Cowboy Carter: Breaking Down Beyoncé's New Album
Source: Spotify
Beyoncé’s highly anticipated album Cowboy Carter has finally hit the streaming services, and the 27-song tracklist did not disappoint. The album features high-profile artists like Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Linda Martell, Miley Cyrus, and Post Malone.
Cowboy Carter is the second album of a three-album concept that started with Act 1, Renaissance. Beyoncé is fresh off of her Renaissance world tour, which grossed $579 million and was eventually supplemented with her Renaissance Tour film. However, Renaissance leaned heavily into Beyoncé’s infamous R&B sound, while Cowboy Carter is a departure from that with a clear country inspiration threaded throughout the album.
This album was partly inspired by her native Texas roots, but Beyoncé says Cowboy Carter was “born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed… and it was very clear that I wasn’t.” This statement is seemingly about a performance at the 2016 Country Music Awards in which Beyoncé performed her country hit “Daddy Lessons” with The Chicks. Following the performance, she was met with racially charged backlash online, although country music is a genre created and shaped by Black Americans.
Cowboy Carter is an album that celebrates the roots of American folk music and raises up Black artists within the country genre. The entire album from “AMERIICAN REQUIEM” to “AMEN” pays tribute to the golden era of country music and aims to reclaim the genre in the present era.
Her single, “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM,” had a contagious country twang that immediately took the world by storm. It topped the Billboard Hot 100 and debuted at number one on the Country Hot Songs chart, making Beyoncé the first Black woman to have a number-one song and album on the Billboard Country charts.
One of the most notable songs on the album is the second track, “BLACKBIIRD” a cover of The Beatle’s original track. She is joined by four rising female, Black country artists–Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer, Reyna Roberts, and Tiera Kennedy–in a beautiful rendition of the classic.
Parton, Nelson, and Martell provide spoken-word interludes to the lengthy album that introduce new songs and concepts such as Beyoncé’s new rendition of Parton’s “Jolene.” In this new version, Beyoncé strays away from the begging that is so familiar to the song and instead switches to a warning to Jolene. Lyrics include “I’m warnin’ you, woman, find you your own man,” and “Jolene, I’m a woman too the games you play are nothing new so you don’t want no heat with me, Jolene.”
It can’t be forgotten that Beyoncé broke the internet when she announced the collaboration with Cyrus on the track “Ⅱ MOST WANTED” which is a slow, acoustic song that showcases the vocal capabilities of these two superstars. The song itself takes inspiration from Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” and gives the vibe of driving down a highway with the windows down.
Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter is an album that creates important discussions and discourse over the roots of country music while also providing a cohesive and intriguing sound throughout. This is only Act Ⅱ in a set of three albums diving into Black culture and its influence on America.
Cowboy Carter is now available for streaming on all platforms. This is an album you don’t want to miss.
What is your favorite song off Cowboy Carter? Comment down below.