Ever since Beyoncé showed up at the Grammys last month rocking a pristine cowboy hat and followed up a week later with a Beyhive-breaking album announcement and surprise two-piece release at Super Bowl LVIII, the internet has been alight with conjecture on why she took a very unexpected foray into Country music.
Will she ever release straight pop music again? Is she coming for Taylor Swift’s crown since that chick keeps getting awards she deserves? Is she simply seeking to dominate various genres, as she did electronic music with the 2022 “Renaissance” album? Is a Celtic New Age album next??
Well, Beyoncé gave us some insight on Instagram this week, posting the album cover to her upcoming eighth studio album “Cowboy Carter,” along with a message to kick off the 10-day countdown to the album’s March 29 release.
“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,” she wrote.
She (unsurprisingly) didn’t expound on the “experience,” but it’s largely assumed that Bey was referencing her 2016 performance at the Country Music Awards, where she joined The Chicks (formerly The Dixie Chicks) to perform “Daddy Lessons” from her magnum opus “Lemonade.” (The group had been performing their version of her song on tour.)
Despite apparently being the most highly rated 15 minutes in the history of the CMAs, the (white) folks in the audience and at home didn’t know what to do with an actual Black woman daring to hit “their” stage without a mop and some Clorox.
The CMAs apparently got so much negative flak from the performance of Bey and The Chicks (who infamously endured their own battle with Country’s rootin’ tootin’ powers that be) that it folded like gym towels and took the performance off its platforms — only to buckle to even greater outrage a day later and put it back up…proving that the CMAs mama still apparently tells it what to do.
That one of the five largest music stars on the planet somehow managed to get shade from the Grammys and the Country Music Awards notwithstanding, Justin Timberlake hit the CMA stage one year earlier to perform with nominated artist Chris Stapleton. He and Bey are effectively pop music peers, but no angry phone calls or de-platformed video for him. Hmm…I wonder why(te)…?
Indeed, Country music and racism have been bedfellows for quite some time, as the genre is the domain of the rebel flag, minimal bass, the wrong side of the Mason Dixon Line and earnest tunes about the “real America” that doesn’t involve you woke Negroes. That’s why when Black artists do permeate Country, their narrative almost always involves how they navigate a genre that isn’t very friendly to them.
Yet when Country borrows from Black artists to powerful impact, as Luke Combs did with his chart-topping 2023 remake of Tracy Chapman’s 1988 classic “Fast Car” — which brought her back outside after decades and with immaculate skin — all is good among the racists, I guess.
So, just as when an openly gay, dark-skinned Lil Nas X had the good ol’ boys stomping their trucker hats in the dirt when he dominated (and confounded) Country for at least a year with his “Old Town Road” remix, Bey will drop “Country Carter” next week and her nonpareil influence will have residents of every Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. in the country buying their first Country album.
Shit that the genre has never seen is about to go down. So, gird your loins, white folks: Country music is about to have way more bodysuits and silver.