Ever since Beyoncé – to quote the lady herself – “changed the game with that digital drop” via her self-titled fifth album, released without warning in 2013, she’s become the fixed point around which popular culture oscillates. Bandwidth-swallowing think pieces, detailed decoding of every lyric, plus an increasingly vexed right-wing America have kept her name on everyone’s lips. She wasn’t exactly a cult concern before, but the last decade has seen her move beyond mere superstar status, aided by 2016’s internet sleuth-facilitating infidelity opus Lemonade and 2022’s liberated, post-lockdown dance party, Renaissance.
That last album was billed teasingly as Act I, and now arrives the second part of a mooted trilogy. While Renaissance, with its celebration of the oft-ignored influence of Black queer dance pioneers, facilitated a healthy amount of debate, you could cobble together a hefty book on the discourse that’s already swirling around Cowboy Carter. Inspired by a less than welcome reaction to the Texan’s performance of her country single Daddy Lessons at the 2016 Country Music Awards – where she was dismissed as a “pop artist”, seemingly code for “Black woman” – it’s an album that takes country music by its plaid shirt collar, holds up its (mainly) male, pale and stale status to the light and sets it on fire.
Thrilling opener Ameriican Requiem – a slow-burn, country-rock opera – references that CMA controversy directly (“Used to say I spoke too country / And the rejection came, said I wasn’t country ’nough”), before making broader statements on who gets to call themselves a “true American” (“A pretty house that we never settled in”). It is followed by a cover of the Beatles’ folk-y Blackbird (here retitled Blackbiird, a consistent motif used throughout the album to denote it being Act II), a song that was inspired by the experiences of nine teenage Black girls attending an all-white school in post-segregation 1957, featuring vocals from upcoming Black country singers Brittney Spencer, Reyna Roberts, Tanner Adell and Tiera Kennedy. It’s an opening salvo ripe for music scholars to unpick.
But Cowboy Carter is never just one thing. Nor does its scholarly detail weigh it down. Just as it uses country music as a backdrop to explore other genres, it also utilises anger and injustice as shades of a bigger picture. There’s fun to be had via the playful, thigh-slapping single Texas Hold ’Em, which makes more sense preceded by an introduction from a stoned Willie Nelson. The unhinged Ya Ya is a freewheelin’ sprint through social and economic disparity that channels the electifying spirit of Tina Turner, and samples Nancy Sinatra and the Beach Boys.
While Beyoncé’s take on Jolene by Dolly Parton (or Dolly P as she’s recast here) loses some of the original’s desperation by morphing into a glint-eyed warning, it’s still a hoot to hear her spit lines like “Jolene, I know I’m a queen, Jolene / I’m still a Creole banjee bitch from Louisiane.” Daughter is a deliciously camp revenge fantasy that suddenly breaks into – and this is one of Beyoncé’s many vocal flexes on the album – a snatch of the 18th-century aria Caro Mio Ben, sung in Italian.
By swapping the tightly packed synth and drum programming of Renaissance for live instrumentation (including percussion made from the click-clack of Beyoncé’s nails), Cowboy Carter has a looser, baggier feel than its predecessor. The excellent, loved-up Bodyguard unspools like a lost Fleetwood Mac classic, all rippling 70s soft-rock melodies, while the sweet Protector, dedicated to her daughter Rumi Carter, sounds like it was knocked out around a campfire. II Most Wanted, meanwhile, finds Beyoncé and pop-country maven Miley Cyrus trading odes to their ride or dies as if sharing the same mic.
If this all sounds decidedly mid-paced, Cowboy Carter isn’t solely about rustic shuffles. Spaghettii, which features Linda Martell, the first Black country star to perform on the Grand Ole Opry stage, is a trap-infused head knocker; II Hands II Heaven rides a soft electronic pulse and samples Underworld; while the finger-pointing Tyrant fuses fiddle filigrees with rib-rattling bass, perfect for a sweat-soaked dosey doe at Club Renaissance.
Cowboy Carter’s scope and scale can be overwhelming, as can its 27-track runtime – the shorter interludes-as-songs cause a dip in excitement midway through – but there’s something about its construction that pleads with you to consume it as a whole; a journey not just through, and beyond, American roots music, but through various moods, shades and emotions that coalesce as a celebration. It feels like a feast at a time when pop is offering up scraps. As she mentioned herself when announcing the album to a mix of anger, intrigue and confusion: “This ain’t a country album. This is a ‘Beyoncé’ album.” It’s also her fourth classic in a row.
