debate overall.
Basically, since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2020s have been the most productive era for country music since at least the late 1990s. For the first time in decades, the “it” artists of the moment are selling out multiple nights at a time at FOOTBALL STADIUMS. We’ve finally found room for true-blue twangers like Zach Top to coexist at country radio with the likes of Old Dominion and Cody Johnson. The rising tide of Morgan Wallen, Zach Bryan, and Luke Combs has lifted every ship, giving country artists of all persuasions a chance to reach the highest levels.
So in a sense, Charley Crockett is right that shaking our fists at Beyoncé’s crossover LP is counterproductive to the cause of growing the roots movement. Gavin Adcock has built himself an impressive platform, but attracting the ire of one of music’s biggest fanbases makes this unaffected rebel look more like a petty attention-seeker. More than likely, if you hadn’t already formed an opinion as to whether or not COWBOY CARTER is a country album, you weren’t swayed by the Georgian upstart bellowing that it’s not in bed on Instagram.
Even though Charley Crockett’s stance is rational, and we should be focused on spreading the good word of authentic country music more than the curious pop artists who want a piece of the pie, he missed one thing: it’s inconsistent to defend Beyoncé and BigXThaPlug’s country cross-pollinations on the grounds of their “authenticity,” but criticize Morgan Wallen for the same thing; as Crockett himself acknowledged, Wallen’s daily musical diet is far more slanted towards rap music than country music. If one group is allowed to blend country music into their preferred format, it’s reasonable to allow our mainstream country stars to do the opposite.
Whether or not that affects their pedigree as “country artists” is an entirely different matter. Post Malone received a hero’s welcome into Nashville last year thanks to his eagerness to fully play the part of a mainstream “country artist,” without ego or ambition to “shake things up.” If we’re holding up an artist as an honest-to-goodness “country star,” that should be a full-time commitment, whether they’re new to the genre or not.
All that said, Beyoncé is allowed to be inspired by country music. Adcock misplaces his frustrations, since Beyoncé never claimed Cowboy Carter as a country album.
It’s understandable for him to be bent out of shape about an outsider stealing the spotlight with very little loyalty to the format, but punching up at an artist who hasn’t been associated with country music for nearly a year makes him look small and impudent. Rather, his ire should be directed at the laissez-faire system that allows the latest Lil Nas X, Bebe Rexha, Nelly, Justin Bieber, and the like to waltz into the format at their leisure, ride the radio charts for a few months, and promptly drop the cowboy hat like a bad habit. None of that is Beyoncé’s fault, who clearly doesn’t need the extra exposure and at least seemed earnest about her interest in country music history.
Likewise, Crockett may annoy his more traditionally minded fans with his slanted defense of Beyoncé and BigXThaPlug, but his overall point is correct that we gain nothing by picking on the interlopers. There will always be another AJ McLean; as country listeners, our prerogative.is not to repel them at the gate, but to invest in the acts that we want to see represent country music, just as we have with Zach Bryan, Zach Top, Cody Johnson, and the like. Nowadays, we all ought to be too big to yell “that’s not country.”
