Oklahoma station refuses to play new Beyonce country single — then relents

Pop star Beyonce crossed genres and released a pair of country singles Sunday. After refusing to play either and facing backlash, an Oklahoma country station is airing one of those songs.

Beyonce’s new songs are “Texas Hold ’Em” and “16 Carriages.” One of her fans emailed KYKC in Byng, Oklahoma, asking that the song be played.

The FM radio station replied on X that “we do not play Beyonce on KYKC as we are a country music station.”

Roger Harris, the general manager of Southern Central Oklahoma Radio Enterprises, which runs KYKC, said the newness of the song and lack of airplay led to its initial exclusion.

“We are a small market station. … It has to chart a little bit higher for us to add it. But we love Beyonce here. We play her on our [other top 40 and adult hit stations], but we’re not playing her on our country station yet because it just came out,” he told The Tennessean.

He added, “If somebody calls and requests the Rolling Stones on that station, we’re going to say the same thing. We don’t play her, but we will [with] this one. If it’s a country song, we will certainly play it.”

Neither song received enough airtime through Monday to land on Billboard’s 60-spot “Country Airplay” chart.

A sister station to KYKC focused on top 40 hits was already playing the new songs, and the influx of calls has led KYKC to add “Texas Hold ’Em” to its playlists, according to Billboard.

The station posted on Facebook Tuesday showing that “Texas Hold ’Em” was in its queue to be played.

Some listeners in Byng weren’t enthusiastic about the station’s capitulation to Beyonce’s fans.

In a response to a comment on Facebook, the station wrote that “local feedback from ’local’ listeners did not really want us to play it. But … this created a lot of ’national’ attention, which was 99% in favor of us playing her new country songs. So … we did.”