USA - 2024
Country Pop, Contemporary Country, Americana, Country Soul
There’s another timeline where Beyoncé has always been a country artist, where it wasn’t even a question. But at a very young age, she entered a church choir and her story went elsewhere. She became this giant modern R&B popstar with Destiny’s Child and her first solo albums Dangerously In Love and B’Day. So when Beyoncé said she was going to record her first country album, it sounded like something out of the blue. But this reasoning is a bias due to her skin colour. Because if we think about it for one second, it’s obvious she had to make COWBOY CARTER. But of course, when a young black girl starts doing music no matter which State she was born in, she has to do gospel, she has to do R&B. How could it be different ? Well, now it’s been 26 years since she debuted with Destiny’s Child, and in more than two decades, Beyoncé helped us change our views on her life story, to erase our biases. So let’s do it again.
Beyoncé Giselle Knowles was born on September 4, 1981 in Houston, Texas. Her mother Tina Knowles was born in Galveston, Texas from a Louisiana Creole heritage while her father Matthew Knowles was born in Gadsden, Alabama. Beyoncé recalls these roots in AMERIICAN REQUIEM, « the grandbaby of a moonshine man / Gadsden, Alabama / Got folk down in Galveston, rooted in Louisiana ». But at a very young age, racism closed the doors of country for her : « Used to say I spoke too country / And the rejection came, said I wasn’t country ‘nough / Said I wouldn’t saddle up, but if that ain’t country, tell me what is? ». It’s been 26 years and now she has enough power to spin the wheel the way she wants.
And she could not have recorded a better song than AMERIICAN REQUIEM to kick that door open. Speaking Louisiana vernacular with « Looka dere, looka dere » and interpolating Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth (Stop, Hey What’s That Sound), this is the heaviest song off COWBOY CARTER where Beyoncé glows in all her artistic splendor. She says it on SWEET/HONEY/BUCKIN, it’s her introspective analysis : “I’m coming home / We’ve come a long way from the rough ride / From the railroads to the rodeos, sweet country home”. Beyoncé is here to bring back country music into the hands of those who participated in its creation and were erased from history : African-American people. This is all about legacy, as much as RENAISSANCE was about legacy for Black people and the LGBTQ+ community.
But there’s a big difference between the first act and the second one. “Sixteen dollars, workin’ all day / Ain’t got time to waste, I got art to make / I got love to create on this holy night / They won’t dim my light, all these years I fight” she sings powerfully on 16 CARRIAGES. RENAISSSANCE was all about the celebration of a culture, shooting fireworks and redirecting the spotlight on those who deserve to be remembered. But she never talked about this work as a “fight”. However, in COWBOY CARTER, the word “fight” comes back a lot. Because this is way more personal, it’s a deeply intimate record where she reworks her life’s narrative. This is her massive healing power. Her personal journey to go back to who she could have been without racism becomes the journey of an entire population. So now our perspective on Beyoncé’s story changes, and so does our perspective on country music.
She did it on RENAISSANCE, she does it again on COWBOY CARTER. Beyoncé surrounds herself with people old and new who all contributed to make the genre she celebrates what it is today. Willie Nelson, one of the most important country singer from the Austin scene, introduces some of Beyoncé’s songs on the album during two interludes called SMOKE HOUR. And Nelson even convinces old-fashioned country lover who would dismiss Beyoncé because of her skin colour when he says : « Sometimes you don’t know what you like until someone you trust turns you on to some real good shit / And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I’m here ». And as Beyoncé pays tribute to the ones who came before her, she questions the cowboy mythology and how it resonates within her own life.
With the Tennessee-born country superstar Dolly Parton, Beyoncé goes back to the topic of adultery she talked about on Sorry in 2016. « You know that hussy with the good hair you sing about ? » asks Parton, « Reminded me of someone I knew back when / Except she has flamin’ locks of auburn hair / Bless her heart / Just a hair of a different color but it hurts just the same ». And now the country hit JOLENE becomes Beyoncé’s Sorry. And instead of keeping Parton’s lyrics, she changes some of them to assert her feminine strength : « Jolene, I’m warnin’ you, don’t come for my man ». Beyoncé finds a resonance in Parton’s song as she connects her own experience with hers, pursuing that scheme on TYRANT and DAUGHTER. Revenge through shotguns becomes revenge through songs. And Beyoncé keeps rewording her badass persona into country archetypes.
