“Sometimes you don’t know what you like until someone you trust turns you on to some real good ****,” country music legend Willie Nelson said during one of two interludes featured in the album.
The album was a canny choice for Beyoncé, who breathed a new swing into the country-infused “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM,” giving her audience a space to do-si-do the mundanity away with silver spurs and whiskey.
Country and Americana music may not be everyone’s taste, but Beyoncé changes minds by putting her twist and Texas twang in the masterpiece “COWBOY CARTER,” providing a fresh sound and innovative song construction — something uniquely Beyoncé’s.
act ii
This album serves as “act ii” for her 2022 feat “RENAISSANCE,” where Beyoncé used her MPC to create dance/electronic music, serving as the ultimate homage to Black queer history like disco music and ballroom culture.
“COWBOY CARTER” uses hand-played instruments and serves as a redefinition of a genre built on the backs of Black Americans, including the African-rooted banjo, according to Pepperdine Graphic Media. Bey employs the foundation of country music to take control of her narrative and “come home” to her Texas roots, telling stories over over strings with impressive vocals and collaborations — heard in the radio-ready songs “BODYGUARD” and “II MOST WANTED” with Miley Cyrus.
The album also serves as her chance to retrace the steps of the past and challenge critiques that told her she “wasn’t country ‘nuf!” — she shouts in the pivotal intro, “AMERIICAN REQUIEM.”
“REQUIEM” is an elaborate display of an artistic manifesto, with Beyoncé celebrating who she is beyond her elusive pop stardom and celebrating the great Black artists who have walked so she could run, shifting the boundaries of sound.
“It’s a lot of talking going on / While I sing my song,” Beyoncé sings — a moving call that lassoes her listeners to see past her celebrity status and view her as an artist.
Steel guitars, tambourines, pianos, horse gallops, banjos, the clacking of acrylic nails on “RIIVERDANCE,” as Dolly Parton popularized, and Beyoncé’s strong vocals make this album an unforgettable listening experience.
Throughout the album, Beyoncé argues for the erased, Black roots in country music — redefining American music.
Celebrating Innovative Black Artists
Beyoncé reclaims the Black archival of sound with “BLACKBIIRD,” her cover of the Beatles’ “Blackbird.” This song features Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer and more emerging Black voices in country. Beyoncé also remade Parton’s “JOLENE” as a warning to whoever tries to take her man.
Bey also highlights Linda Martell — the first commercially successful Black woman in country music.
“Genres are a funny little concept, aren’t they?” Martell says in the Brazilian funk/rap “SPAGHETTII,” featuring country rapper Shaboozey. “They have a simple definition that’s easy to understand / Some may feel confined.”
Beyoncé takes the observation seriously as she shows off her dexterity by tackling an array of sounds with a cohesive, badass Texan attitude.
Seeing Beyond Country’s Boundaries
Beyoncé continues to challenge the constraints of genre through funk in the voluptuously sexy “DESERT EAGLE” and the James Brown howls of “YA YA.” Even the operatic eeriness of the poisonous “DAUGHTER” to the potent dance-infused “RIIVERDANCE,” decorated by soft kisses of percussion, allowed the artist to take reign on a variety of genres.
Beyoncé takes her audience on a roller coaster of sound in the triple threat “SWEET ★ HONEY ★ BUCKIIN.” In “SWEET,” dance finds its home in country strings as she sings “I’m coming home” before slipping into a smooth doo-wop for “HONEY.” She then teleports the listener to an underground rodeo for the Spanish guitar experience of “BUCKIIN.”
The artist bleeds into the R&B-influenced cowboy song of “II HANDS II HEAVEN,” A track filled with passion and ethereal vocals that shows the artist as a free spirit and living for the trials of life, adoring the pleasures of glittering rhinestones, sex and love.
What makes this album country is not its sound but rather Beyoncé’s symbolic picking up of her guitar and singing songs that reveal her truest emotions. Stories of her familial origins in the climax of “AMERIICAN REQUIEM,” her arduous journey to stardom in “16 CARRIAGES” and her rocky but fulfilling relationship in the playful “BODYGUARD” let her music speak for itself rather than seeing the media manipulate and polarize her image.
Beyoncé continues to cherish being a mother and watching her children grow with the sweet, folksy lullabies of “PROTECTOR” and “MY ROSE.” She also speaks on her relationship with her husband between the dance and reconciliatory verses of “RIIVERDANCE” and the ode of anguished adoration in “ALLIIGATOR TEARS.”
Beyoncé Been Country
Beyoncé continues her reign of revival by renovating the power of music and dance, teaching generations what it means to continue to move in an age where they are motionless — subdued to their phones and today’s recycled pop music.
Listening to the album makes the nation more cognizant of the art that incites movement, ambition, confidence and dialogue on the true roots of country music, a Black-founded genre.
“COWBOY CARTER” is a testament to Beyoncé’s artistic journey. Her passion for music and her identity as a Black woman gives her the responsibility to look into the past and continue to walk in the footsteps of Martell or Tina Turner, giving past greats the eternal representation they deserve after making sounds that birthed modern American music.
This album serves as a testament to embracing who she is — a Texan. She left this identity behind because critiques told her to when she was just emerging as she mentions in “REQUIEM” but is rediscovering her roots, making this album a homecoming of sound — not to be confined by “genre” but to be liberated by music.
She concludes the album with a reprisal of the album’s intro in a gospel of redemption in “AMEN,” which allows her audience to recollect the question initially posed: “If that ain’t country, tell me what is?”
In the 27 tracks from “COWBOY CARTER,” Beyoncé paints a darn good picture.
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Contact Ivan Vicente Manriquez via email: ivan.manriquez@pepperdine.edu
