Beyoncé performs on the opening night of the Renaissance World Tour in at Friends Arena in Stockholm, Sweden on May 10, 2023. Photo by Mason Poole.

Beyoncé has the no. 1 country song on Billboard with “Texas Hold ‘Em.” That’s generating a lot of talk, most of it hysterical on both pro and con sides, because Queen Bey did a pretty good song that sort of sounds country.

Rendering: Adam Pardee/STAFF.

It’s just a song. Or is it?

Four on the floor, banjo, some lyrics about hoedowns, all sung by the same voice that has dominated R&B and pop charts for decades.

This is country music, I guess. I know it’s good, and that’s all I care about. But it’s not that different from what she’s done in the past. It all comes from the same place: 20th Century United States of America.

I’ve also heard people also consider Kid Rock country. I wouldn’t know, as I haven’t willingly listened to a Kid Rock song in 20 years, when he was supposed to be some unholy rap-rock hybrid. (I can’t even begin to believe he still has a career, but playing golf with an orange rapist who once lived in the White House means about 40 percent of the country might care).

Now Kid Rock hangs around with rednecks and plays with guns and hates Bud Light for being “woke.” So I guess he’s “country.”

In a way, It’s all so stupid.

Ray Charles proved more than 60 years ago that there’s barely a difference between some music considered blues and some considered country, with his 1962 hit album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music. One genre came from the Mississippi Delta and one came from Appalachia (though, by some accounts, country music came from farther south). But it’s all American music, as is the rock and roll both genres had a hand in birthing.

As I get older, the differences seem smaller, because the music isn’t that different in its rawest form.

Laying claim to a musical genre is more about group identity and sometimes, in defining those identities, we highlight the differences instead of the similarities. But there’s far more of the latter than the former.

So Beyoncé—who is from Houston, Texas, by the way, and grew up around people in cowboy hats—crossing over to country could be a great thing, if it brings more ears to good country music (or just new music, for some).

Just as Luke Combs covering Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” brought more ears to folk by one of the greatest folk songs ever written. Just like seeing a white male country star and a middle-aged Black woman dueting on “Fast Car” at the Grammys earlier this month was nothing but good in a divisive America.

One of the only things the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame gets right is its inclusiveness of artists from so many supposed subgenres. Rock and Roll is a nothing if not a hybrid of everything that came before it.

Get on YouTube and search for Bill McClintock mashups. McClintock takes songs from what are considered totally opposite genres and mixes them together and suddenly it’s obvious how all these genres are pretty much the same thing, with the same instruments, only with different instruments highlighted and different wardrobes of the artists. Often, the mashed-up musicians are of different races, just reinforcing the idea that none of the music is that different.

My favorite is McClintock’s genius mix of Van Halen’s “Mean Street” and the Jackson 5’s “Dancing Machine” into “Mean Machine.”  And since we’re here, part of why Van Halen itself was so successful was the mix of the Van Halen brothers’ (trained as classic pianists) love of heavy rock, blended with David Lee Roth’s vaudevillian schtick and love of soul music. Led Zeppelin meets the Ohio Players.

So, yes, some of the people rolling around the South in giant pickup trucks with Confederate flags on the bumper may be annoyed at Beyoncé’s sudden “country” success (never mind similar crossovers from Lil Nas X, Lionel Richie, Jack White, Jon Bon Jovi, Elvis Costello, Jewel …  the list gets long). It’s gone the other way as well. One of America’s great sometimes-experimental alternative rock bands, Wilco, was born as a mainstay of what was called Alternative Country.

Some of Beyoncé’s hardcore R&B fans may be annoyed at the cowboy hat and banjo (which, by many accounts, was invented in Africa).

It all comes from the same place, kids, And it’s really not that different. We’ll all be better off once we realize that. Because sometimes I swear music is the only thing that will save us.

Follow music critic Tony Hicks at Twitter.com/TonyBaloney1967.