A magic blend of art and message
Beyoncé’s epic Act II: Cowboy Carter defies categorization, redefines American style
Act II: Cowboy Carter
Beyoncé'
Parkwood/colombia
“Nothin' really ends / For things to stay the same they have to change again,” Beyoncé sings on Act ll: Cowboy Carter, the opening lines of the opening track, Ameriican Requiem.
“Them big ideas, yeah, are buried here/amen.”
In some ways, it is a mission statement for the epic 78-minute, 27-track release — or at the very least, functions like a film's title card to introduce yet another blockbuster album.
In the days leading up to Cowboy Carter, the superstar said this “ain't a country album” but “a Beyoncé album,” positioning herself in opposition to country music's rigid power structures and emphasizing her ability to work with the style with her latest genre-defying opus.
Beyoncé is an eclecticist, known for her elastic vocal performances: in a moment, choosing to belt close to godliness and, in another, moving with marked ease into a fractured run, inheriting histories through the vowels she stresses, the handclaps she introduces and the genres she utilizes. (That's evident in the instruments as well, which range from washboard, pedal steel, banjo, mandolin, Vibraslap, bass ukulele and mandolin, to name a few.)
If the album, five years in the making, was inspired by the racist backlash she faced after performing at the 2016 CMAS with The Chicks, as many fans have theorized, she's eclipsed it and then some. Tell Beyoncé she isn't welcomed in your space; she'll carve out a bigger one.
American Requiem bleeds into a reimagination of a Beatles classic, Blackbird. It was originally written by Paul Mccartney about desegregation in American schools with particular emphasis on the Little Rock Nine, the first group of Black students to desegregate an Arkansas high school in 1957. In Beyonce's rendition, harmonies are stacked. She's joined by Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer, Reyna Roberts and Tiera Kennedy — some of the most exciting voices in contemporary country — who are also Black women.
The '50s cuts are an inspired choice; Beyoncé has chosen to reference the decade in which format-based radio emerged and, as a result, country music's racial lines were all but codified. The effects are still felt. Jolene is a reimagined take on the 1973 Dolly Parton original; Beyonce's version, of course, is very Beyoncé — there's no shrinking and begging for this woman to step off; it's a warning. If listeners position Act II: Cowboy Carter next to Act I: Renaissance, they might view the record as a continued dialogue in the Beyoncé mythos: Lemonade established her dedication to Black empowerment. Renaissance reclaimed house music for its Black progenitors in a sprawling release that placed techno, Chicago and Detroit house, New Orleans bounce, Afrobeats, queer dance culture and beyond on the same dance floor — and highlighted the frequent invisibility of Black performance in music history books. Cowboy Carter does something similar with country music — and, in true Beyoncé fashion, extends well beyond it, as vessel, captain and crew on this journey.
Effortlessly — and momentously — Cowboy Carter weaves canonized classics into the same breath as Beyonce's country music evolutions and Black music history preservations.
The magic here, of course, is Beyonce's mastery of art and message. At the centre of everything is her larger-than-life performance — serious and jubilant, like when she plays her nails as percussion on Riverdance, an ode to Parton doing the same on 9 to 5. Historical course-correcting and evolution go down with honey. Lessons are learned on the dance floor, on the radio, at the imagined honky-tonk, in headphones.