Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson join the singer’s posse for a record ranging from hoedown to psychedelic rock
Beyoncé’s albums are the closest pop music gets to a Hollywood historical epic. They are blockbuster affairs with an impressive, very American aura of importance, the sense that history is not only being told but also made. At their centre is the singer herself, a star who dominates the teeming action with a magnetism comparable to the grandest screen idols. Much revisionism takes place, mostly relating to race — an aspect that the typical Hollywood epic used to ignore or whitewash.
Illustrated by a superb swagger portrait reminiscent of Charles I on horseback, Cowboy Carter is the second part of a projected trilogy telling the story of different music genres. The first was 2022’s Renaissance, about club culture and its overlooked Black LGBT+ pioneers. Beyoncé’s widescreen treatment of the theme in that album was personalised in the form of Uncle Jonny, a gay family friend who died of an Aids-related illness. Now comes a fishtail swerve to country and US roots music.
This time the disavowed historical figures are the Black cowboys seldom seen in John Ford films and the Black musicians who weren’t accepted by the country music establishment. The personal touch is more convincing than Renaissance’s schmaltzy handling of Uncle Jonny. It’s Beyoncé’s immersion in the sounds and stories of the West as a child growing up in Houston, and also her feelings of rejection when a previous excursion into country in 2016, “Daddy Lessons”, met with a backlash from the genre’s gatekeepers.
The album is a whopper. There are 27 tracks, lasting almost 80 minutes. “Them big ideas are buried here,” she announces in opening song “Ameriican Requiem”. The excavation unfolds with forensic attention to detail, from astutely chosen song samples and interpolations to the doubled i’s in the song’s titles, a nod to the project’s designation as Act II. But on this occasion the big ideas are applied more easily than the sometimes heavy-handed touch detectible in Renaissance.
Lead single “Texas Hold ’Em” is the most cartoonishly country moment, a rootin’, tootin’ hoedown that has made Beyoncé the first Black woman to top the country charts. It’s rather too breezy, but the song’s success underlines the album’s good timing. Cowboy Carter leads a move into country by other mainstream stars such as Lana Del Rey. It also unfurls its flag ahead of a US presidential campaign when national divisions will be at their starkest — as signposted by the Oklahoma country radio station that initially refused to play “Texas Hold ’Em”.
In a neat reproach, outlaw country grandee Willie Nelson has a cameo in the album in the role of a radio DJ. Fellow Nashville freethinker Dolly Parton also appears, introducing a cover of her song “Jolene” with a witty reference to an old Beyoncé song about infidelity, “Sorry”. The lyrics to “Jolene” have been altered — there’s no begging in Beyoncé’s version — but the music is respectfully faithful to the original. The same is true of the album’s other high-profile cover, a choral version of The Beatles’ “Blackbird”.
Stylised as “Blackbiird”, it shows that there’s more going on in Cowboy Carter than just country music. “Ameriican Requiem” morphs from hymnal singing into psychedelic rock. “16 Carriages” has the whiplash beats and resolute singing of an old-fashioned Western soundtrack. “Daughter” brings to mind Ennio Morricone with pattering guitar, dramatic orchestrations and a passage of soprano singing from Italian aria “Caro mio ben”. “Ya Ya” ingeniously works samples of “These Boots are Made for Walkin’” and “Good Vibrations” into an old-school dance podium stomper.
Other guests include hip-hop/country fusion acts Willie Jones and Shaboozey as well as chart stars Miley Cyrus and Post Malone. They are the supporting cast to Beyoncé’s star turn at the microphone. Even at duller moments such as “Bodyguard”, a plainly jangling acoustic rocker, she holds our attention with well-judged shifts in emphasis and tone. There is much ornamentation with vibrato and melisma, but it isn’t overdone. Cowboy imagery runs through the lyrics, which move from topics of marriage and sex to the larger themes of race and America like a camera panning outwards. Here’s a big star telling a big story, and doing it with panache.
