Beyoncé has come out as trans-genre.
After the release of Renaissance, the first act in her three-act trilogy (trilogy means three, after all), Mrs. Carter has left her disco balls behind and saddled up to ride into a new territory, and guess what: This town may just be big enough for the both of them. Bey has adamantly stated that the newly released Cowboy Carter is not a country album, despite its imagery, Western aesthetic, and country music homages. It is, instead, a “Beyoncé album,” a declaration that she exists outside the box society has tried to place her in. In fact, she is the box, unpacking and creating something new each time.
Cowboy Carter opens with “Ameriican Requiem,” a brilliant framing of Beyoncé’s headspace while creating this project. “Used to say I spoke too country / Then the rejection came / Said I wasn’t country enough,” she sings. It sounds like a rebuke set entirely in the present, a mission statement—but it’s also an allusion to a particular experience from nearly a decade ago that forced this album into existence. Walk with me, won’t you?
2016 should have been an exciting year for Yoncé. That February, she released her smash hit “Formation” and the next day performed it at the Super Bowl, angering the Blue Lives Matter sect with imagery of submerged police cars and messages of resistance against police brutality. In August, a crowning moment when she performed a 16-minute Lemonade medley at the VMAs. In November, however, just days before the country would “elect” its 45th president, something more sinister happened at the 50th Annual Country Music Awards. Beyoncé hit a nerve: Performing her single “Daddy Lessons” from Lemonade, she brought along the Chicks, the group that had been blacklisted by the country music industry after they criticized Ellen DeGeneres’s BFF George W. Bush and his actions surrounding the Iraq War. Here was Bey, not only parking her Lexus out in front of the country party with a song that could stand stiletto to stiletto with any CMA winners, but doing so defiantly with a trio who had long been a spur in the industry’s old, wrinkly side. The majority of the country clan did not like this. In fact, they hated it—so much so that the performance was quickly removed from the CMA’s website because it received so many hateful comments.
Before Beyoncé released Cowboy Carter, she offered an explanation in the caption of an Instagram post: “This album has been over five years in the making. It was born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed … and it was very clear that I wasn’t. But, because of that experience, I did a deeper dive into the history of Country music and studied our rich musical archive.
“It feels good to see how music can unite so many people around the world, while also amplifying the voices of some of the people who have dedicated so much of their lives educating on our musical history,” the post continued. “The criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me. Act II is a result of challenging myself, and taking my time to bend and blend genres together to create this body of work.”
This deep dive into the history of country music led Beyoncé to some treasure. As a once in a lifetime talent who has been praised by the greats and broken nearly every record you can think of, Beyoncé acknowledges that such determination came from the Black women before her. The Diana Rosses, the Aretha Franklins, the Tina Turners, and in the case of Cowboy Carter, a country music legend who most listeners mightn’t be familiar with, Linda Martell. Martell was the first Black woman artist to play the Grand Ole Opry, though her commercial success would be short-lived: Martell (who is still alive, by the way) was mostly pushed out of country music by the racism that still infects the genre today. “It was very hard,” Martell told Rolling Stone in 2020. “When you’re playing to an all-white audience—because Lord Jesus, they are prejudiced—you learn to not say too much. You can carry it a little too far if you’re correcting somebody. So you learn how not to do that.”
Martell lends her voice to a few interludes on Cowboy Carter, most pointedly at the top of “Spaghettii”: “Genres are a funny little concept, aren’t they?” she ponders in a smoky tone. And with her inclusion, Beyoncé accomplishes multiple things, cementing a legend in her rightful place within country and righting (and condemning) a historical wrong while inviting the audience to familiarize themselves with how frequently such injustice occurs.
