During the Paris Olympics, which recently concluded triumphantly, Beyoncé capped the huge commercial success of her album “Cowboy Carter” with a triumph of her own: an exclusive prime-time video appearance introducing Team USA during the opening ceremony on July 26. Upon its release this spring, “Cowboy Carter” reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Top 200 Albums, Best-Selling Albums and Top Country Albums charts, making Beyoncé the first black woman to have a country album reach No. 1.
But as Bey put it in a March 19 Instagram post, “This is not a country album. This is a ‘Beyoncé’ album.”
This may sound unbelievable given the many contributions, references and samples from iconic country artists, especially Dolly Parton herself. But I think Cowboy Carter is better described as an album to Country music.
In it, Beyoncé celebrates the history of country in all its forms and expressions, from folk music to soul and gospel to rock ‘n’ roll. She challenges the mainstream country scene, breaks genre boundaries and affirms the role of black artists in an often whitewashed tradition. And when she’s not deconstructing the genre, she uses it as a backdrop for more personal themes, reflecting on childhood in “16 Carriages” and motherhood in “Protector.”
Furthermore, everything in “Cowboy Carter” seems very deliberate and precisely chosen to make this artistic vision shine.
The seamless transitions and interludes between songs keep things moving, while the consistent theme and all-caps song titles tie the whole album together. It’s really artful, in a way I haven’t often seen in pop music, and that’s all the more impressive when the songs are actually fun to listen to.
What really caught my eye on first listen was the mix of hip-hop style electronic drums and live instruments, particularly on 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 as there’s a clean electronic kick driving the beat up front.
“Amen,” the album’s finale, basically does the opposite, looping a sample behind live instruments and making the track feel less “unplugged.” It creates a distinctive sound that reinforces the feeling of a genre mix, without which something like “Spaghettii” could feel like a mere rap song with a Western sample.
While “Riiverdance” has the same effect, I noticed the traditional Irish influence, one of Beyoncé’s lesser-known country references on the album.
Another example is the Italian opera singing in “Daughter.” Musically, it’s about as far from country as you can get. Yet it fits perfectly into the broader theme when you include Western films and their soundtracks. The most famous is the Italian opera song “L’estasi dell’oro” (“The Ecstasy of Gold”), which appears in none other than the classic Western “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”
But my favorite song on the album is probably “Ya Ya,” the track used in the Olympics video. I’m already a fan of the ’60s-style rock and roll that’s at the core of the song, but Beyoncé reinterprets it with 808 drums and her own distinctive style of layered vocals to create something truly special. Additionally, “Ya Ya” features some of the most blatant and blunt social commentary on the entire album.
The first verse is full of sarcastic lyrics like “Lots of red in that white and blue / History can’t be erased,” and the song’s stylistic references to black musicians of the ’60s are a tribute to the struggles they had to endure 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. This song and Beyoncé’s cover of “Jolene” are probably the strongest songs on the album, both musically and lyrically.
As for “Jolene,” I didn’t notice the lyrics changed the first time I heard it, but now it’s probably my second favorite song.
Beyoncé doesn’t beg like Dolly Parton’s original narrator because she doesn’t have to. She knows her worth. She’s 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 that leads to that point, is the other thing that Cowboy Carter is about besides country.
What I’m saying is that Cowboy Carter is as much a rich, compelling work of art and social commentary as it is an album of just plain good music. I highly recommend it. 10 out of 10. You can find it anywhere you stream music.