« They keep sayin’ that I ain’t nothin’ like my father / But I’m the furthest thing from choir boys and altars / If you cross me I’m just like my father / I am colder than Titanic water ». Beyoncé formulates this threat on DAUGHTER who is also a nod to her first truly country song in 2016, Daddy Lessons. Empowerment has always been a part of Beyoncé’s music as she always showcase her unbreakable self-confidence. In RIIVERDANCE, the cowboy-persona resurfaces with the lyrics « Staring down the barrel of my gun / Yes I shot you down / He cried the day he realized / That lies were hidden in my kisses ». But the pinnacle of this pattern happens during SPAGHETTII, the name of the song itself taking us back to Spaghetti Westerns, the films directed by Sergio Leone, Tonino Valerii and others : « Howl to the moon / Outlaws with me, they gon’ shoot / Keep the code, break the rules / We gon’ ride for every members we lose ».
SPAGHETTII also introduces another theme through the legendary Linda Martell (first African-American country artist to meet commercial success) who asks : « Genres are a funny little concept, aren’t they? ». While Beyoncé constantly subverts the image of the traditional cowboys, she also twists the usual codes of country music, blending it with hip hop, gospel, folk and R&B. Country music travels through another evolution thanks to COWBOY CARTER, and its imagery, here mostly used for violence, also lines up with Beyoncé’s most prominent theme throughout her career : romance. Indeed, COWBOY CARTER might be Beyoncé’s most romantic album since BEYONCÉ or Dangerously in Love.
R&B has always been the music genre made to talk about love. But so is country, and Beyoncé perfectly understood that. First, she starts to paint these exquisitely melancholic landscapes on the album’s most gorgeous songs. She sees these « sixteen carriages drivin’ away / While I watch them ride with my dreams away / To the summer sunset on a holy night / On a long black road, all the tears I fight ». Then on II HANDS II HEAVEN, images of wolves are meshed with stallions, moons and winds while she has her « bottle in my hand, the whiskey up high / Two hands to Heaven, wild horses run wild / God only knows why though », as if she was a lonely rider praying God by a fire in the cold night of the desert. This is also the song where she declares her passion to her lover : « And all I see is everything / Your goals, your glow, your inner being / And our bigger meaning ».
These romantic themes come back on many songs, giving COWBOY CARTER a very sweet and delicate aura, like a warm blanket covering your ears in a dreamy night. On II MOST WANTED, she teams up with Miley Cyrus to unleash a new wave of romanticism : « I’ll be your shotgun rider / ‘Til the day I die » while LEVII’S JEANS leans in sexual innuendos with Post Malone : « You call me pretty little thing / And I love to turn him on / Boy, I’ll let you be me Levi’s jeans / So you can hug that ass all day long ». Almost all the songs have a romantic feeling to them, even the countriest one, TEXAS HOLD ‘EM, ends on a honey-like slow-dance that draws on your lips the softest of smiles. But Beyoncé’s love isn’t purposeless. It’s a healing force.
Two songs are dedicated to her children. The first one is PROTECTOR where Beyoncé’s child Rumi asks her mother to sing her a lullaby. The second one is MY ROSE, written for Rumi’s twin brother Sir. This time, Beyoncé tries to convince her young son that he shouldn’t be so hard on himself : « So be fond of your flaws, dear / I love you ». This is what Beyoncé wants people to feel when they listen to COWBOY CARTER. Just like Sir, they need to feel proud of being themselves, unapologetically.
With the use of the banjo, Linda Martell as a guest and a song dedicated to the Chitlin Circuit (a collection of venues in the USA allowing African-American artists to perform), Beyoncé reinvests the past only to make it glow brighter, so everyone can see how much Black people have their word to say when it comes to country music. “Can we stand for something? / Now is the time to face the wind / Now ain’t the time to pretend / Now is the time to let love in” she sings on AMERIICAN REQUIEM. Indeed, COWBOY CARTER is a political statement. “This house was built with blood and bone / And it crumbled / The statues they were made beautiful / But they were lies of stone”. On the splendid closing track AMEN, Beyoncé looks straight in the eyes of an old and stumbling America. And upon those stones, she encourages everyone to revolt, to fight, to heal, to rest, to dance, to love. Because as she says on JUST FOR FUN, « Time heals everything / I don’t need anything ».
