Shaboozey’s been embraced by country’s establishment, but as a young Black man in America’s most conservative music format, he’s under no illusions about it. His songwriting is bracing and melancholy in ways “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” barely suggests. After his raucous ascent on the back of a huge hit, will country fans stay for the real thing?
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“Especially after Beyoncé, his sound is pushing the country format in a direction that’s very timely right now,” said Amanda Marie Martínez, a historian at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill who studies the intersection of race and country music.
Black acts like The War and Treaty and Mickey Guyton have won critical acclaim, but “country radio still dictates business practices and its gatekeepers wield power,” Martínez continued. “If you look back from Charley Pride to Darius Rucker to Kane Brown, Nashville usually only allows one Black man to succeed at a time, and that’s troubling. There’s never been a Black woman with sustained commercial success on country radio. It’s not a nice reality, but the only template is to not talk about anything controversial with regards to being a Black man in country.”