Beyoncé

Way back when I first started writing songs, long before there were algorithms and expectations and boxes we needed to check … I wrote something that had a spoken lyric. I will not share it here as that would be mortifying.

In my novice mind I thought of it as white-girl rap, if you will. Though that wasn’t my intention or destination when I started plunking it out. I was experimenting, not thinking too much, as it should be.

Some people liked it (my mother) and some never said anything … which meant they didn’t. But that’s not the point. Nobody suggested I didn’t have any business trying to be something I was not. I didn’t think I sounded black. I was just making a song. It felt right. It came out of me. I let it rip. No one was the boss of my creative spirit.

Had I been a signed artist, my label would have released it or my A&R might have had a sit-down with me to tell me why they wouldn’t. But if they did release it there might have been a review in Billboard. Radio would have played it … or not. But there wasn’t a plethora of platforms on which everyone and their sister could bloviate, pontificate, judge or air their opinion about me and my creation.

My daughter Layla loves Beyoncé. Says she turns to Taylor for romantic insight but to Beyoncé for power. I don’t particularly like “Texas Hold ‘Em.” Layla suggested I give it another listen. I did. I still don’t love it.

“And I'll be damned if I can't slow dance with you

Come pour some sugar on me, honey too”

… just doesn’t speak to me.

But what do I know because “Texas Hold 'Em" debuted atop Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart, making Beyoncé the first black woman with a number-one country song in history. The track ignited all kinds of opinions about her place in the genre.

I don’t remember the public being as opinionated and unaccepting when Taylor transitioned from country to pop.

In a recent SONA In The Room YouTube conversation we hear two of my good friends, Stephen Bray and Rohan Hylton, getting into it. It started out with Rohan asking “What is black art?” And that lead to the idea of genre jumping.

Stephen reminds us that in 1976 people were complaining that Hall and Oates were taking up spots on the black charts but then they realized they simply couldn’t deny “She’s Gone.” And that we all thought Donny Hathaway wrote “A Song For You” because he sang it so soulfully. But it was Leon Russell who penned that song. “Art is not about what you look like,” Stephen says, “but what your experience was … from when you were growing up.”

Stephen grew up listening to Aretha, CSNY and Todd Rundgren. His parents listened to show tunes. Stephen went on to write (along with Brenda Russell and the late great Allee Willis) the songs for The Color Purple. Makes sense.

And Beyoncé grew up in a countrified Texas. It’s part of her experience. Rohan objects to the boundaries. “Lines are getting blurred. When you see Beyoncé taking a risk like this it’s beautiful.”   

I always loved black county artist Mickey Guyton’s song “Black Like Me.” I believe her. She’s reflecting on her childhood experience on the school playground. And how it’s still going on! Should she have left that to herself?

In a review for Variety, Chris Willman described "Texas Hold 'Em" as a "genre-embracing and -transcending" track that acts as a radical venture into "unexplored territory.” What? He ads, “black people are generally shut out of country music's creation.” That I get.

I’ve heard the speculations:

Now that Taylor isn’t focusing on the country market there’s more country oxygen for Beyoncé

Was this a calculated move? A marketing strategy?

If it wasn’t Beyonce’s song would those of us who love it love it as much?

If it wasn’t Beyonce’s song would we be talking ad nauseam about it? (Myself included).

The answers to these questions don’t matter. I may not be a fan of the song. I may never play it again. But I still say…

You go girl. Make art like nobody’s watching.

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I’m sharing Mickey’s track cuz I like it better than “Texas” 😳 AND it addresses the matter at hand.

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