Fearless, fascinating but also frustrating: Beyonce’s ‘country’ LP is pure Hollywood
Cowboy Carter is the biggest album of the year so far. It may also be the longest, running to 27 tracks and 79 minutes. As a concept album and double LP, it couldn’t be more album-ish if it tried.
It has been widely described as Beyonce’s country album, though not exactly by her. In a press release that goes on for almost as long as the record, she prefers to call it ‘a no-holds- barred, multi-genre nod to Americana country culture’.
As slogans go, this is a bowl of porridge, but it does contain a grain of truth. ‘Multi-genre’ soon proves to be spot-on. The opening track begins as gospel before lurching into heavy rock, as if Beyonce wants to show us what would have happened if Aretha Franklin had joined Black Sabbath. Country this is not.
The song is called Ameriican Requiem, and yes, it is spelled like that. Not content with putting all the titles in capitals, just like on her last album Renaissance, Beyonce now favours a double ‘i’. The choice of letter is revealing: even when she appears to address the state of the nation, it’s all about her.
The lyrics settle some scores, noting that Beyonce, who grew up in Houston, has been rebuked both for speaking ‘too country’ and for not being ‘country ’nough’. She has a point, but the point doesn’t quite make a song. If you’re going to call a track Ameriican Requiem, you need to have something big to say, as Paul Simon did when he used American Tune to throw some shade at Richard Nixon, a year before his downfall.
Ameriican Requiem is fearless and fascinating, but also frustrating. And much the same goes for the whole album.
Cowboy Carter contains multitudes. It has a cast of hundreds, from black country singers to white rappers, from Willie Nelson (aged 90) to Beyonce’s daughter Rumi (aged six). It lays on a hotel buffet of styles, from folk-blues to hip-hop and even opera.
It includes a cover of The Beatles’ Blackbird, a snippet of Patsy Cline’s I Fall To Pieces and a drastic rewrite of Dolly Parton’s Jolene, which replaces all that desperate pleading with lofty disdain. Unlike
The Temptations, Beyonce is too proud to beg.
There are many country sounds, from the banjo to the organ, but hardly any country songs. This could be because country revolves around storytelling, which is not Beyonce’s thing. She prefers to make a broad case – arguing that country, like most of pop, has black roots – and then concentrate on capturing her own moods.
Her thesis is persuasive, her singing pyrotechnic, but the songwriting from her various committees is hit-and-miss. They may rhyme Texas with Lexus, but they never quite hit you in the solar plexus.
Inside this sprawling epic is a very decent EP trying to get out. Only five tracks demand to be on your playlist: the breezy Texas Hold ’Em, now Beyonce’s longest-running UK No1, the rousing II Most Wanted, a duet with Miley Cyrus that could be equally big, the delicate Blackbiird, laced with lovely harmonies, the effortless Bodyguard, powered by a Motown piano, and the exuberant Ya Ya, which allows Beyonce to play James Brown.
After an hour, perhaps exhausted by her own restlessness, she returns to familiar territory – raunchy R’n’B, albeit with extra references to famous films. The atmosphere throughout has been more Hollywood than Nashville. Cowboy
Carter ends up in a category of its own: Beyonce’n’western.
And now for something completely different – the new album from Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits, fresh from his success with the all-star version of Going Home. One Deep River is a modest treat, full of thoughtful riffs and wry observations. At 74, Knopfler knows how to turn a murmur into a memorable ballad.