Shaboozey side-eyes Megan Moroney at American Music Awards over 'invented country' comment

USA Today

5 days ago

Shaboozey side-eyes Megan Moroney at American Music Awards over 'invented country' comment
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Shaboozey is the No. 1 artist on SiriusXM's Galaxy 50 roundup for 2024
Breakout artist Shaboozey came in at No.1 on SiriusXM's Galaxy 50 list, curated by programmers at the satellite radio company.
Shaboozey is speaking out after his side-eye of fellow country star Megan Moroney during the American Music Awards raised some eyebrows.
During the Memorial Day telecast, the "A Bar Song" hitmaker presented the favorite country duo or group award alongside the "Tennessee Orange" crooner. He told the audience in-person and at home that "country music has been an important part of AMA history."
"The very first year of this show, the award for favorite male country artist went to the great Charley Pride," Shaboozey said, in reference to the late Black country music pioneer who died of COVID-19 in 2020.
"That same year, favorite female artist went to Lynn Anderson. And this award went to the Carter Family, who basically invented country music," Moroney said, reading off a teleprompter. Then, Shaboozey side-eyed the statement.
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In a series of X posts May 27, Shaboozey addressed the comments and told fans to "Google, Lesley Riddle, Steve Tartar, Harry Gay, Defoe Bailey, and The Carter Family..." and added that "when you uncover the true history of country music, you find a story so powerful that it cannot be erased."
"The real history of country music is about people coming together despite their differences and embracing and celebrating the things that make us alike," wrote Shaboozey, who is Black.
The moment, too, marked another chapter in country music's complicated intersection with race in America.
In recent years, Nashville has become increasingly polarized as the insulated industry reckons with its own handling of racial issues that have affected the careers of Morgan Wallen, Maren Morris, Beyoncé and Jason Aldean.
The Carter Family didn't invent country music, despite Megan Moroney remarks
Considered foundational country icons, the Carter Family were among the genre's early breakout stars, but they did not invent the genre.
Many tie country music's roots back to the banjo being a West African musical instrument that, as far back as the 17th century, gained renown when Black Africans were first brought to the Americas as enslaved people. Three centuries of intertwining this tradition with English, German, Latin and Scotch-Irish folk traditions ultimately created the root of what is popularly regarded as "traditional" country music.
The Carter Family: Country music group helped put genre on the map
Lesley Riddle, a Black artist familiar to the nearby Appalachian hollers, taught the area's best songs to the Carter Family members A.P. Carter, his sister-in-law "Mother" Maybelle Carter and Maybelle's sister, Sara. He once told the Birthplace of Country Music Museum that he "was (A.P.'s) tape recorder."
Notably, in the roughly dozen or so trips in a half-decade that A.P. Carter took alongside Riddle, he was taught songs including "The Cannonball," "Let the Church Roll On" and "Coal Miner's Blues." Not content to stop there, Riddle also helped Maybelle Carter develop her renowned "Carter Scratch" guitar style, featured in many Carter Family songs, including "Wildwood Flower."
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By the 1974 era referenced at the 2025 American Music Awards, the Carter Family was two generations into their legacy. Following A.P.'s death in 1960, "Mother" Maybelle Carter and the Carter Sisters began using the name "the Carter Family" for their act. Though instrumental in the Carter Family's legacy, Lesley Riddle left music in the 1940s.
"There was no career in music in those years, and Lesley didn't try to make a career in music," Black author, singer-songwriter and ethnomusicologist Don Flemons told The Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network, for a 2019 story.
However, in 1965, at the behest of folklorist Mike Seeger, who documented Riddle's songs and stories before his 1980 death, the legendary performer began playing again.
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In recent years, Nashville has dodged its own reckoning surrounding the issue of race.
While accepting the biggest CMA Award of her career in November 2020, Maren Morris paid tribute to Black women in country music, dedicating her female artist of the year win to Rhiannon Giddens, Yola, Linda Martell, Rissi Palmer, Mickey Guyton and Brittney Spencer — all generational Black women who have helped shift narratives in Nashville.
"There are so many amazing Black women that pioneer and continue to pioneer this genre," Morris said. "I know they're gonna come after me. They've come before me. You've made this genre so, so beautiful. I hope you know that we see you."
In May the following year, Morris criticized fellow country star Morgan Wallen after he shook the country music world – and the country – when a video surfaced of him using a racist slur in leaked home security footage.
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In the summer of 2023, Morris foe Jason Aldean released "Try That in a Small Town" which topped the Billboard Hot 100.
Its music video showed clips from protests in recent years and was quickly pulled from CMT after the criticism online, with some claiming the visual was a "dog whistle" aimed at Black people as others labeled the tune "pro-lynching."
That September, the "My Church" singer announced that she was leaving the structural elements of country music behind as Taylor Swift and Kacey Musgraves did before her.
"The stories going on within country music right now, I've tried to avoid a lot of it at all costs. I feel very, very distanced from it," she told the Los Angeles Times. "I had to take a step back. The way I grew up was so wrapped in country music, and the way I write songs is very lyrically structured in the Nashville way of doing things."
While Beyoncé received the most Grammy nominations of any artist in November, last fall she was snubbed from the CMAs, which reignited cultural conversations surrounding the award show. Her country-inspired album "Cowboy Carter" was nominated for 11 Grammys, including five in the country and American roots music field.
In September, Beyonce didn't receive a single CMA award nod while Wallen received the most nominations with a total of seven nods. Eight years earlier, the "Texas Hold 'Em" hitmaker was greeted with an icy reception while performing with The Chicks at the 2016 CMAs.
"The criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me. Act ii is a result of challenging myself and taking my time to bend and blend genres together to create this body of work," she wrote last year. One of the most lauded collaborators on "Cowboy Carter," which won album of the year at the 2025 Grammys? Shaboozey.
Contributing: Taijuan Moorman, Caché McClay, Naledi Ushe; Matthew Leimkuehler, Nashville Tennessean