On March 29, 2024, 32-time Grammy winner Beyoncé Knowles released her eighth album, “Cowboy Carter”, the second installation of her trilogy project. This album comes as a follow-up to the trilogy’s first act, “Renaissance”, a pop album inspired by house music and ballroom culture of the 1980s and 90s. In the album notes of “Renaissance”, Beyoncé stated that “this three-act project was recorded over three years during the pandemic.” She found it to be “a time to be still, but also a time [she] found to be the most creative.” In an Instagram post signifying ten days before the album’s release, Beyoncé stated that Cowboy Carter had been “over five years in the making… born out of an experience that [she] had years ago where she did not feel welcomed and it was very clear that [she] wasn’t.” Many fans have assumed that this post was in reference to her 2016 performance at the Country Music Association Awards, where she performed her song “Daddy Lessons” off her 2016 album “Lemonade” alongside the Chicks (formerly known as the Dixie Chicks). The negative reaction online led her to do a deep dive into the rich history and origins of country music, exploring what it means to be a Black woman in a predominantly white genre.
In the creation of this album, Beyoncé collaborated with famous country artists from various decades, including Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, and Linda Martell, who was the first commercially successful Black female country artist in the United States and the first Black country artist to perform at the Grand Ole Opry. Martell released one studio album before leaving the industry in 1974. Beyoncé also collaborated with younger, smaller artists spanning genres, including Black female country artists Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer, Tiera Kennedy, and Reyna Roberts, all of whom are featured on the album’s second track “BLACKBIIRD,” a cover of the song first performed by the Beatles. Nigerian-American singer Shaboozey is also featured and has songwriting credits on two songs on the album.
Continuing to draw inspiration from those around her, Beyoncé also turned to film during the songwriting process. During a press release, it was stated that Beyoncé was heavily influenced by films across genres, including blaxploitation films, spaghetti westerns, and fantasy films, going as far as pairing certain movies with specific songs on the album. The specific films on her watchlist for the creation of this album include “Five Fingers For Marseilles,” “Urban Cowboy,” “The Hateful Eight,” “Space Cowboys,” “The Harder They Fall” and “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
Two singles were released in the months leading up to the album’s release. Following a commercial in collaboration with Verizon at the Super Bowl, Beyoncé surprise-released “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages” as co-lead singles for “Cowboy Carter”. In the week following their releases, “Texas Hold ‘Em” debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Hot Country Songs charts, making Beyoncé the first Black woman to debut at number one on the country chart. The song also led to a TikTok trend, where dancers created and performed line dances to the song’s chorus.
On the album’s second song, “BLACKBIIRD,” Beyoncé covers the popular track off the Beatles’ 1968 self-titled album. Paul McCartney, one of the songwriters, cites the reasoning behind his writing of the song came from seeing footage of the Little Rock Nine, a group of nine Black teenagers who were the first to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in September 1957. In an episode of iHeartPodcasts’ “McCartney: A Life in Lyrics” released November 29, 2023, McCartney stated that the song “wasn’t an ornithological piece; it was now to do with politics and to do with freedom.” The message behind the original version of “Blackbird” ties in seamlessly with the exploration being done to find a place for Black women not only in country music but also in the ever-changing music industry as a whole through the entirety of the album.
One of the album’s highlights comes in the form of a three-and-a-half minute duet featuring Miley Cyrus, on the track “II MOST WANTED,” which became the album’s third single on April 2. Beyoncé was said to be inspired by the film “Thelma and Louise”, a critically acclaimed 1991 film about two friends who embark on a road trip together that ends up with unexpected consequences. The song features an interpolation of “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac, seen in the chord progression used within the song. The pair sing back and forth through the song’s entirety. With lyrics such as, “I’ll be your shotgun rider / ‘Til the day I die,” fans online have connected the song to the most important relationships in their lives – both platonic and romantic ones. The song also touches on the theme of youth and the acknowledgment that life doesn’t last forever, through the lyrics “Know we’re jumping the gun, but we’re both still young / One day we won’t be” featured in the first verse and the bridge of the song. The ‘ride-or-die’ nature of the song pairs well with the source material of “Thelma and Louise”.
Across the album, Beyoncé questions and toys with the idea of what it means to be a country artist or make a country album. On the album’s twelfth and twentieth songs, “SPAGEHTTII” and “YA YA,” Beyoncé blends country, trap, rock, and blues to create a sound authentic to her. The song “SPAGHETTII” opens with a spoken introduction from Linda Martell, where she states genres are a funny concept that theoretically is simple to understand, but can leave artists feeling confined and forced to fit in a box. This is a problem seen throughout the music industry, where consumers and critics alike often force Black women into the R&B category, even if their work doesn’t align with the genre. This ties in well with “YA YA,” which blends themes of cultural identity and personal empowerment into an almost five-minute song. The song references economic hardships faced by Black people throughout American history, with lyrics such as “aren’t you tired workin’ time and a half for half the pay” and “insurance ain’t gon’ pay no Fannie Mae,” which refers to the Federal National Mortgage Association, a government-sponsored enterprise that was founded during the Great Depression as a way to help Americans to be able to afford and buy homes. The song interpolates “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys and samples Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” while simultaneously referencing dance trends from the 1950s and 1960s including the swim and the jerk. Finally, the song also mentions the “Chitlin’ Circuit,” which refers to a collection of venues across the U.S. where Black artists were able to perform after being turned away from predominantly white venues, providing a place for Black culture to be celebrated and acknowledged from the 1920s to 1960s.
The listener of “Cowboy Carter” is taken on an auditory journey throughout history, exploring what it means to be a Black singer in the music industry across decades. The album’s 27 tracks can be seen as snippets into Beyoncé’s experience reclaiming country music for herself and her community as well as defining what it means to be a multifaceted artist in the 21st century.
