Bethenny Frankel Weighs In on Beyoncé’s Country Transition

Bethenny Frankel has never shied away from sharing her opinions, and this time she’s weighed in on Beyoncé’s new music.

Beyoncé surprised everyone when she released two country songs on February 11, “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages,” and revealed she would release a new all-country album on March 29. The new music made headlines with all kinds of people weighing into the debate and some country music radio stations even refusing to play the song at all.

Now the former Real Housewives of New York star has put her two cents into the mix.

“I’d like to shout out Beyoncé. Now, I don’t know much about country music, I’m certainly no critic and I can’t comment with institutional knowledge or that I’m educated on country music. I’m a complete tourist in the space,” she said on her Just B podcast.

Frankel continued that she was not sure if she liked the song at first, much like Beyoncé’s husband Jay-Z’s hit “Empire State of Mind,” but after hearing it a few times she suddenly “lived for it.”

“You literally, just don’t know if you like it… but anyway, Beyonce’s song, I’ve heard a couple times and I don’t know exactly how I feel about it, but I do know that I haven’t stopped it [thinking about it],” she continued.

“It can’t get out of my head. It is so freaking catchy.”

Frankel went on to compliment Beyoncé saying she’s “so elegant, so fierce, so classy, so talented.”

“Some people just do it right and she’s not thirsty, there’s a difference between someone who you know is desperate and thirsty and someone who you know is not,” she added.

When Beyoncé released her country songs, she made history when she became the first woman to have topped both the Hot Country Songs and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts.

Her new country album comes after 2023 saw the genre become one of the fastest growing in the U.S, according to industry data firm Luminate. Country on-demand audio streams exceeded 20 billion last years which was a 23.7 percent increase from 2022.

The album is Act II in her Renaissance journey, the first act being an album dedicated to house music and the queer ballroom culture spearheaded by Black and Latinx people.

Fans and music experts have theorized that her latest projects are a drive to claim back music created by Black people.

“Historically, country music has been a white space and an exclusionary space at that. This is in direct contrast to the little-known but increasingly talked about fact that country music actually began with Black people. And Beyoncé making a country album only solidifies this fact,” singer/songwriter Kaia Kater told Newsweek earlier this month.