The Recording Academy announced on Thursday that it would be renaming the best country album award category to best contemporary country album and adding a new grouping — the only new music one — called best traditional country album.
The announcement drew criticism online with, some social media users accusing the Recording Academy of adding the new category as a response to Beyoncé’s best country music album win at this year’s Grammys, which made her the first Black female artist to win in the category.
‘Think responsibly about who’s in those rooms’
Jada Watson, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa, said while on the surface it looks like Black artists will get nominated more in the contemporary category, she’s concerned that white artists will predominantly be dominated in both, because only two Black artists have been nominated for best country album since the first Grammy Awards in 1959.
Watson, whose research specializes in gender and racial inequity within the country music industry, said she’d like to see the Recording Academy “think responsibly about who’s in those rooms when those two awards come up for discussion.”
That includes “making sure that those rooms are as diverse as possible, so that the Black artists who make both styles of country are considered and not relegated to the margins the way they are in the rest of the industry.”
Timing may be unfortunate coincidence
Watson said while it’s “unfortunate timing” for the decision to come out now, the conversation of adding another country award category has been ongoing for many years before Cowboy Carter‘s 2024 release.
“Country, for a long time, was one of the only genres without some kind of double category,” Watson said. She pointed out there are already traditional and contemporary album categories within other genres, such as R&B.
“In a way, this is taking the country categories and putting them in the same space as other genre-based categories, where there are more nuances to the sort of stylistic qualities of the album category.”
Because of that, she said it’s hard to know if the decision to add a new category was due to a more “recent catalyst” or if whether it had been in the works for a while.
Academy says new category allows for more diversity
In a news release from Thursday, Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. said the organization reviews its guidelines every year to ensure it is aligned with “the ever-changing music industry.”
“This action by our members now opens the door for us to celebrate more artists and a wider range of music,” Mason Jr. said.
Beyoncé alluded to inequity in the country genre in her acceptance speech earlier this year at the Grammys, after winning what was at the time called the best country album award.
“I think sometimes ‘genre’ is a code word to keep us in our place as artists,” she said then, “and I just want to encourage people to do what they’re passionate about and stay persistent.”