John Rich Calls Out The Politics Of Award Shows After Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ Win: “Grammys Outed Themselves”

Mary Claire Crabtree·
COUNTRY MUSICNEWS
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John Rich/ Beyonce Grammys
John Rich/Grammys

John Rich is calling it how it is.

Last night, the 67th Grammy Awards were held in the Cryto.com Arena in Los Angeles. At first, there was a great question surrounding whether the awards show would even be held due to the massive destruction L.A. faced due to blazing wildfires. The Recording Academy chose to have the awards still, but they cut back on the Grammy Week event and shifted the program’s focus to fundraising and bringing awareness to small businesses impacted by the fires.

Some viewers tuning in might argue that the most significant charity work done during the program was awarding Beyoncé with Best Country Album and Best Album Of The Year.

The internet was outraged to see Beyoncé win Best Country Album. She competed against Chris Stapleton, Post Malone, Kacey Musgraves, and Lainey Wilson, who all released stellar records. Many fans were upset with this choice on behalf of the Recording Academy’s voting members because the Texas native specifically said the album was NOT a country record.

“This ain’t a Country album. This is a ‘Beyoncé’ album. This is COWBOY CARTER, and I am proud to share it with y’all!”

Later in the night, Beyoncé won the biggest award of the night as she was finally honored with Best Album Of The Year, but even non-country fans were not thrilled to see Cowboy Carter win this award. Other nominees in this category included  André 3000, Sabrina Carpenter, Charli xcx, Jacob Collier, Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan, and Taylor Swift.

We all knew the Swifties would be upset Taylor did not win, but I’ve seen a lot of discourse on social media this morning noting that they felt like Billie Eilish and Sabrina Carpenter were snubbed because of the cultural impact of those records; both have many viral songs and securing higher streaming numbers than tracks featured on Cowboy Carter. In fact, Cowboy Carter actually fell off the Billboard 200 rather quickly, current sitting at #179, whereas, Billie, Sabrina and Taylor’s albums are all in the top 10, and even older albums from Morgan Wallen and Zach Bryan are still top 30. In the grand scheme of things, it just hasn’t been an overwhelming commercial success.

Social media is abuzz with commentary from viewers and industry professionals. One person who got a kick out of Queen Bey’s winning the Best Country Album award is John Rich.

John Rich has never been afraid to tell it like it is, often calling out country artists for not speaking up, being a massive voice within the Conservative party, and advocating for country music to return to its roots, claiming that “wokeness killed country music.” However, after sleeping on the awards show last night, the Big & Rich member took to social media to law down the law of how these awards programs run.

While we have always known award shows are a political game and that some foul play is used to secure artists’ wins, Rich took to social media to call out the Grammy Awards for letting him be shown too much with two Beyoncé wins last night.

“Folks are asking me, ‘How do music award shows work?’ Labels/publishers all have blocks of votes. They make deals with each other, ‘You vote for mine, we’ll vote for yours’ type thing.

It has ZERO to do with who made the best music, thus, Beyonce with ‘Country Album of the Year.’ Nice, right? The same thing is true with the CMA’s, ACM’s, Billboard, etc…all work exactly the same. Last night, the Grammys outed themselves in a big way.”

Many X users responded to his post, noting that they knew it was a “bought and paid for award.” While there are many conspiracy theories that Jay-Z has paid radio stations to play her music, so it is considered for awards shows, but there is no proof. However, it should be noted that voting blocs are expressly prohibited by the Recording Academy so Rich is correct in the sense that a number of awards shows work that way, but the Grammys are a bit different. The voting membership includes performers, songwriters, producers, engineers, instrumentalists, and other creators actively working in the recording industry, whereas the professional membership can include agents, managers, label executives. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a lot of groupthink and concerted efforts to lobby for votes, but label blocs aren’t a thing at the Grammys.

However, one true thing is that the other artists in this category were snubbed big time. If the CMA voting members did not include Cowboy Carter because it was not a country record, the Grammy Awards need to consider that. Now, I’m not saying I agree with the CMA Awards on many of their choices, but they were correct in not nominating that record. And to be clear, I take more exception to her winning Best Country Album vs the Album of the Year all-genre… we can argue about the merits of her album compared to the rest of the music industry as a whole, but when you explicitly say that you didn’t make a country album, I just don’t see how you win an award for it. But then she said she felt the love from the country music world so…. is it a country album or not?

At the end of the day, the mainstream media and music world thinks country music is a racist institution, and while there definitely is a lack of black artists topping the country charts (and women for that matter), handing the award to one of the world’s biggest pop stars because she put on a cowboy hat and pulled out a banjo doesn’t do anything to help the up-and-coming black artists, who make actual country music, get a foot in the door. In fact, it probably does the opposite.

At least we all know who John was pulling for to win Best Country Album…

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