Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold 'Em”: Hit? Stunt?? Or Both???
Examining Spotify data to objectively answer this question.
I will peddle no hot take here regarding whether Beyoncé’s Superbowl surprise is a Country song. Chris Molanphy expertly covers the societal questions the song exposes in his Slate column Why Is This Song No. 1?
Instead, I will merely examine how “Texas Hold 'Em” has performed on Spotify to see if people are sampling it in response to the hype or if they genuinely enjoy the song.
Here’s how many times U.S. Spotify users played Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold 'Em” each day from Superbowl Monday, February 12th, through Tuesday, February 27th:
During its first week, the song’s daily stream count dropped slightly (15 percent) by Thursday. On Friday, however, plays jumped back to release day levels. Two and a half weeks after its release, “Texas Hold 'Em” is still garnering 73 percent of the streaming plays on Spotify it received on its release day. Beyoncé has consistently held the #1 or #2 slot on Spotify’s top 200, eclipsed only by Kanye West’s return with “Carnival.”
For comparison, what does a song that has proven to be a mere stunt look like on Spotify?
Consider Lil Nax X’s January release, “J Christ.” Launched with a video rife with religious imagery to garner public ire from the Christian community, the song was only #53 on Spotify’s daily chart in the U.S. on the Friday it debuted. That’s only a quarter of the streaming plays “Texas Hold ‘Em” received when it dropped. However, that difference isn’t surprising: Lil Nax X only promoted the song to his insider fan base, not during the Superbowl broadcast.
Unlike Beyoncé’s latest, however, “J Christ’s” streaming plays feel quickly and precipitously. Only two days after its debut, the song received only 58 percent as many streams as it did on its launch day. By the following Friday, “J Christ” fell out of Spotify’s top 200.
This is what a song that isn’t a hit looks like.
That’s not to say that “J Christ” is a failure. When I told my teenager—a rabid Nas X fan—that the song wasn’t doing well, I was informed, “Dad, the song wasn’t supposed to be big the way people your age think of it. It’s supposed to just get him publicity ahead of an upcoming album.”
That’s the kind of thing an artist can do in our YouTube/Spotify/TikTok era that was never possible in the radio/CD era. It’s a publicity model Lil Nas X pioneered.
Later, my teen noted, “Beyoncé is kind of copying “Old Town Road’ with her latest song.”
So is “Texas Hold ‘Em” a hit or a stunt?
Based on Beyoncé’s ability to generate publicity for her genre bending, if it is a stunt, it is a successful one.
Based on the high percentage of streams the song is retaining on Spotify during its first two and a half weeks, however, it also sure looks like a hit.
So, should radio play “Texas Hold ‘Em?”
We can’t yet tell if the song’s continued strong streaming is from Beyonce fans who continue to like the song, or if new listeners who didn’t pay attention to the publicity are now newly discovering the song. We’ll need a few more weeks for that pattern to clearly emerge in the Spotify data.
The publicly released Spotify data also doesn’t tell us if the folks playing “Texas Hold ‘Em” typically play more Hip Hop/R&B songs or if they play more Country songs. Furthermore, no behavioral data can tell us if Country or R&B radio partisans think “Texas Hold ‘Em” belongs on their station. That’s a question my former employer’s perceptual research could answer.
So, to finally answer the question: Is “Texas Hold ‘Em” a successful stunt or a real hit?
Yes.
(P.S. If that banjo on “Texas Hold ‘Em” from Carolina Chocolate Drops’ legend Rhiannon Giddens ain’t real country, there ain’t no Goo Goo Clusters at the Cracker Barrel.)
Sources for this post:
Spotify Charts (Daily charts for USA): https://charts.spotify.com/charts/overview/global
Beyoncé Has Embraced Country. That Doesn’t Mean Country Has Embraced Beyoncé. (Slate’s “Why Is This Song #1 by Chris Molanphy): https://slate.com/culture/2024/02/beyonce-texas-hold-em-country-song-billboard-hot-100.html