Yep, the Grammys are at it again.

Everyone's favorite musical institution. And somehow all of the progressive lip service the Academy has been trying to pay over the last several years, maybe because of the former President's comments on women needing to step it up creatively – well, all of that seems to be amounting to exactly nothing because of the ridiculous new thing they're doing right now with the Best Country Album category.

Now, if you guys remember at the last Grammys, who won a Best Country Album that year? Who was it? Oh, yeah. It was Beyoncé with Cowboy Carter, the second installment in her currently ongoing trilogy, a quality album to my ears. I mean, if there was one thing that turned me off about the record, it's that despite there being a lot of quality country music on it, there was maybe just a little bit too much time spent trying to validate the album's existence as a country album in the eyes of potential doubters.

But I don't know. As annoying as I found it to sit through a lot of that stuff on the record, I feel like every passing month just proves Beyoncé's motivations behind doing that on that album correct.

Because that record is a year fucking old at this point, and there are still people flipping shit over it saying, Why is Beyoncé doing this? She doesn't really actually care about country. This isn't really a country album. This isn't really a country artist. And look, I've made some of these arguments before, and I'll make them again, but – have you heard the fucking album? There are numerous rustic, enjoyable country tunes and ballads in the tracklist on that thing. And while sure, there are some tracks that fuse in bits of pop and RnB and hip hop, too. By that same token, there are countless white artists in country doing exactly that with their records.

Like the new Morgan Wallen album has songs on it that legit sound like Future tunes, but with Morgan Wallen's ass crooning through the autotune instead. And there isn't a genre and culture-wide movement trying to prevent Morgan Wallen from getting country accolades. So what is it exactly about Beyoncé making a country album that pisses people off?

But anyway, let's fast forward to today where the Grammys are, I don't know, trying to come up with their own fix and solution to please all of these annoying, stupid caveman brain country traditionalists who suddenly care about the authenticity of the genre who have been watching it get flushed down the commercial fucking toilet for over a decade now with bro country and all this other bullshit.

But when Beyoncé actually makes a good good faith artistic effort to do a country album, all of a sudden, it's Defcon 1.

So yeah, the best country album category is being smashed apart now. Beyoncé is going to be officially the last person to have received this award. Which in and of itself is like doubly historical. And now what we are going to instead get is a Best Contemporary Country album category and a Best Traditional Country album category, which off the bat already reads like some weird ass musical segregation. And for a myriad of reasons.

I'm not even sure which one to get into first. Maybe the first thing we should get into is what exactly qualifies as "traditional country" in the eyes of the Grammys, because apparently what lands in one category versus the other is going to be on a case-by-case basis. And I guess what's going to influence these decisions is whether or not the music adheres to more traditional country sounds and structures, including elements like steel guitar, fiddle, banjo, mandolin, and live drums, which how much of that an album does or doesn't need is not really specified.

I mean, going back to Cowboy Carter, there are banjos and fiddles and folk instrumentation on that record. There are live drums, or at least what sounds like live drums, on some tracks, too. And again, comparing that to something like the most recent Morgan Wallen album, which many tracks on that record, though there are palettes of country instrumentation in the mix, like the sequencing and the tracking, a lot of that record is produced like a hip hop album, along with many other country songs that are back with these snap beats that have been popular for years now.

So how traditional is traditional? Certainly, there's a new generation of country artists out there who favor more live instrumentation in the backdrops of their songs, guys like Zack Bryan, maybe Chris Stapleton, as well as Tyler Childers. But depending on the song or the record, there are also influences and sounds on those artist's albums that sound very modern and also blend in elements of pop or rock or indie folk, which that's not very traditional.

Again, what is the historical or aesthetic cutoff here? Is traditional country going to be a category for artists that basically sound like Charlie Crockett and older? I mean, at the very least, that would feel traditional, I guess. But by that same token, what would the point of such a category be?

Because while guys like Charlie Crockett out here are cool, I respect what he's doing in the country lane, but it's not like there's a whole ocean of Charlie Crockett-like artists making noise at the same level he is. I don't know. Maybe this will provide an opportunity for a smaller, more old-school country artist to get some shine that they wouldn't have received otherwise. But if that's ultimately what this category split ends up doing, what was even the point?

Hypothetically, if Beyoncé came out with another country album, it's likely that it would receive a nomination or a win in the contemporary country category anyway. And the prime complaint of a lot of her haters is that she's not country music regardless, traditional or contemporary. So you would still have all of those same annoying morons whining. Basically, it feels like they've created this separation so they can guarantee a white person is going to win a country album of the year award, whether Beyoncé decides to put out a country record or not.

I've heard this said before, and I'll say it, too: It just feels like DEI for white people. And this feels even more true when you consider that country is getting a special type of treatment here that other genres aren't that have been a part of the Grammy Awards system for decades and have also comparatively gone through similar eras of evolution and change.

For example, we don't have a traditional and contemporary hip hop category. We don't have a contemporary and traditional rock category. Meanwhile, the rock music and metal music that we see get celebrated and awarded on the Grammy stage today doesn't sound like fucking rock music from 1950. Hip hop certainly doesn't sound the same way it did 50 years ago. Why do the traditional sounds of any given genre suddenly factor when it comes to war decisions now.

I mean, also from what I've been reading, allegedly, this split between traditional and contemporary country is something that the Grammys have been considering for years. But even if that is true, officially making this decision right after the Beyoncé win just feels especially suspect. And the logic still doesn't track when you consider that it's only country music that is getting this treatment.

And again, it just continues to feel weird to see the Grammys pick and choose for the oddest reasons what categories they're going to segment off into some other traditional category. Because as some viewers may know, the Grammys also do have a traditional RnB album awards section. But I guess that's more or less said for RnB that has maybe a flavor that feels reminiscent of something that came out of the '80s, late 2000s at the latest. Despite the fact that RnB has been known as a genre even long before that, like in the days of rock and roll. There's also traditional pop vocal. There's also traditional blues. And it just feels weird to continue seeing the Grammys pick and choose for the oddest of reasons when they basically segment certain genres off into a traditional category.

I'm not sure what else to add other than that. This feels weird. Let me know what you think about all of this in the comments down below. I'm sure you will.

Anthony Fantano, Country Music, Forever.