This sort of reexamination happens throughout Cowboy Carter. “Ya-Ya” (not an ode to America’s Next Top Model contestant Yaya DaCosta, FYI) samples both Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walking” and the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” which, beyond merely subverting expectations, is a deft act of recontextualization as Beyoncé nimbly traverses and blends genres. And while most fans were excited for a cover of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene,” what they got was a reworking that illustrates Beyoncé’s persona and differentiates her from Parton. Parton’s version is perfect, but Beyoncé adds a new point of view, a more modern version in conversation with the character Jolene. Instead of pleading with her, Beyoncé serves up a very, very stern warning not to mess with her man. The tweaked lyrics—from “Don’t take the chance because you think you can” to “You’re beautiful beyond compare / Takes more than beauty and seductive stares / To come between a family and a happy man”—act as a (strong acrylic) nail in the coffin, but Beyoncé’s final warning, “Jolene, I know I’m a queen, Jolene / I’m still a Creole banjee bitch from Louisiane (don’t try me),” comes as an explanation of who she is and exactly why you don’t want to mess with her. (Personally, if I were Jolene, I would close my legs to married men!)
Beyoncé has been known to do her musical history homework, so to the surprise of no one (OK, a few people were surprised), her majesty removed her cowboy hat and put on her ornithology cap to cover the Beatles’ “Blackbird.” This was no empty gesture. Paul McCartney wrote “Blackbird” about the Little Rock Nine, the students who were enrolled in and initially prevented from attending Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas during the height of segregation.
In the book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, by Barry Miles, McCartney explains how he came up with the idea for the song: “I had in mind a black woman, rather than a bird. Those were the days of the civil rights movement, which all of us cared passionately about, so this was really a song from me to a black woman, experiencing these problems in the States: ‘Let me encourage you to keep trying, to keep your faith, there is hope.’ As is often the case with my things, a veiling took place so, rather than say ‘Black woman living in Little Rock’ and be very specific, she became a bird, became symbolic, so you could apply it to your particular problem.” In her cover “Blackbiird” (the Act II theme resonates throughout the track list), Beyoncé enlists other young Black women in country music—Tiera Kennedy, Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer, and Reyna Roberts—acting as a nurturing mentor to them, the way Tina, Aretha, and Diana were for her; encouraging them to keep trying, even though at times they may have felt that same unwelcome she once felt at that CMAs; instilling the message that hope is stronger than hate.
Not every song is meant to deliver a message about righting past wrongs or civil rights struggles. The second half of Cowboy Carter is lighter, airier, more laid-back and dancy. Tracks like “Bodyguard”—which may or may not be about Beyoncé’s longtime bodyguard Julius—are feel-good anthems that demand to be played while you’re driving down the PCH with the wind in your hair (less chance of it being caught in a fan) and are less glued to the idea of country, which further proves that it is simply a “Beyoncé album.” And no Beyoncé album is complete without an iconic feature from one of music’s most in-demand songstresses to add a bit more fierceness (see: “Beautiful Liar” featuring Shakira and “Telephone” featuring Lady Gaga). On “II Most Wanted,” Mrs. Carter teams up with country music’s rightful heiress Miley Cyrus (who, one could say, also traverses genres just as easily) for a sonically soothing Thelma & Louise duet that will have you shouting, “I’ll be your shotgun rider / Till the day I die” for weeks.
But the features on Cowboy Carter aren’t just an exercise in recruiting well-known talent with an “Achy Breaky Heart” lineage—they’re also about highlighting lesser-known talent, and the numbers speak for themselves. Beyoncé has continuously created new opportunities for Black artists simply by shining a light on them. Despite the way many see Black music as a monolith, consisting of only rap or R&B—might I point out that “16 Carriages” and “Texas Hold ’Em” were categorized as R&B when they were first released—artists like Adell, Kennedy, and Willie Jones are given the freedom to be themselves here. And the genius of Beyoncé is that she sparks interest in those unique voices and leaves you wanting more.
That said, Cowboy Carter is not a perfect album. “Desert Eagle” could have been at least 10 minutes longer.
Meecham Whitson Meriweather is a culture writer based in Brooklyn, whose work has appeared in Granta, Vulture, New York magazine, InStyle, The Daily Beast, and his newsletter Now That I Mention It, which you should already be subscribed to!