The Recording Academy is changing its Best Country Album category following Beyoncé’s win in 2025.
Many fans and some country artists believed Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter album was not country enough. Thus, her 2025 Country Album of the Year Award ruffled feathers. Consequently, the Best Country Album Award category will no longer exist. At the 68th Grammy Awards, two categories will represent the genre’s most significant awards, Best Traditional Country and Best Contemporary Country. The Recording Academy’s rulebook provides insight into the elements that determine traditional and contemporary album eligibility.
Traditional Country Album:
Traditional country includes country recordings that adhere to the more conventional sound structures of the country genre, including rhythm and singing style, lyrical content, as well as traditional country instrumentation such as acoustic guitar, steel guitar, fiddle, banjo, mandolin, piano, electric guitar, and live drums. It also includes sub-genres such as Western, Western Swing, and Outlaw Country.
Contemporary Country Album:
Contemporary country music recordings, both vocal and instrumental, utilize a stylistic intention, song structure, lyrical content, and/or musical presentation to create a sensibility that reflects the broad spectrum of contemporary country style and culture. The intent is to recognize country music that remains reminiscent and relevant to the legacy of country music’s culture, while also engaging in more contemporary music forms.
The new terminology is intended to clearly distinguish between experimental and traditional country, and what some call “real” country. Some even believe the split in categories ensures that artists, who are not primarily country singers, such as Beyoncé, are firmly kept out of the category. The irony is that since Cowboy Carter’s release, there have been multiple examinations of the album. Music experts have dissected the multiple traditional elements in the album.
Beyoncé did not seek to pass off a pop album as country. Many songs on the album include fundamentally traditional elements.
The singer enlisted Rhiannon Giddens, a Pulitzer Prize-winning banjo player and historian, to join her on Texas Hold ‘Em. She also covered a highly popular country song, Dolly Parton’s Jolene. The artist went so far as to collaborate with traditional country artists: Linda Martel, Dolly Parton, and Willie Nelson.Yet, while the album embraced tradition, it also veered to showcase the evolution of Blues and Country music, with genre-bending songs like “Spaghettii” that showcased her impressive rap skills and “Daughter” that included an Italian Opera portion.
Categories can be changed at the Grammys. Whether that change is due to the versatile singer, we will never know. However, time has shown that Beyoncé will not back down from exploring new sounds and genres. The Recording Academy might be making up new categories for 2027 because Act iii is on the way. Rumor has it Queen Bey is coming for the rock genre next.
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