Beyonce has made an ambitious entry into the country world with “COWBOY CARTER,” asprawling 27-track project with a fairly unique structure.The album provided me with anopportunity to not only talk hip-hop, but also country music, a genre that this campuscommunity largely shies away from.
On the album, Beyoncé incorporates a range of sounds, from stripped-down country all the way todensely produced hip-hop tracks with minimal inclusions of country instrumentation. With such awide spectrum, it is worth categorizing the songs to give an overview of the project. There are 13country-forward tracks with various depths of production, including two covers (“BLACKBIIRD,””JOLENE”), 10 country-hip-hop-fusion tracks, all with fairly bouncy beats (“SPAGHETTI,””DESERT EAGLE,” etc.) and also four voiceover skit tracks featuring Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson,and Linda Martell. I would like to highlight a bit of music from each category and then shout outsome additional tracks at the end.My favorite Big C Country song on the album is “ALLIGATOR TEARS.” While not a particularlyflashy track, it features sour guitar finger picking, tense drums and some surprisingly bluesychords. Over the track, Beyoncé’s signature tight harmonies shine through. Lyrically, a typically-empowered Beyoncé is reduced to a bitter lover who is attempting to resist a manipulative,demagogic partner by ignoring them. The track is so stark that it almost reads like a wonderfullystrange A.I. wish fulfillment of Beyoncé doing a stripped-down country song, sort of like a recentedit of Kanye West singing “Wonderwall, though this is far more cohesive.
While not a particularly musically or thematically deep track, its excellence comes through in itssimplicity, which is where country music usually excels for me. I love country songs withuncomplicated structures, like nursery rhyme levels of simple. For example, the 1987 track, “AllMy Ex’s Live In Texas” by George Strait. Why does George Strait reside in Tennessee? Becauseall of his exes live in Texas. The entire song is just him listing exes whose names happen torhyme with Texas cities, and it is great.Inversely, many modern country tracks feature excessively maximalist elements: featuring ear-splittingly loud drums, superbly twanged guitars and vocals and deeply white trash subject matter.To this extent, I can understand this campus’ aversion to country music. While certain tracks onthis part of the album are a tad over engineered (“PROTECTOR,” “LEVII’S JEANS”), the vastmajority of them are in line with the content on albums such as Chris Stapleton’s toned-down2020 project “Starting Over,” and Sturgill Simpson’s incredibly dynamic “A Sailor’s Guide toEarth,” elusive gems in today’s country wasteland.Going back to the country tracks on the album, “JOLENE,” a song originally performed by DollyParton, is another country track that stands out but for mixed reasons. While featuring an addedbridge that propels the song’s second half, the song inverts the original song’s themeing to itsdetriment. Instead of a song about a pop star pleading with a woman they admire(Jolene) to notseduce their partner, it becomes one where the cheated-on spouse is unfazed by Jolene,removing the stakes of the track and its compelling undertones of desperation. While Beyoncéhas covered infidelity with such tones on Lemonade’s “Hold Up” and was perhaps not looking torepeat it, she severely defanged “Jolene” in the process.
In terms of Country-fusion, “SPAGHETTI” is a stand-out track. It features Beyoncé rapping purebraggadocio for the first half before slowing down into a spacey melodic verse from fellowcountry-hip-hop-fuser Shaboozey, with Beyoncé providing angelic vocal ad libs. The track exhibitsher skill across genres and moods brilliantly. Looking at other fusion tracks,”RIVERDANCE” hasa great bounce to it, “DESERT EAGLE” is led by a delightfully funky bassline, “TYRANT” featurespunchy 808s and fiddle and SWEET HONEY BUCKIN,” though a little chaotic, has an infectiouslydriving beat. The fusion tracks are strong throughout, with one or two being forgettable at worst.
Lastly, I enjoyed most of the album, I think Beyoncé should have cut all four skit tracks and theintro dialogue on “SPAGHETTI,” which felt like a particularly egregious use of skit dialogue. Onthe track, Linda Martell posits, “Genres are a funny little concept, aren’t they?” While this partfunctionally signals the transition to the largely country-fusion half of the album, I think it takes, atminimum, two listens to realize this statement is incredibly bland, somewhat preachy andcompletely unnecessary. I think listeners are pretty aware of the fluidity of genes of artistsswitching genres: Last year, André 3000 made a well-praised flute album, and Lil Yachty made asuccessful psychedelic rock album. Lil Nas X pulled the ultimate hip-hop-country crossover with”Old Town Road” in 2018. Furthermore, hip-hop is basically built on innovatively sample-flippingother genres.Nelson and Parton’s skits follow a similar script, saying some form of, “Hey, you should be open-minded to this project even though it is not a typical Beyoncé or country album,” all of which feelsdefensive. “COWBOY CARTER” will earn its fans through the quality of its music, not its skitrhetoric. Even if the skit rhetoric was compelling, the country stars provide little energy. Theirperformances are adjacent to Cameo videos: benign but ultimately quite flat.To round this out, I will just mention a few more highlights. “MY ROSE” features beautifully layeredvocals and is perhaps too short—a similar problem is present in “FLAMENCO” and “DESERTEAGLE”—though all are quite compelling regardless. “Il MOST WANTED” is a gorgeous duetfeaturing Miley Cyrus, and “DAUGHTER” has Beyoncé breaking into operatic singing out ofnowhere. While I am no Beyoncé nut, moments like these certainly make me consider converting.
While there are a few clunkers here and there, like the vapid “LEVII’’S JEANS,” the somewhatmisguided “JOLENE” and the skippable skit tracks, Beyonce’s country project is not only superblyexecuted, but it has provoked far more discourse than I offer here. That is perhaps worth far morethan the album’s sonic value alone
