During the Paris Olympics, which recently concluded on a triumphant note, Beyoncé topped off the huge commercial success of her album “Cowboy Carter” with a triumph of her own: a prime time-exclusive video appearance introducing Team USA during the July 26 opening ceremony. After its release this spring, “Cowboy Carter” hit No. 1 on Billboard’s top 200 albums, Top Album Sales, and Top Country Albums charts, making Beyoncé the first Black woman to have a No.1 country album.
Except, as Bey put it in a March 19 Instagram post, “This ain’t a country album. This is a ‘Beyoncé’ album.”
Considering the many contributions, references and samples from iconic country artists, most notably Dolly Parton herself, that may sound implausible. But I believe “Cowboy Carter” is better described as an album about country music.
In it, Beyoncé celebrates the history of country in all its forms and branches, from folk music to soul, to gospel, to rock ’n’ roll. She challenges the mainstream country scene, breaking genre barriers and reaffirming the role of Black artists in an often whitewashed tradition. And when she isn’t deconstructing the genre, she uses it as a backdrop for more personal topics, reflecting on childhood in “16 Carriages” and on motherhood in “Protector.”
What’s more, everything in “Cowboy Carter” feels very intentionally, precisely chosen to let this artistic vision shine.
The seamless transitions and interludes between songs create pacing, while the consistent theming and all-caps song titles tie the whole album together. It’s genuinely artsy in a way that I haven’t seen often in popular music, and that’s all the more impressive when the songs are actually fun to listen to.
One thing that really stood out to me on a first listen was the mix of hip-hop styled electronic drums and live instruments, especially in the Brazilian funk track “Spaghettii.” The violin and vocal ad-libs in the background have a natural echo that gives the whole track a sense of space, even with a clean electronic kick driving the beat in the foreground.
“Amen,” the finale of the album, does basically the opposite, looping a sample behind live instruments and making the track feel less “unplugged.” It creates a distinctive sound that adds to the sense of a mix of genres, without which something like “Spaghettii” might feel like just a rap song using a Western sample.
While “Riiverdance” has the same effect going on, what caught my ear was the traditional Irish influence, one of Beyoncé’s more obscure country-related nods in the album.
Another is the Italian opera singing used in “Daughter.” From a pure musical genre standpoint, this is about as far from country as you can get. Yet it fits like a glove in the broader theme when you count Western movies and their soundtracks. Most famously, the Italian opera song “L’estasi dell’oro” (“The Ecstasy of Gold”) appears in none other than the classic Western “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”
But my favorite song from the album is probably “Ya Ya,” the track used in the Olympics video. I’m already a sucker for the ’60s-styled rock’n’roll that makes the core of the song, but Beyoncé reimagines it with 808 drums and her own distinctive style of multilayered vocals to create something truly special. What’s more, “Ya Ya” offers some of the most overt, unapologetic social commentary in the whole album.
The first verse is dense with sardonic lyrics like “Whole lotta red in that white and blue / History can’t be erased,” and the song’s stylistic references to Black ’60s musicians are a tribute to the struggles they faced and a reminder that those struggles aren’t over.
“Ya Ya” proves, if “Not Like Us” didn’t already, that a song can have something to say and say it loudly while still being a club banger. It and Beyoncé’s cover of “Jolene” are probably the album’s strongest songs, both musically and lyrically.
As for “Jolene,” then, I didn’t notice the lyrics had changed on a first listen, but now it’s probably my second favorite track.
Beyoncé doesn’t beg like Dolly Parton’s original narrator because she doesn’t have to. She knows what she’s worth. She is self-actualized. She can stand up for herself. To put it bluntly, she’s a bad bitch. And I think that, or at least some kind of narrative journey to get to that point, is the other thing “Cowboy Carter” is about besides country.
My point is, “Cowboy Carter” is both a rich, compelling work of art and social commentary, and an album of just straight-up good music. I highly recommend it. 10 out of 10. You can find it wherever you stream music.
