Carly Pearce gave her two cents on Beyoncé’s lack of CMA nominations in an exclusive interview with E! News at the 2024 People’s Choice Country Awards.

Carly Pearce knows nothing is going to hold Beyoncé down, down, down, down.

So while Queen Bey wasn’t nominated for any Country Music Association Awards—despite Cowboy Carter being one of the most successful albums of the year—the “Next Girl” singer doesn’t think Beyoncé herself is too worried.

“Beyoncé is Beyoncé,” Carly told E! News’ Keltie Knight at the 2024 People’s Choice Country Awards Sept. 26, where Beyoncé was nominated in 10 categories. “I think she has publicly said she did not make a country album. She was making an album, and yes, there’s a lot of Western, a lot of country elements, because I think she’s grounded in her roots in Texas.”

She continued, “I don’t think Beyoncé cares that she didn’t get nominated for a CMA award. And I think everybody can just calm down. I think she’s doing okay. She’s not worried about the state of her career.” (To see all the stars at the PCCAs red carpet, click here.)
But while the “Texas Hold ‘Em” star herself has remained quiet since the CMA Awards nominations came out, there has been much discourse over why Cowboy Carter—which had the biggest debut of the year for a country album and spent weeks on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart—did not earn the 43-year-old any nods.

Among those weighing in was also country music legend Dolly Parton, who spoke out in defense of the CMA Awards.

Ralph Bavaro/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images & Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for iHeartRadio
“Well, you never know,” Dolly told Variety in an interview published Sept. 17. “There’s so many wonderful country artists that, I guess probably the country music field, they probably thought, well, we can’t really leave out some of the ones that spend their whole life doing that.”

And while noting Cowboy Carter was a “wonderful album,” the Music Hall of Famer continued of Beyoncé, “She can be very, very proud. And I think everybody in country music welcomed her and thought that was good. So I don’t think it was a matter of shutting out. I think it was just more of what the country charts and the country artists were doing, that do that all the time, not just a specialty album.”

Previously, Dolly—whose song “Jolene” was covered by Beyoncé on Cowboy Carter—praised the work.

JEWEL SAMAD/AFP via Getty Images
“I was very proud of her album,” Dolly told E! News in May. “I thought she did a great job in country music, and I thought it was great. And I was just happy she did ‘Jolene.’”

The lack of nominations comes after Beyoncé spoke to the inspiration behind the genre-detouring album, which was a departure from her previous R&B, pop and hip-hop albums.

“It was born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed,” Beyoncé said of Cowboy Carter on Instagram in March, “and it was very clear that I wasn’t. But, because of that experience, I did a deeper dive into the history of Country music and studied our rich musical archive.”

“The criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre,” she continued, “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.”

But while Beyoncé might have been excluded from the CMA Awards, at the 2024 People’s Choice Country Awards she was nominated for in 10 categories, including the People’s Artist, Female Artist, Album of 2024, and Song of the Year.