Ever since Beyoncé announced that the second installment of Renaissance would be landing at the end of March, fans have been abuzz with excitement.
But the Houston singer added a twist to the forthcoming release: massively deviating from the dance-themed Act I, the new record will be a country music album.
How do we know? Well, at first there were just clues. Not only were the two teaser singles that Beyoncé released called Texas Hold ’Em and 16 Carriages, but lyrics included references to hoedowns (a type of American folk dance associated with country music) and “rugged whiskey”. And the music itself has a strong country sound.
All the accompanying aesthetics were cowboy-themed: Beyoncé was wearing Western-inspired looks, and in a teaser clip, a group of men in a desert stared up at a cowboy pin up version of Bey.
But then, earlier this week, Beyoncé confirmed the title of the second ‘Act’ of Renaissance, and in doing so, once and for all confirmed the music genre. The new album will be called Cowboy Carter.
So, it looks like we’re all about to become country music fans. To bring you up to speed, here is our selection of some of the songs and artists that have made contributions to the genre over the past 70 years...
Merle Haggard, Sung Me Back Home, 1968
Merle Haggard utterly embodies country music. Not only was he an icon of the genre, with 38 number ones on the US country music charts, but his life comprised many of the struggles often discussed in country music. His family lived in a converted boxcar in California and he had hopped his first freight train by the time he was 10. He started to steal and would run away from home; his early life was spent in and out of juvenile rehabilitation centres.
“I would’ve become a lifetime criminal if music hadn’t saved my ass,” he once said to Rolling Stone. But, luckily it did: Haggard, who was married five times, released 64 studio albums over the course of his life (he died in 2016). He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1994 and was awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006. Here he is performing his 1968 hit Sung Me Back Home, which was the first track on his fifth album.
Johnny Cash, A Boy Named Sue, 1969
Country music also transformed the life of legendary singer Johnny Cash, who was born to poor farmers in Arkansas during the Great Depression, and began working in cotton fields from the age of five. After a stint in the Air Force in the Fifties, Cash, who played music in his spare time, tried to get a recording contract: he succeeded in 1955. The rest really is history: he’s one of the world’s best-selling artists, and was inducted into the Country Music, Rock and Roll, and Gospel Music Halls of Fame. Here is my favourite Cash track, a song about a father who names his son Sue, in order to toughen him up.
Dolly Parton, Jolene, 1973
Dolly Parton, now 78, is another country music legend, having enjoyed a stellar, decades-long career – receiving 11 Grammy Awards, two Oscar nominations, and 26 number-one tracks on the country music charts in the process. Making it all the more remarkable, Parton did it all in an industry known for its sexism, releasing music in the Sixties when Second Wave feminism was just taking off. Born into a one-room cabin in Tennessee, Parton had everything to lose, but was still fearless in discussing topics such as sexual freedom and female agency – as well as love and heartbreak – in her music. In 1968’s Just Because I’m A Woman, for example, she sings: “Now a man will take a good girl and he'll ruin her… reputation. But when he wants to marry, well, that's a different situation.” Here we’ve included her most famous track, but of course there are so many more classics: 9 to 5, I Will Always Love You, Coat of Many Colours, Islands in the Stream... the list goes on and on.
Shania Twain, You’re Still The One, 1997
Canadian singer-songwriter Shania Twain redefined country with her hybrid Nineties country-pop hits, which included Honey, I’m Home, That Don’t Impress Me Much and Man! I Feel Like a Woman. One of the best-selling artists of all time, Twain, who has won five Grammys, still holds the Guinness World record for ‘the biggest-selling studio album by a female solo artist’, for Come On Over (1997). Here’s her 1997 mega-hit You’re Still The One which is just a total banger.
The Chicks – Not Ready To Make Nice, 2009
The Chicks – who dropped ‘Dixie’ from their name in 2020 because it had connotations of slavery – broke onto the country music scene in the Nineties, and duly became one of the best-selling all-female bands of all time. Today, the Dallas group has sold over 33 million records worldwide, released eight studio albums and won 13 Grammy Awards. And they did it in an industry dominated by men. This is one of the band’s most celebrated songs: it won three Grammys and in 2011 Rolling Stone listed it as one of the 100 best songs of the Noughties.
Mickey Guyton – Better Than You Left Me, 2015
Arnold Shultz (1886–1931), Rufus “Tee Tot” Payne (1883–1939), Lesley Riddle (1905–1979) – these are just some of the pioneering Black musicians who made hugely influential contributions to country music. But racism in the American South – segregation only became illegal in 1965 – meant that country music has typically been dominated by white artists. Black country music fans have found little mainstream representation in the genre.
That is, until perspectives changed and singers such as Mickey Guyton came along. "My journey of getting where I am today has not been an easy one,” said the 40-year-old Texan to Country Living in 2022. “Being in the country music industry, I’m often the only woman of colour in the room and had to learn to navigate that early in my career.” Better Than You Left Me is one of her biggest songs, released in 2015 as part of her second EP.
Lil Nas X – Old Town Road (feat. Billy Ray Cyrus) [Remix], 2019
No one could have prepared the world for this unlikely pairing. In 2018, the then-19-year-old Georgia rapper Lil Nas X made an internet smash hit using a $30 Nine Inch Nails instrumental sample. The song went big on TikTok as part of the ‘Yeehaw Challenge’ and, somehow, landed in the hands of best-selling country music star and Miley Cyrus’s dad, Billy Ray Cyrus, who agreed to sing on a remix version of the track.
The 2019 remix became a global hit, soaring to number one in 21 countries including the US and the UK, winning two Grammys, and selling over 18 million units worldwide. It was a major moment in country music history as the genre evolved to incorporate trap; millions of country music and rap fans were thrilled by the fusion. But the song didn’t get released without some controversy: it charted on both Billboard’s country and Hip-Hop charts, before being removed by Billboard from the country listing for "not [embracing] enough elements of today's country music".
Luke Combs – Dive (Live with Ed Sheeran), 2022
North Carolina-born country music star Luke Combs has been a major star in the States since 2017, when his debut studio album, This One's for You, shot to the top of the charts. But it’s over the past couple of years that he’s found a UK audience. His cover of Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car became a massive hit last year, and he was the artist Ed Sheeran chose to collaborate with when the British folk-pop singer started to dip his toes in the country music genre.
The pair released their single Life Goes On in May 2023. “I would love to transition into country,” Sheeran said to Billboard last November. “I love the culture of it, I just love the songwriting. It’s just like brilliant songs.” Combs has been nominated for three Grammys and has released four albums.
Kane Brown – I Can Feel It, 2023
Perhaps no artist better embodies the future of country music than Kane Brown, whose pop and R&B country tracks almost defy categorisation. Though the Tennessee singer, who battled poverty and racism as a child, is loyal to the genre, his collaborations with artists including Khalid, Marshmello and Becky G perfectly exemplify country music’s evolving sound.
“I used to always be nervous about what people were going to think, and I was kind of scared. I didn’t want people to think that I was leaving country music because that’s my heart,” Brown said to one newspaper in 2022. Now aged 30, he’s released three albums, all of which made it into the top five of the US album charts.
