Musical Interlude: 16 Carriages & Texas Hold 'Em (2024)

 I'm reading that conservatives are having a collective cow over another pop star, this time because she dared to cross over to the country charts.

That would be Beyonce, who dropped a pair of country-themed singles a week ago, in line with a Super Bowl commercial she made for Verizon. Thing is, she's not the first African-American to climb the country charts, and won't be the last. I grew up listening to the late Charlie Pride, for example. In more recent times, Darius Rucker spun off from Hootie & The Blowfish to begin a solo career that for now has been short-circuited by his recent arrest on DUI charges.

Rapper Cowboy Troy ran with Big & Rich a few years back.

Big Al Downing, not to be confused with the baseball pitcher of the same name, was a contemporary of Charlie Pride.

So, Beyonce experimenting with country shouldn't be a big deal, should it?

10-20 years ago, no, it wouldn't, but conservatives today are easily triggered. They ignore the examples noted above, and they whine & cry because another big name pop star is going country.

20 years ago, Sheryl Crow & Kid Rock scored a crossover hit with the ballad, "Picture". Today, because of Kid Rock's political leanings, you probably wouldn't see that in the same light. Subsequently, Bruce Springsteen & John Mellencamp experimented with country music.

Last year, Luke Combs covered Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car", making it a hit all over again (Chapman's original version came out 35 years earlier), and two weeks ago, at the Grammys, the two performed a duet of "Car", which, to my knowledge, didn't set off conservatives the way Beyonce did.

Let's check out "16 Carriages". The lyrics appear on the screen as the song plays.

A radio station in Oklahoma initially wasn't going to play "Texas Hold 'Em", but only because they didn't know it was a country record. They've since put it in rotation.

The videos are what Beyonce's YouTube channel refers to as "official visualizers", which explains the repetitive images. In this one for "Texas Hold 'Em", again, the lyrics appear on the screen as the song plays.

You know what a conservative's worst nightmare is now? Beyonce co-headlining with Taylor Swift......