Country

When independent country singer Chris Housman attended high school in a rural Kansas town of just 200 people, he bought a copy of the gay cowboy movie Brokeback Mountain, smuggled it to a friend’s house under his shirt and viewed it at a later date.
“I just bawled watching that,” he remembers over coffee in East Nashville.

In April, Housman issued a video for his song “Guilty As Sin” that features him wrapped in shirtless passion with another man. He’s no longer hiding, instead proclaiming his identity in his debut album — Blueneck, due May 31 — which features songs such as “Drag Queen” and “Bible Belt,” owning his God-given traits with the same fervor that more traditional country artists might apply to their Southern roots or small-town heritage.

It happens at a time when minority country artists are more frequently demanding a place at the table and increasingly embracing their differences in their music, not just their marketing. In addition to Housman, Tiera Kennedy — fresh off her appearance on “Blackbiird,” from the Beyoncè album Carter Country — released “I Ain’t a Cowgirl,” an aspirational ballad that lays out through thinly veiled Western metaphors her plan to succeed as a Black female country singer. And Stoney Creek artist Frank Ray released “Uh-Huh (Ajà),” his first radio single to sonically feature his racial heritage, employing Spanish lyrics alongside the English phrases in a production that sounds a bit like “Despacito” without the hip-hop elements.

Trending on Billboard

“I embrace it in every other sense of my artistry,” Ray says. “Whether it’s on social media platforms, or whether it’s in a live performance, or whether it’s with merch, you see the Latin influence there. And then for some reason, when we’re going to pick a new single, it’s anything but the Latin vibe, and I was like, ‘What are we doing? Why are we missing that?’ ”

These three assertive works all arrived in the last two months, around the same time that Beyoncè became the first Black woman to rule both Top Country Albums and Hot Country Songs, followed at the summit on the latter chart by Shaboozey’s  “A Bar Song (Tipsy).” The tracks had already been completed — Kennedy penned “Cowgirl” in late 2022 or 2023, and Housman authored “Guilty As Sin” in November 2020 — but the success of Beyoncè and Shaboozey more strongly established that an audience exists for a brand of country with a progressive sound by artists with a nontraditional bio.

“Beyoncè has sort of allowed the voiceless to have a voice through that one album and the publicity that surrounds it,” says director-producer Francis Whately, whose independent movie Rebel Country will make its world premiere on June 10 during the Tribeca Festival in New York. “She’s made it acceptable and given permission to all those artists who didn’t really have a voice to now have a voice and say, ‘I’m country too.’ ”

Rebel Country examines the modern version of the genre’s rabble rousers who are pushing against the established sounds and systems that have guided the format.

“The rebels of the past were the hard-drinking, womanizing, drug-taking, prison-visiting rebel males,” notes Whately. “The new rebels are people who are challenging the conservative system inherent within country music by dent of simply being gay, or bisexual, or African American, or Mexican, or whatever it is.”

There is, to be sure, a greater interest in promoting them among Nashville’s music industry. Diversity programs have been enacted by the Country Music Association, the Academy of Country Music and CMT. Labels have actively sought Latin American voices and Black (though mostly male) artists, with Darius Rucker, Blanco Brown, Kane Brown and BRELAND among the handful who’ve generated actual country hits.

That difference seems to be enticing to many of the format’s decision-makers, who recognize the demographic changes taking place in America, particularly among youth, who are traditionally the most active music consumers. But there’s likewise a tendency to conform to what’s already working — particularly at radio — and that has made for more caution when it comes to singles. 

Kennedy lost her deal with Valory after a pair of pop-country singles failed to light up the marketplace. After some initial hurt, she sees it as a lesson learned and intends to be more forceful in releasing music that reflects her creative spirit instead of letting the business culture dictate that.

“I’ve listened to stories of Shania [Twain]and Dolly [Parton], and I think at some point every artist goes through that,” Kennedy reasons. “They always come out on the other end of like, ‘Man, I should have just listened to my heart from the very beginning.’ And so I decided to do that.”

It is easy for nontraditional artists to let the market lead. They have, after all, been conditioned to believe that a large segment of the audience will reject them. Ray remembers a particular radio programmer who denigrated his Latin-flavored material, making him gun-shy about issuing it to broadcasters, even though it gives him an instant brand of his own.

“I didn’t realize how much that would hinder my creativity,” says Ray. “Why am I going to take this one person’s curmudgeon remark and shelve this whole Latin country idea that I’ve been hoping for? And it wasn’t until recently where I decided to say — pardon my French — ‘Forget my fucking insecurity. Let’s go all the way.’ ” 

The advent of the internet, social media and digital platforms has made it easier for these artists to find their audiences. Housman, for example, anticipated he would be flooded with hate-filled public comments or — maybe worse — no reaction at all. Instead, he has discovered that with the rare exception, consumers have reacted positively. One YouTube respondent from his native Kansas wrote that Housman is “saving lives with your music.”

Modern technology has made it easier for country fans who think of themselves as isolated to discover expansive artists and music. It has also made consumers in other genres more open to country. That, in turn, creates more possibility for artists who are outside the genre’s historic box.

“The way I’ve been looking at it,” Housman says, “is a little like a house of country music as a foundation. It’s already there, already established. I’m not trying to knock that house down and start from scratch necessarily, but I think we can add a nice little back sunroom with a little tiki bar for the gays and a little pool. But I think you can build [upon] the foundation that’s already there, and that just makes the value of the property go up.”

The artists remain aware of the potential hostilities. Country is stereotypically considered a conservative genre, and campaign efforts by the presumed Republican presidential nominee have referenced concentration camps, dictatorship, a “unified Reich” and revenge. Given the climate, their willingness to not just pursue their music, but to also proclaim their differences is an act of bravery. But also one of faith.

“There’s a lot of hate in this world, and there will always be hate in this world,” Kennedy says. “But I think the best way to counteract that is to love other people. Love always wins — always wins — at the end of the day.”

Subscribe to Billboard Country Update, the industry’s must-have source for news, charts, analysis and features. Sign up for free delivery every weekend.