CMAT credits Beyoncé for her Mercury Prize nomination.
The 29-year-old musician is the favourite to win the prestigious award at Thursday’s (16.10.25) ceremony in Newcastle for her album Euro-Country and believes that the Single Ladies hitmaker’s Grammy win for her 2024 country record Cowboy Carter has changed perceptions around the genre.
CMAT, whose real name is Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, is quoted by the Daily Star’s Wired column as saying: “Beyoncé winning a Grammy for it is particularly interesting, and I think it is a really good sign of how she’s opening it up to so many other people, because this is a woman who got it really badly in the neck from the country music establishment in 2016 when she brought the Dixie Chicks – or the Chicks out – at the Country Music Awards and people were like fuming, fuming at this woman for taking ownership of it – and it’s funny because she comes from Texas, which they say is where country music comes from. So I was like, ‘What are you gonna do?'”
CMAT explained that she has faced her own challenges trying to get her own brand of country music accepted by traditionalists.
The Irish singer said: “Everyone’s allowed to make it… (but) what I’ve dealt with in my career so far is going to America and people not accepting that what I make is country music and saying what I make is not country music, because country music is a genre is so tied into people’s identities in the south… being co-opted by white Christian conservatives.
“And so they tied into their identity and if anyone wants to come in and use it for self-expression, they think it’s literally not allowed.”
The Take a Sexy Picture of Me artist continued: “And this is a conversation that’s coming up a lot nowadays because country music is having this revival and we had the Beyoncé album where people were like, ‘That’s not country music. She’s just making it modern by introducing new stuff to it.'”
CMAT adds that she was introduced to country legends such as Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton from an early age.
She recalled: “When I was growing up there was a bit of a craze of like Johnny Cash. I really latched on to that film Walk The Line. And then Dolly Parton… Taylor Swift’s early work.
“I love Dolly Parton, obviously. She plays guitar and writes her own songs and has big boobs. She’s, like, the best person alive.”