This review has been in the works for a bit – in my head, if not actually on digital paper. So much had already been said about the album well before I got around to my first listen; and there were plenty of haters out in force well before the album actually released. And while I wanted to have this review done much sooner, I’ve used the delay (driven by priorities, unfortunately) to give this one a few extra listens.
It needed it. There’s so much to digest and process on this album.
Because it’s Beyonce, who needs no introduction. And Cowboy Carter is quite possibly her most ambitious album to date, with 27 tracks spanning 78 minutes. If you remove the interlude tracks, there are still 20 songs totalling 73 minutes. And I have to stress that Queen Bey applied an incredible amount of restraint to trim the album to this point, as she has stated that she recorded roughly 100 songs for it.
The upside to covering a high-profile release by a high-profile artist, especially on a delay, is that there is an incredible amount of reference material to dig into in order to uncover the album’s background. As a 90s kid who grew up on damn-near only Country music, this album’s announcement immediately captured my curiosity (and the snippet of “Texas Hold’Em” that took over TikTok only exacerbated that). So, naturally, I’ve been doing a fair bit of reading on this one, and I’m happy to condense the album’s backstory here for you.
It starts with the fact that Beyonce is, herself, from Texas. Houston, to be exact. And with those roots, Bey was often criticized for sounding “too country” in interviews.1 Yet, when she included a Country-leaning track on 2016’s Lemonade,2 it “wasn’t Country enough”. All of this is, lyrically, referenced in Verse 2 of opening track “Ameriican Requiem”.
But that second thing is something that I was thoroughly unaware of: not only did Beyonce reach deep into her roots while crafting “Daddy Lessons” to make a Country song, but it was good, very well-received, and then shut out of appropriate consideration because it wasn’t “Country” enough.
Listen to the song. If Beyonce’s name wasn’t on it, you would think it was a Country song with a bit of N’awlins flair up front.
Beyonce performed the song, live, at the CMAs alongside The Chicks in November 2016. Within a day, all of the promotional material that the Academy had put out regarding the performance had been taken down as the Academy caved to pressure from the loudest segment of the Country music fanbase.
And, yes, many of the criticisms were racist.
Then, a month later, the Recording Academy’s Country music committee blocked “Daddy Lessons” from even being considered. Beyonce and Lemonade received nine other nominations for that year’s Grammys, but the Country establishment didn’t want her.
In response, Beyonce started working on Cowboy Carter in 2019. It was, originally, meant to be her seventh studio album and the first act in a trilogy of albums. However, because of the Pandemic, Beyonce opted to switch it up and released Renaissance first, delaying the album which would become Cowboy Carter for a couple of years, feeling that what people needed right then was something more uplifting and danceable. The album lived the last couple of years under the working title of “Act II”, since it is now the middle album in the trilogy, and this can be seen in several song titles with doubled ‘I’s, such as “Ameriican Requiem” and “Blackbiird”. The album’s official title is the name of a fictional character:
“The character, Cowboy Carter was birth from these experiences and inspired by the original Black cowboys of the American West. The word cowboy itself was used in a derogatory way to describe the former slaves as "boys," who were the most skilled and had the hardest jobs of handling horses and cattle, alike. In destroying the negative connotation, what remains is the strength and resiliency of these men who were the true definition of Western fortitude.”
I would note, as well, that “Carter” is the surname of Beyonce’s husband, Jay-Z, and three children.
Much of the discourse around the album remains focused on genre – specifically on whether the album is or is not “Country”. I would like to remind my (thin) audience here that that is entirely the wrong question, especially with how it’s being approached, because that’s not how genre works. Not in 2024, anyhow. Maybe in the 1970s, you could apply rigid this-but-not-that rules to genre, but that black-and-white categorization has been outdated since about that time; music, like all art, is fluid in its conception and expression. Genre blending and fusion is how new genres are ultimately born, and there is more music being made today than ever before. Naturally, you can’t stand out and gain an audience if you sound like established acts.
And established acts like Beyonce and Taylor Swift don’t like just sitting on their hands, either. Innovation is what keeps them on top.
