Beyoncé's surprise announcement during Super Bowl Sunday, AKA dropping her country album Act II, with the songs Texas Hold ‘Em and 16 Carriages, has Variety asking the question: will country radio stations being playing Queen Bey?

The answer: not quite yet. Radio programmers are apparently still reeling from the drop and there are no plans in place yet to promote the song.

Beyoncé and country music

Beyoncé, Texas Hold 'Em

However, the question started trending on social media on Tuesday when an Oklahoma station tersely responded to a fan asking to play the new songs. A user on X (formerly Twitter) going by the handle @jussatto posted on the social media platform, “I requested ‘Texas Hold ‘Em' at my local country radio station and after requesting, I received an email from the radio station stating ‘We do not play Beyoncé on KYKC as we are a country music station.”

After the post went viral, KYKC's Facebook account later announced that the station IS going to include Texas Hold ‘Em in their playlist. It seems logical to assume that this move was done either to avoid the wrath of the Beyhive, as well as to capitalize on their newfound fame/notoriety.

KYKC, the Oklahoma station isn't part of a major radio conglomerate. It's quite small and is owned by a Native tribe. So this doesn't exactly give us a window to how the country music industry at large will react to Beyoncé's shift to a musical genre that has been infamously resistant against Black women in this space.

However, fan or not, Beyoncé IS one of the biggest music stars in the world. It seems unlikely that country music stations wouldn't play her country songs. While Variety has reached out to Sony Music Nashville, its representatives have not yet responded to the comment requests. Neither did representatives from iHeart and Cumulus, two of the biggest radio chains in the US.

Radio tipsheet Country Insider editor Brian Mansfield said that a few country station played Texas Hold ‘Em once on Monday, most likely as part of the morning news program.

“Even when you're seeing streaming playlists add a record to the top of their playlist, it takes radio a little while to catch up,” Mansfield said.

“We saw that with Oliver Anthony [and his viral sensation “Rich Men North of Richmond”]. That was putting up insane consumption numbers, and it took radio forever to get on board with that. There are some key similarities here, along with some differences, but the common thing is that it's very hard to get a song on the radio when nobody with the record label is saying ‘Hey, you should play this song on the radio,'” he added.

So are country radio stations just not playing it because Beyoncé's label hasn't told them to?

San Francisco country music

However, there is one station — and only one for now — that has been playing the song several times in the last few days, outside of a news programming contest, Mansfield continued. It's KBAY in San Francisco. And not to beat you over the head with it, but just guessing from the location, this station tends to skew towards the progressive side.

“I can't speak for the industry, but we're gonna play it,” KBAY program director and operations manager Bo Matthew said.

“What everybody else will do, I have no idea. I can only tell you that history will show we were early with things like Zach Bryan, whose music is some of the biggest in the world. Country radio has been slow to adopt that, for some reason I can't figure. I think for most country stations, they really want (the signal) to come from Nashville, and I have no idea what Columbia will do,” he continued.

And what do San Francisco country music listeners think about the song?

Matthews stated, “We've gotten mixed reviews, just as we would from any new song. But I think people are excited to hear it.”

“It’s Topic A as a moment in pop culture, and I think if we don't play it we're missing the moment. I feel like so many artists are coming to country right now. Post Malone is doing country stuff; he's worked with Morgan (Wallen) and Hardy, and was at the Super Bowl doing a country-style rendition of ‘America the Beautiful,'” he continued.

“Country is the hottest format, and I think the tent is big enough for all these artists to come out and play. If Beyonce came through their town with a guitar, people would say, ‘Sit down, enjoy yourself and play your music.' I don't know why radio wouldn’t be the same way. Wanting to be part of this is exciting,” Matthews added.

How’s it gone over with KBAY listeners? “We’ve gotten mixed reviews, just as we would from any new song. But I think people are excited to hear it,” Matthews says. “It’s Topic A as a moment in pop culture, and I think if we don’t play it we’re missing the moment. I feel like so many artists are coming to country right now. Post Malone is doing country stuff; he’s worked with Morgan (Wallen) and Hardy, and was at the Super Bowl doing a country-style rendition of ‘America the Beautiful.’ Country is the hottest format, and I think the tent is big enough for all these artists to come out and play. If Beyonce came through their town with a guitar, people would say, ‘Sit down, enjoy yourself and play your music.’ I don’t know why radio wouldn’t be the same way. Wanting to be part of this is exciting.”

Maybe I'm deliberately trying not to see the issue here when it comes to country radio stations not wanting to play Beyoncé. If she had released a hip-hop or R&B or pop music, I completely understand why they wouldn't.

But Texas Hold ‘Em sounds country. So does 16 Carriages. And if it matters at all, she's from Texas.

Is it really because Sony isn't pushing radio stations to play her songs? I understand that there's no precedent for this — even after all the crossovers from pop to country. As the entertainment magazine points out, Beyoncé set her own precent with Daddy Lessons, which was on her 2016 Lemonade album. She performed it at the CMA Awards with the Dixie Chicks.

And that's just one song. This, from the tone of the two songs she has released, is a whole album of country songs. Mansfield compares Beyoncé's move to what Ray Charles did with Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music in 1962.

“That was one of the few places where the artist who's (newly) doing country is bigger than the format. So you can't classify this as carpetbagging, because Beyonce isn't trying to cross over to country (in whole) — she’s just expanding her kingdom,” he elaborated.

I am deliberately not mentioning the white elephant in the room with this question because I'm hoping that in the next few days it stops being a question.