Shaboozey’s face says it all when Megan Moroney suggests Carter family ‘invented country music’
When Shaboozey heard that The Carter Family “basically invented country music,” he had about as honestly Black a reaction as one can have—shade.
The American Music Awards (AMAs) took place over the weekend and lots of worthy people won awards, Janet Jackson performed for the first time in years while also accepting an award and Beyoncé added more hardware to her already full mantle with two wins for Favorite Female Country Artist and Best Country Album for “Cowboy Carter,” an album she’s touring right now. Chances are somebody you know is putting on cowboy boots and chaps right now preparing to head out to see the show, which on May 28 and 29, is pulling up to New York (really New Jersey’s) MetLife Stadium.
But I digress. One of the awards given at the AMAs is for Favorite Country Duo or Group and country stars Shaboozey and Megan Moroney were the presenters. And that’s when it all became…a thing.
While reading from the teleprompter (that’s an important detail here), Shaboozey read his part that mentioned the first AMA for Favorite Male Country Artist went to Charley Pride. Then Megan Moroney read her part on the teleprompter.
“That same year, the favorite female country artist went to Lynn Anderson, and this award went to The Carter Family, who basically invented country music.”
And that’s when a new meme was born. In what can only be described as a perfect “shade-meets-side-eye-with-a-laugh” execution, Shaboozey threw his head back ever so slightly, looked disgusted, and then briefly laughed at the assertion before announcing the nominees in the category. I have no idea who they were or who won. But that’s not what’s important here.
What is important is that Shaboozey couldn’t believe what he heard and the ancestors couldn’t stop him from showing it on his face. Now, I don’t know if Ms. Moroney believes what she said. I don’t know if she doesn’t either, but I do know she was reading from a teleprompter and that teleprompter set her up. Because Shaboozey gave her the business—now we have a new way of communicating disgust on social media.
It has been posited online in way too many places that maybe Shaboozey thought the Carters being mentioned were Beyoncé and Jay-Z, and he couldn’t believe that they’d be given such credit but I doubt that. Shaboozey was on “Cowboy Carter,” an album dedicated to Black people being acknowledged and taking up space in a genre that has long ignored some of its greatest Black pioneers.
This is why it is much more likely that Shaboozey was annoyed that The Carter Family, long considered “The First Family of Country,” was being overly credited with creating a genre when the influence of a Black man named Lesley Riddle was all over their music stylings, and that’s not speculation.
Again, we don’t know if Ms. Moroney believes what she read off that teleprompter, but we do know she did read it and we do know Shaboozey took issue with it in a very culturally Black way.
And now we have a meme for eternity.
(For what it’s worth, the rest of the awards presentation went off smoothly and with smiles.)