No Album Left Behind: Beyoncé, COWBOY CARTER

For over a decade and a half, Beyoncé albums have been getting continuously more ambitious. 2008’s I Am… Sasha Fierce was a conceptual double album split between sincere balladry and alter-ego indulgence; five years later, the former Destiny’s Child invented the visual album as we know it today with her self-titled effort. Since then, we’ve had Lemonade—another staggering concept album, one that spans R&B, pop, blues, country and rock while meditating on infidelity—as well as the magnum opus RENAISSANCE, a fantastical homage to 1970s Black and queer dance music. 

When Beyoncé announced COWBOY CARTER (a.k.a. Act II), the larger-than-life star seemed to be upping her ambitions once more. Here she was taking a genre, country music, infamous for its regressive tendencies and attempting to re-center it and recognise its origins in oft-overlooked Black pioneers. “Nothing really ends / For things to stay the same, they have to change again,” she sings as the album opens. It’s a bold statement of intent, to force a progressive reckoning at a time when the forces of regression seem only to be gaining in power. 

Much like 2008’s I Am… Sasha Fierce, COWBOY CARTER is an album of two thematic halves (even if the delineation between the two is less precise than it was with the former LP). There’s the outward-looking side—focused on meditating on the genre’s past and present, while highlighting the contributions of trailblazers like Sister Rosetta Tharpe—and the inward-looking side, where Beyoncé tackles motherhood, coming of age and, again, infidelity.

The outward-focused side of this album alternates between staggering highs and moments that, while undoubtedly competent, pale in comparison to the heights Beyoncé has scaled in recent years. The LP is at its best when the singer pairs her urgent reflections with similarly urgent sounding music. “YA YA” is an obvious highlight, with some of the album’s most on-the-nose, politically conscious lyricism coming to the forefront (“Whole lotta red in that white and blue / History can’t be erased”). The song, which celebrates the artists who toured the Chitlin’ Circuit, represents COWBOY CARTER at its most adventurous; there are finger snaps, bursts of drum-fuelled energy, carnivorous vocal delivery from Beyoncé and an array of samples and interpolations, including Nancy Sinatra, The Beach Boys and Mickey & Sylvia. All in all, it’s an expert fusion of radical messaging with a sonic approach every bit as radical to match. 

There are, however, stumbles—often occurring when Beyoncé opts for covers. It’s jarring that bold mission statement opener “AMERIICAN REQUIEM” is then immediately followed by a largely faithful and deferential cover of The Beatles’ “Blackbird,” for instance. Meanwhile, lyrical changes made to Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” aim to channel female empowerment, but fail to realise that the song’s emotional heft comes from the desperation of its narrator. Elsewhere, the interlude “SMOKE HOUR * WILLIE NELSON” attempts to pay tribute to various inspirations, while also mimicking the experience of flicking through radio stations. But the way that songs from Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Chuck Berry and Roy Hamilton are limited to short snippets and contained within a mere 51 seconds feels incomplete. This is especially true when compared with the masterful ways Beyoncé incorporated her inspirations’ musical contributions on RENAISSANCE—and how she does the same again on this album’s more successful moments. 

More consistently compelling, then, are COWBOY CARTER‘s inward-looking moments. Joint lead single “16 CARRIAGES” is a towering achievement in a discography where the bar for “towering achievement” is being ever-raised. An epic bildungsroman, with the musical intensity to match the emotional intensity of its lyrics, “16 CARRIAGES” charts the loss of innocence upon entering the music industry as a teen, seeing family struggle in the days before Beyoncé’s world domination and trying to make it big with the rest of the band in the back of the bus. The song carries forth country music’s reputation (at its best) for world-moving, breathtaking depths of storytelling unparalleled across other genres. Meanwhile, the more stripped back “PROTECTOR” proves staggeringly moving in its emotional sincerity and meditations on motherhood, with lines like, “Even though I know, someday, you’re gonna shine on your own / I will be your protector.” 

But surprisingly, many of COWBOY CARTER‘s most replayable moments prove to be some of its less grand displays. “II MOST WANTED,” a duet with Miley Cyrus, does not have nearly as much to say as a “YA YA” or a “16 CARRIAGES,” but there’s no doubting its bonafides as an excellent duet, with a dynamic contrast between Beyoncé’s honeyed vocals against Miley’s gritty delivery. “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM,” meanwhile, delights in not taking itself too seriously as Beyoncé tosses off lines like “Don’t be a bitch, come take it to the floor.” Upon release, the anthem was a smash hit—one of Beyoncé’s biggest hits globally in years and one of the biggest hits for a country song by a Black woman in many more years. Hopefully, the inclusive big-tent country landscape Beyoncé envisages will, sooner rather than later, become a reality.