Will country radio play Beyoncé’s new songs? Station managers weigh in
"I'm excited because it just sounds so freaking good on the radio," says Houston's 93Q program manager Travis Moon.
If the singles “Texas Hold ‘Em’ and “16 Carriages” are any indication, Beyoncé’s new album Renaissance: Act II appears to be her first full-fledged country project. The songs have caused a stir in the country music world — an Oklahoma station added the tracks to its rotation after widespread fan outcry — and now, managers for some of the biggest country radio stations in the nation are weighing in on Lady Bey’s country era.
Travis Moon, the program manager for 93Q Country in Beyoncé’s hometown Houston, says he’s “all-in” on “Texas Hold ‘Em.” “We're playing right now. We’re actually the first station in America to officially add the song,” he tells EW. Moon’s enthusiasm stems from the quality of the track rather than the singer’s stardom. “Am I going at this going, ‘Hey, I want to convert every Beyoncé fan to love country music?’ That's not why I'm doing this,” he explains. “I added the song because it's a great song, and I'm excited because it just sounds so freaking good on the radio. And if there are some of her fans who listen to the song on my radio station that like some other songs, that's actually good for my station.”
Moon can’t get enough of the “Texas Hold ‘Em” sound. “There's nothing like it… a lot of times you get country songs and they fit in a certain vibe and there's a formula. This is a fresh sound that I'm really excited about,” he explains. “Just the way the song is constructed, the vocals are amazing, the instrumentation's fantastic. It fits the vibe of what we're doing on this radio station, and I'm really, really excited and curious to see how listeners are going to react to the song. I think they're really going to react positively.”
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BeyoncéMeanwhile, Nick Russo, music director for Houston’s 100.3 The Bull - KILT, is prioritizing “16 Carriages” over “Texas Hold ‘Em,” as he thinks the track should make a strong impression on country fans, as he noted in an Instagram Reel he shared with EW prior to jumping on a call to discuss in more detail.
“‘16 Carriages’ deserves equal weight in this situation,” he tells EW. “In the storyline, it really hits the heart, and that's where country music lives. The songs live in your heart.” Russo compared the song’s lyrics, which reflect on the narrator’s teenage years, to Taylor Swift’s early work. “Taylor was writing with the acoustic guitar at that young age, and she went straight into country, and kind of did her thing with the acoustic guitar, right? Well, Beyonce went the route of Destiny's Child,” he says. “I think that's a really beautiful story to tell, and it's sort of haunting.”
Russo is an advocate for country’s inclusivity and flexibility as a genre — he’s also recently played Dolly Parton’s rock album and a Chris Young song sampling a David Bowie track on his station. “I think country music for a long time has had a bad rap of not being welcoming of outside voices,” he says. “You can ask any of the songwriters, they'll tell you that it's the way country music writes the song. There's a formula to it, the way they set it up, and then the way the hook comes in. There's an art to it and it's an art form of itself. And so to say that artist A, B, or C can't create art is silly.”
Even those taking a more measured approach, like Mike Levine of Go Country 105 in Los Angeles, are still excited about Beyoncé’s new music. “The new single sounds great,” he says. “We will probably be able to play it like one or two times this week just to sample it, but I won't know until about a month or so, once we start looking at programming again, just to see how the data is on it, and if it's something we add to our regular programming or not.”
The radio managers are optimistic about the singer’s potential to convert the Beyhive into country fans. “Anything to make country more approachable is amazing, so it's fantastic,” Levine says. And Moon thinks the fan crossover will also move in the other direction, too. “I haven't spent a lot of time with Beyoncé’s music personally, so it is going to open up a different audience to her music,” he explains. “I think it just goes both ways where this is exciting not just for country radio, but for the artist and the legacy that she's done in her entire career.”
Russo agrees. “Beyoncé's fans are always going to drive up her numbers no matter what,” he explains. “That’s the unprecedented sight we're seeing here: We have a global superstar who is releasing a song where her fans are some of the most consuming fans of all fans. So in a way, it's almost like country went to Beyoncé fans, versus Beyoncé coming to the country fans.”
Reporting by Yolanda Machado
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