Luke Bryan is speaking out after he received backlash for commenting on Beyoncé’s 2024 CMA Awards nominations snub.
“Hey yall, I’m wrapping up the last night of my tour tonight and it’s been an amazing time. For that I am thankful,” the country star, 48, began in a social media statement shared on Sunday, October 6. “I am posting tonight based on the ridiculous nature of the headlines I have read the last couple days from an interview on the Andy Cohen show I did this week when I was promoting my album. I feel in my heart I could not let media create a false narrative.”
Noting that he’s read through some negative comments, Bryan encouraged fans to listen to the interview before passing judgment. “You will hear my tone and intentions which were not negative,” he stated.
He finished his message on a sweet note, writing, “I respect Beyonce and I love how loyal her fans are. I spend a lot of time supporting other artists. I want everyone to win. Love yall.”
Beyoncé’s latest album, Cowboy Carter, was notably left off the nominations list for this year’s CMA Awards, prompting strong reactions from her fans. “Beyonce should host a live show on all platforms at the exact same time as the CMAs,” one fan tweeted in reaction to the snub on September 9. “Or release the videos for the album the minute the CMAs begin.”
Bryan reacted to her lack of nominations during an October 1 episode of Andy Cohen’s Radio Andy show on SiriusXM, stating, “I’m all for everybody coming in and making country albums and all that, but just because she made one … like, just because I made one, doesn’t mean I get nominations. A lot of great music is overlooked. Sometimes you don’t get nominated.”
Bryan, who will cohost this year’s CMA Awards with Peyton Manning and Lainey Wilson, continued: “I think the CMA has their voting body and they vote what they think should make it. Everybody loved that Beyoncé made a country album. Nobody’s mad about it, but where things get a little tricky [is] if you’re gonna make country albums, come into our world and be country with us. Like, Beyoncé can do exactly what she wants to … but come to an award show and high-five us, have fun and get in the family too.”
He concluded his comments by noting, “Country music’s a lot about family, but it ain’t always family too. We get pissed at each other too.”
One X user called Bryan’s words “infuriating,” tweeting on October 2, “The cost of admission is high-fiving you? Being ‘country’ on your terms, the terms the popular white men in charge get to decide, to be a part of the ‘family?’”
Beyoncé, 43, has not publicly addressed Bryan’s comments or her CMA Awards nominations snub.
Prior to Cowboy Carter’s March release, Beyoncé wrote via Instagram that she was inspired to explore the country genre after “an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed … and it was very clear that I wasn’t.” Fans were quick to connect the comment to her 2016 CMA Awards performance with The Chicks, which sparked negative backlash online and from the show’s attendees.
“An audience member in front of me proceeds to say, ‘Get that Black bitch off the stage right now,’” Tanner Davenport, who was in the awards ceremony audience, recalled to CNN for the April documentary Call Me Country: Beyoncé & Nashville’s Renaissance. (Beyoncé has not publicly confirmed whether the 2016 CMA Awards performance was her inspiration for the album.)
