Introduction
By November 2024, the Grammy Awards eligibility window for the 67th ceremony had closed, and Cowboy Carter was confirmed as a factor in the awards conversation in ways that its zero CMA nominations had not prepared the industry to expect.
The Grammy nominations, announced in late 2024, placed Cowboy Carter at the center of the year's most significant awards story. Beyoncé received 11 nominations, tying Michael Jackson's Thriller for the most nominations for a single album, across country categories, Americana, and the top prize of Album of the Year. She became the most-nominated artist in Grammy history, surpassing Jay-Z's previous record.
The nominations immediately deepened the conversation that the CMA snub had started: what is country music, and who gets to decide?
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The Album's Path Through 2024
To understand what the Grammy nominations meant in November 2024, it helps to trace the album's year:
March 29: Cowboy Carter releases. Debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with 407,000 equivalent album units and simultaneously topped the Top Country Albums chart, making Beyoncé the first Black woman to reach that position. Spotify reported 76 million streams in the first day.
Spring, Summer: "Texas Hold 'Em" spent 10 weeks at number one on Hot Country Songs and reached number one on the Hot 100. The album generated significant conversation about country music's racial history and institutional gatekeeping.
September: CMA nominations announced. Zero nominations for Cowboy Carter across all categories, despite the album's eligibility and chart performance. Morgan Wallen led with seven.
November: Grammy nominations period closes. Cowboy Carter receives five country-related nominations plus Album of the Year, a total of 11, leading all artists.
The arc from CMA zero to Grammy maximum nominations in the same eligibility year is one of the more remarkable institutional divergences in recent music awards history.
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What the Grammy Nominations Documented
The 67th Grammy Award nominations for Cowboy Carter spanned several categories:
- Album of the Year, competing against Taylor Swift (The Tortured Poets Department), Charli XCX (Brat), Sabrina Carpenter (Short n' Sweet), Billie Eilish (Hit Me Hard and Soft), André 3000 (New Blue Sun), Chappell Roan (The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess), and Jacob Collier (Djesse Volume 4)
- Best Country Album, competing against Kacey Musgraves, Chris Stapleton, Lainey Wilson, and Post Malone
- Best Country Solo Performance, for "16 Carriages"
- Best Country Duo/Group Performance, for "II Most Wanted" with Miley Cyrus
- Best Country Song, for "Texas Hold 'Em"
- Best Americana Performance, for "Ya Ya"
The Grammy nominations represent the judgment of the Recording Academy, a broader body than the CMA membership, with a more diverse voting base across genres and geographies. That the same album received maximum recognition from one institution and zero recognition from the other is a factual record of institutional difference, not a contradiction resolvable by deciding which institution was "right."
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The Genre Question That Wouldn't Resolve
At the center of the Grammy conversation in November 2024 was the same question the CMA snub had raised: was Cowboy Carter a country album?
Beyoncé's own answer had been complicated from the beginning. She stated publicly that the album was not a country album, it was "a Beyoncé album." This created an interesting situation: an album that the Recording Academy classified across country, Americana, and all-genre categories, produced by an artist who declined the genre label herself.
The Grammy categories used to recognize the album suggest the Academy's position: the album is country enough for five country and Americana nominations, and significant enough across all popular music for Album of the Year. Neither answer perfectly resolves the genre question. They do, however, document where two major institutions landed.
For critics and music publications covering this moment in November 2024, the conversation was about genre as institution versus genre as sound. Country music as a Radio & Records format, a CMA membership category, and a Marketing demographic had specific criteria that Cowboy Carter did not meet in all respects. Country music as a sonic tradition with African-American roots, a history of Black artists that Nashville largely erased, and a diverse set of regional folk and roots influences, by those criteria, the album had strong claims.
The Grammy nominations gave institutional weight to the second definition without resolving the argument.
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What the Race Meant Heading Into February 2025
By November 2024, with Grammy nominations confirmed, the awards race had clarified into several distinct questions:
Would Cowboy Carter win Album of the Year, an award Beyoncé had been nominated for four times without winning, with many observers characterizing each previous loss as a Grammys oversight? Would it win Best Country Album, beating out Chris Stapleton (who many traditional country observers considered the more authentically country choice) and Post Malone (who had been significantly more warmly received by Nashville)? And what would either outcome mean for how country music defines itself going forward?
Those questions resolved on February 2, 2025: Cowboy Carter won Best Country Album, Album of the Year, and Best Country Duo/Group Performance. Beyoncé became the first Black woman to win Album of the Year in 26 years (since Lauryn Hill's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill) and the first Black artist to win Best Country Album.
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From The Stem's Perspective: The Year the Conversation Couldn't Be Closed
What Cowboy Carter produced in 2024 was not resolution of the country music identity debate but rather evidence that the debate had become too large to contain within any single institutional framework. The CMA could decline to nominate it. The Grammys could nominate and award it. Radio could play or ignore it. Streaming audiences could respond to it regardless of what any institution said.
None of those responses controlled the others. And the fact that they could diverge so completely, CMA zero, Grammy maximum, documented that country music's institutional infrastructure is not monolithic. Different institutions apply different filters. Different filters produce different results about the same music.
For artists and producers working outside any single institutional framework, that fragmentation is important. It means that institutional recognition from one body does not define what your music can do for an audience. The audiences and the institutions often reach different conclusions. In 2024, so did the institutions themselves.
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FAQ
Q: How many Grammy nominations did Cowboy Carter receive for the 67th ceremony? A: Eleven nominations, tying Michael Jackson's Thriller for the most nominations for a single album. The nominations included Album of the Year, Best Country Album, Best Country Solo Performance, Best Country Duo/Group Performance, Best Country Song, and Best Americana Performance.
Q: Did Cowboy Carter win at the 67th Grammy Awards? A: Yes. The album won Album of the Year (making Beyoncé the first Black woman to win the top prize in 26 years), Best Country Album (making her the first Black artist to win in that category), and Best Country Duo/Group Performance for "II Most Wanted" with Miley Cyrus. In total, the three wins brought her Grammy career total to 35.
Q: Why did the Grammy nominations create a conversation about genre? A: The album received zero CMA nominations despite being eligible, while simultaneously receiving five country-category Grammy nominations. The divergence between the two institutions' decisions about whether the album counted as country was itself a major story about how country music is defined institutionally versus commercially and culturally.
Q: Who else was nominated for Best Country Album at the 67th Grammys? A: The category included Cowboy Carter (Beyoncé), Deeper Well (Kacey Musgraves), Higher (Chris Stapleton), Bell Bottom Country (Lainey Wilson), and F-1 Trillion (Post Malone).
Q: What did Taylor Swift have to do with the Grammy outcome? A: Taylor Swift presented the Best Country Album award to Beyoncé at the ceremony. Swift was also a nominee for Album of the Year with The Tortured Poets Department, Cowboy Carter won that category as well.
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