Maybe you have wondered why the Nashville establishment seemed to welcome Post Malone and BigXthaPlug but did not open its arms and heart to Beyonce with similar enthusiasm. Posty's country music album F-1 Trillion was super successful. So was Beyonce's first country LP Cowboy Carter. (It landed Grammys for Best Country Album and Album of the Year in 2024.) Each singer dipped their toe into the country music waters with boldness and flair.
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But the two artists apparently got very different receptions from the Music City establishment. How come? Breland, the singer, rapper, and songwriter, has a hunch about that. Hint: It's how you play the industry game.
Breland's Idea About Why Some Artists Get Accepted by Nashville, Others Don't
Per Rolling Stone via its Nashville Now podcast, he said, "I think that country music is fine with certain artists coming over here if they do it with the artists that they trust. For BigXthaPlug, and I don't know what he might feel like — 'Nah, I haven't been accepted here at all...,' I don't want to assume — but what it looks like to me is that BigXthaPlug started doing some of these collabs with much success and then decided, 'Hey, I'm going to lean all the way in and do a whole collab album with all of these pop and country artists and it's gonna work.'"
What Breland Says About How Beyonce Possibly Went Wrong
Here is his thinking on the singer. "She chose to put a bunch of artists on there that people weren't as familiar with. And didn't come to town and play the game the same way that everyone else would. So it's really easy for the institutions in Nashville to be like, 'She's not with us because she didn't come here and take all the same steps that someone like Post Malone or BigXthaPlug did."
Breland thinks he knows how things could have gone better for Beyonce. "I promise you that if Beyoncé had made her album in town and had written with more writers and producers who were here in town and popped out somewhere on Broadway and did CMA Fest, and debuted at the Grand Ole Opry, people's reception to her in town would have been a little different."
