Beyoncé became the first black woman to reach No. 1 on Billboard’s country music chart.
Music genres are a bit of a funny concept, aren’t they? In theory, music genres have simple definitions that are easy to understand, but in reality they are somewhat limited.
Beyoncé in the Cowboy Carter video
Beyoncé started a track on her new album Cowboy Carter with Linda Martell’s autobiography, as above.
In 1970, Linda Martell became the first black female artist to taste some success in country music, a music genre associated with white people.
Not long after, a conflict with the record company caused her to leave the music industry and do many jobs to make a living, from driving a bus to singing at weddings. After she appeared on Beyoncé’s album, it was recorded that Martell music streams increased by 127,430%!More than 50 years after Linda Martell, Beyoncé became the first black woman to reach No. 1 on Billboard’s country music chart.
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Cowboy Carter was released not long after One Thing At A Time, Morgan Wallen’s country album spent its 19th week atop the Billboard 200, becoming the highest-performing album since Adele’s 21 in 2011-2012.
One Thing At A Time is a country album that couldn’t be more country. Its owner is a white man, from Tennessee. His songs are stories about working-class people with red necks from working in the fields and born with a beer bottle in their hand.
When compared to One Thing At A Time, Cowboy Carter is something that does not fit any definition of country.
Before Cowboy Carter, eight years ago on the album Lemonade, Beyoncé had a country-inspired song called Daddy Lessons.
The story of a father’s admonitions to his daughter is narrated by Beyoncé in a musical space like a small pub on the remote roads of America on a happy night.
Her voice is like wine pouring over a glass, like a fire dancing in a fireplace.
Cowboy Carter this time is truly a galloping trip through country music heritage. On the album cover, Beyoncé holds an American flag sitting upside down on the back of a white horse, and the music she sings behind is not “smooth” country music like Morgan Wallen.
Beyoncé
Beyoncé’s show not only had the appearance of legends like Willie Nelson – a voice sculpted from the American countryside or Dolly Parton – one of the biggest names country music has ever produced.
The party expanded to include young people, Miley Cyrus – a girl from Tennessee – and even lesser-known people. And perhaps only Beyoncé is capable of inviting giants like Stevie Wonder or Paul McCartney to play music for her.
It is impossible to describe Beyoncé’s sublime moments in Cowboy Carter, an album that Stevie Wonder also foresaw its classic status.
That was the moment when Beyoncé sang a falsetto opera from the 18th century about loneliness in the track Daughter about feelings of hatred and repentance.
It was the moment when she brought her honey-like voice to a fun track about nightlife in the American West in Texas Hold’Em.
It was the moment she turned Jolene, Dolly Parton’s classic song, from a wife’s plea to her husband’s lover into an arrogant warning, threat, and humiliation.
As a Texan, country and western music has always been in Beyoncé’s shoes. But when she was at the peak of her power, she had an album that focused on this genre.
She had to fight to do that, against the stereotype that she was “not country enough”, as she confided in American Requiem.
Now no one will be able to stop Beyoncé. She remixed The Beatles’ Blackbird, a song that McCartney wrote inspired by the black liberation movement, with the lines: “The black bird sings in the dead of night, learning to fly with broken wings, all my life was just waiting for this moment to soar high.”
Maybe Beyoncé has been waiting for this moment her whole life.