The public eye won’t look at country the same. COWBOY CARTER and Beyoncé set a precedent for Black musicians, while pushing the boundaries of a music genre she always belonged to.
Beyoncé Giselle Knowles was born on September 4, 1981 in Houston, Texas. Her mother Tina Knowles was born in Galveston, Texas from a Louisiana Creole heritage while her father Matthew Knowles was born in Gadsden, Alabama. Beyoncé recalls these roots in AMERIICAN REQUIEM, « the grandbaby of a moonshine man / Gadsden, Alabama / Got folk down in Galveston, rooted in Louisiana ». But at a very young age, racism closed the doors of country for her : « Used to say I spoke too country / And the rejection came, said I wasn’t country ‘nough / Said I wouldn’t saddle up, but if that ain’t country, tell me what is? ». It’s been 26 years and now she has enough power to spin the wheel the way she wants.
And she could not have recorded a better song than AMERIICAN REQUIEM to kick that door open. Speaking Louisiana vernacular with « Looka dere, looka dere » and interpolating Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth (Stop, Hey What’s That Sound), this is the heaviest song off COWBOY CARTER where Beyoncé glows in all her artistic splendor. She says it on SWEET/HONEY/BUCKIN, it’s her introspective analysis : “I’m coming home / We’ve come a long way from the rough ride / From the railroads to the rodeos, sweet country home”. Beyoncé is here to bring back country music into the hands of those who participated in its creation and were erased from history : African-American people. This is all about legacy, as much as RENAISSANCE was about legacy for Black people and the LGBTQ+ community.
But there’s a big difference between the first act and the second one. “Sixteen dollars, workin’ all day / Ain’t got time to waste, I got art to make / I got love to create on this holy night / They won’t dim my light, all these years I fight” she sings powerfully on 16 CARRIAGES. RENAISSSANCE was all about the celebration of a culture, shooting fireworks and redirecting the spotlight on those who deserve to be remembered. But she never talked about this work as a “fight”. However, in COWBOY CARTER, the word “fight” comes back a lot. Because this is way more personal, it’s a deeply intimate record where she reworks her life’s narrative. This is her massive healing power. Her personal journey to go back to who she could have been without racism becomes the journey of an entire population. So now our perspective on Beyoncé’s story changes, and so does our perspective on country music.
She did it on RENAISSANCE, she does it again on COWBOY CARTER. Beyoncé surrounds herself with people old and new who all contributed to make the genre she celebrates what it is today. Willie Nelson, one of the most important country singer from the Austin scene, introduces some of Beyoncé’s songs on the album during two interludes called SMOKE HOUR. And Nelson even convinces old-fashioned country lover who would dismiss Beyoncé because of her skin colour when he says : « Sometimes you don’t know what you like until someone you trust turns you on to some real good shit / And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I’m here ». And as Beyoncé pays tribute to the ones who came before her, she questions the cowboy mythology and how it resonates within her own life.
With the Tennessee-born country superstar Dolly Parton, Beyoncé goes back to the topic of adultery she talked about on Sorry in 2016. « You know that hussy with the good hair you sing about ? » asks Parton, « Reminded me of someone I knew back when / Except she has flamin’ locks of auburn hair / Bless her heart / Just a hair of a different color but it hurts just the same ». And now the country hit JOLENE becomes Beyoncé’s Sorry. And instead of keeping Parton’s lyrics, she changes some of them to assert her feminine strength : « Jolene, I’m warnin’ you, don’t come for my man ». Beyoncé finds a resonance in Parton’s song as she connects her own experience with hers, pursuing that scheme on TYRANT and DAUGHTER. Revenge through shotguns becomes revenge through songs. And Beyoncé keeps rewording her badass persona into country archetypes.
