In true Avengers fashion, the BeyHive (Beyoncé’s fanbase) assembled to hold an Oklahoma country radio station accountable for initially refusing to play the singer’s new country hits.
Earlier this week, the superstar put the internet in a chokehold after debuting two country songs, “Texas Hold ’Em” and “16 Carriages,” on Sunday as she announced her transition into the genre via her forthcoming album.
But the buzz over the announcement took a turn after one of her fans went viral on social media for claiming that KYKC 100.1 FM rejected their request for them to play one of Beyoncé’s new tracks.
Sharing a screenshot of the email exchange with the radio station on X (formerly Twitter), the fan wrote, “I requested ‘Texas Hold ’Em’ at my local country radio station (KYKC) 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.”
“This station needs to be held accountable for their blatant racism and discrimination against Beyoncé,” they added in a separate post.
The fan tagged Queen Bey’s popular fan account, @BeyLegion, which has more than 460k followers, in the posts, drawing attention to the alleged snub.
“#BeyHive! Let’s kindly educate Oklahoma country radio station 1001 KYKC that Beyoncé’s upcoming project and already released singles are indeed country music! Remember to be kind and diplomatic. 🤠👢,” the fan account posted.
In the comments section, many fans replied that they called and emailed the station over the discrepancy.
Just a few hours later, KYKC took to X to share an image of their show schedule, which listed “Texas Hold ’Em” on the lineup in the 2:29 p.m. time slot.
“Lots of calls coming in for Beyoncé’s Texas Hold ’Em,” the station captioned the post on Tuesday. “It’s coming up in minutes.”
KYKC did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
On Wednesday, KYKC’s general manager Roger Harris explained why they initially “refused” to honor the song requests, adding that the station didn’t know about the song at first.
“We initially refused to play it in the same manner if someone requested us to play the Rolling Stones on our country station,” Harris told Today in a statement. “Fact is we play Beyonce on TWO of our other stations and love her…she is an icon. We just didn’t know about the song.”
Harris said that after the station found out about the song, they tried to fulfill the play requests but were unable to obtain it due to limited resources.
“We are not a ‘big boy’ station and getting record companies to service us is tough,” he continued.
Harris added: “But…finally we got our hands on it, and based on the fan support, we decided to air it…truthfully, normally we would (usually) wait a while to see how the song performs on the charts and on bigger country stations than ours, as we are just the little guys.”
On Sunday, Beyoncé posted a mysterious promo clip on X with country themes teasing “act ii” on March 29. The “Lemonade” singer’s 2022 album “Renaissance” is referred to as “Act I: Renaissance.”