Beyoncé Officially Enters Country Radio With 'Texas Hold 'Em'

Beyoncé and her Their latest single “Texas Hold 'Em” debuted on the country charts on Billboard's Country Airplay, the publication announced on Friday. The track marks Beyoncé's debut on this chart more than two decades into her career. The Country Airplay chart is for radio airplay only.

Once Beyoncé released the country-influenced “Texas Hold'Em” and “16 Carriages” on Super Bowl Sunday, a major question became how the country music industry would embrace the tracks, especially given the genre's own history of ignores black artists in the past, and that Beyoncé is not a long-running country act. Streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music quickly placed “Texas Hold 'Em” at the top of their country playlists, though it wasn't so clear how country radio's old guard would react.

Beyoncé's Columbia Records label officially pushed “Texas Hold'Em” to country radio earlier this week, and the song opens on the Airplay chart at No. 54 with about 1.1 million plays, Billboard reported.

As Rolling rock as reported this week, Queen Bey's track isn't all that unexpected. While she's known primarily as a pop and R&B icon, she's also had a notable influence in country, which emerged most prominently in 2016. Lemonade track “Daddy Lessons”. Meanwhile, the Nashville stars have been covering Beyoncé songs for the past 10 years.

With Beyoncé charting for a few days of radio play, the question now is how “Texas Hold'Em” will chart next week. And of course, there are the other charts that also take into account streams and sales along with radio, including the Hot 100 and Hot Country Songs charts. Fans readily compared Bey's status to Lil Nas X and “Old Town Road” in 2019, when Billboard removed the song from the Hot Country Songs chart. Where the song ends up will become clear when the Billboard charts are updated next Tuesday. If Beyoncé were to top the Hot Country Songs chart, she would become the first black female artist with a No. 1 country song.

Four different versions of the song currently occupy the top five of the iTunes chart as fans push for the song to earn a Number One accolade. As of publication, “Texas Hold 'Em” is also the Number Two track on Apple Music and Spotify's US Top Charts, behind only Kanye West and Ty Dolla $ign's “Carnival.”