« They keep sayin’ that I ain’t nothin’ like my father / But I’m the furthest thing from choir boys and altars / If you cross me I’m just like my father / I am colder than Titanic water ». Beyoncé formulates this threat on DAUGHTER who is also a nod to her first truly country song in 2016, Daddy Lessons. Empowerment has always been a part of Beyoncé’s music as she always showcase her unbreakable self-confidence. In RIIVERDANCE, the cowboy-persona resurfaces with the lyrics « Staring down the barrel of my gun / Yes I shot you down / He cried the day he realized / That lies were hidden in my kisses ». But the pinnacle of this pattern happens during SPAGHETTII, the name of the song itself taking us back to Spaghetti Westerns, the films directed by Sergio Leone, Tonino Valerii and others : « Howl to the moon / Outlaws with me, they gon’ shoot / Keep the code, break the rules / We gon’ ride for every members we lose ».
SPAGHETTII also introduces another theme through the legendary Linda Martell (first African-American country artist to meet commercial success) who asks : « Genres are a funny little concept, aren’t they? ». While Beyoncé constantly subverts the image of the traditional cowboys, she also twists the usual codes of country music, blending it with hip hop, gospel, folk and R&B. Country music travels through another evolution thanks to COWBOY CARTER, and its imagery, here mostly used for violence, also lines up with Beyoncé’s most prominent theme throughout her career : romance. Indeed, COWBOY CARTER might be Beyoncé’s most romantic album since BEYONCÉ or Dangerously in Love.
R&B has always been the music genre made to talk about love. But so is country, and Beyoncé perfectly understood that. First, she starts to paint these exquisitely melancholic landscapes on the album’s most gorgeous songs. She sees these « sixteen carriages drivin’ away / While I watch them ride with my dreams away / To the summer sunset on a holy night / On a long black road, all the tears I fight ». Then on II HANDS II HEAVEN, images of wolves are meshed with stallions, moons and winds while she has her « bottle in my hand, the whiskey up high / Two hands to Heaven, wild horses run wild / God only knows why though », as if she was a lonely rider praying God by a fire in the cold night of the desert. This is also the song where she declares her passion to her lover : « And all I see is everything / Your goals, your glow, your inner being / And our bigger meaning ».
These romantic themes come back on many songs, giving COWBOY CARTER a very sweet and delicate aura, like a warm blanket covering your ears in a dreamy night. On II MOST WANTED, she teams up with Miley Cyrus to unleash a new wave of romanticism : « I’ll be your shotgun rider / ‘Til the day I die » while LEVII’S JEANS leans in sexual innuendos with Post Malone : « You call me pretty little thing / And I love to turn him on / Boy, I’ll let you be me Levi’s jeans / So you can hug that ass all day long ». Almost all the songs have a romantic feeling to them, even the countriest one, TEXAS HOLD ‘EM, ends on a honey-like slow-dance that draws on your lips the softest of smiles. But Beyoncé’s love isn’t purposeless. It’s a healing force.
Two songs are dedicated to her children. The first one is PROTECTOR where Beyoncé’s child Rumi asks her mother to sing her a lullaby. The second one is MY ROSE, written for Rumi’s twin brother Sir. This time, Beyoncé tries to convince her young son that he shouldn’t be so hard on himself : « So be fond of your flaws, dear / I love you ». This is what Beyoncé wants people to feel when they listen to COWBOY CARTER. Just like Sir, they need to feel proud of being themselves, unapologetically.
With the use of the banjo, Linda Martell as a guest and a song dedicated to the Chitlin Circuit (a collection of venues in the USA allowing African-American artists to perform), Beyoncé reinvests the past only to make it glow brighter, so everyone can see how much Black people have their word to say when it comes to country music. “Can we stand for something? / Now is the time to face the wind / Now ain’t the time to pretend / Now is the time to let love in” she sings on AMERIICAN REQUIEM. Indeed, COWBOY CARTER is a political statement. “This house was built with blood and bone / And it crumbled / The statues they were made beautiful / But they were lies of stone”. On the splendid closing track AMEN, Beyoncé looks straight in the eyes of an old and stumbling America. And upon those stones, she encourages everyone to revolt, to fight, to heal, to rest, to dance, to love. Because as she says on JUST FOR FUN, « Time heals everything / I don’t need anything ».
The public eye won’t look at country the same. COWBOY CARTER and Beyoncé set a precedent for Black musicians, while pushing the boundaries of a music genre she always belonged to.