So, yes, Cowboy Carter is a Country album. Not only that, it’s a landmark Country album; Cowboy Carter is a complete modernization of the genre. It isn’t some soft-handed white guy with an accent trying to emulate rap with a southern accent – it’s Beyonce fusing everything she’s always done well with the music she heard at the rodeo every year in Houston as a kid. It is modern Americana; modern Western. It is also an R&B album and a Pop album.It has elements of Hip Hop and Zydeco and Gospel. There is no nailing this album down,3 and a voiceover by Linda Martell at the beginning of “Spaghettii” acts as a funny little tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of how liberally Bey is playing with the concept of genre on the album.
It goes right over the heads of many, though, who oppose Cowboy Carter’s inclusion as a Country album mostly on some misguided notion that Beyonce could never be Country. Such attempts to gatekeep it and hold it from genres by saying things like “but it’s not REAL COUNTRY” are hollow and vapid, at best.
Especially considering the aforementioned soft-handed Hick-Hop artists.
Because Nashville hasn’t been “REAL COUNTRY” for about 20 years now, anyhow.4 You can’t gatekeep a genre that has long since had its gates battered down from within in pursuit of the almighty dollar.
Those who think they can lost the thread of what defined the genre at about the same time that they started to enlist in the burgeoning culture war.
With all of that said, the entire 78-minute ride that is Cowboy Carter is a bop. It isn’t as non-stop in its cohesion as was Renaissance, but the album flows smoothly from start-to-finish; from style to style; from song to song to interlude. There isn’t a bad moment. Some of the lyrics are a bit repetitive, but it never really feels repetitive, which is a feat.
Speaking of feats, all of the featured artists are incredible – Miley, Post Malone, Dolly, and a host of smaller, lesser known acts, including black Country artists. Willie Nelson’s participation as a mock DJ was a brilliant surprise I’d managed to avoid until suddenly he was in my ear and I had to figure out why this voice was so familiar, and it took a good ten to fifteen seconds to place it.
Then, there’s the scope. Cowboy Carter is definitely a broad view, incredibly zoomed out on its many themes and motifs. It suffers a touch on that front, in my opinion, as I like really tight-knit albums. It is impressive just how comprehensive the album’s focus it, but I do think it might have benefitted from a tighter, more controlled concept.
That leads me to my two serious complaints about the album:
First, the album warps over the last 20-30 minutes, leaning further and further into non-Country stylings (though there are still some Country/Americana/Folk elements in each song). I can only assume that this has to do with the original plan to have this be Act I, as this gradual evolution in the album’s sound would lead pretty flawlessly into Renaissance. I’m willing to give this a bit of a pass, but it also stings a bit of a failure in editing akin to the scene which totally ruins Disney’s Frozen.
There are also a couple of songs which feel incomplete, in the sense that they don’t really feel that they could stand on their own; there’s not a clear beginning-middle-end arc. This is noticeable in tracks like opener “Ameriican Requiem”, despite that it’s one of the longest tracks on the album, and “16 Carriages”. When you’re playing the album straight through, it’s not a huge thing, but it makes it less satisfying to add these tracks to playlists where they’ll need to stand on their own.
Considering everything, those are relatively minor complaints, though.
I haven’t even begun to try and break down individual songs5 or decipher which songs are based on which Westerns, and this is already one of my longest reviews. Ever. There’s an incredible amount of material to break down on this album. It is gorgeous from start to finish, and its genric flexibility and fluidity is absolutely incredible.
This is definitely an AOTY contender. If you haven’t listened to this album, you should.
Rating: Purple.
I guarantee anybody who thought Beyonce sounded ‘too country’ would have lost their minds down in my neck of the woods.
I still haven’t gotten around to listening to this one. I really need to do that.
Except for the fact that each and every one of the genres and styles in play on this album has, at its roots, black musicians who innovated the sounds.
Why else would Chris Stapleton write a breakup song directed at Nashville?
Including the cover/update of “Jolene”! How did I write all of this and not discuss that?!