Dolly Parton Reacts to Beyoncé’s CMA Awards Snub

Beyoncé’s country music album was seemingly snubbed by the CMA Awards, and Dolly Parton has thoughts on it. Reacting to the news that Beyoncé’s debut country album, Cowboy Carter, did not pick up any nominations, Parton noted that it could just be that the pool of talent was so wide this year.

“Well, you never know,” Parton told Variety in a new interview. “There’s so many wonderful country artists that, I guess probably the country music field, they probably thought, well, we can’t really leave out some of the ones that spend their whole life doing that.”

Going on to call Cowboy Carter a “wonderful album,” Parton went on to say that Beyoncé “can be very, very proud of, and I think everybody in country music welcomed her and thought that, that was good. So I don’t think it was a matter of shutting out, like doing that on purpose. I think it was just more of what the country charts and the country artists were doing, that do that all the time, not just a specialty album.”

“She’s a country girl in Texas and Louisiana, so she grew up with that base,” Parton continued, then noting Post Malone’s recent entrance into the country genre. “It wasn’t like she just appeared out of nowhere. Post Malone has loved country music his whole life, and then I got to do the duet with him on his album, and I think it’s a fantastic album. I thought both those albums were great.”

Notably, Beyoncé included a reimagined cover of Parton’s classic song “Jolene” on Cowboy Carter, which Parton is a fan of. “Well, I think it was very bold of her,” the beloved singer said in a previous interview. “When they said she was gonna do ‘Jolene,’ I expected it to be my regular one, but it wasn’t. But I love what she did to it. And as a songwriter, you love the fact that people do your songs no matter how they do them.”

“She wasn’t gonna go beg some other woman like I did,” Parton added. “‘Don’t steal my man.’ ‘S—, get out here, b—. You ain’t stealin’ mine.’”