Beyoncé suggests Cowboy Carter is an outgrowth of the Chicks CMAs backlash
Beyoncé says her new country album "was born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed"
Beyoncé made waves by doing a genre overhaul ahead of her next album, Act II. She pulled on a pair of cowboy boots and leaned into her Texas twang for an album that would later be revealed as Cowboy Carter, but “This ain’t a Country album,” she says in a lengthy new post about creating her latest record. It makes sense that she might not fully embrace the label, because the country music establishment hasn’t exactly embraced her, either. Besides, the pop star has always moved her way through multiple genres, dabbling, blending, curating, and creating an oeuvre wholly her own. As she herself says, Cowboy Carter “is a ‘Beyoncé’ album.”
“Today marks the 10-day countdown until the release of act ii. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all of the supporters of TEXAS HOLD ‘EM and 16 CARRIAGES,” Beyoncé writes in her Instagram post, in an unusually long missive from the typically taciturn star. “I feel honored to be the first Black woman with the number one single on the Hot Country Songs chart. That would not have happened without the outpouring of support from each and every one of you. My hope is that years from now, the mention of an artist’s race, as it relates to releasing genres of music, will be irrelevant.”
The singer goes on to confirm that Cowboy Carter “has been over five years in the making,” and specifically “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.” She refers, of course, to the reception to her song “Daddy Lessons” on the 2016 album Lemonade. The song rankled country critics and fans alike, generating backlash when it played on country radio. That backlash came to a head when Beyoncé performed the song with The Chicks at the Country Music Awards, which was met with so much racism and vitriol that the CMAs temporarily took it off their website. In the wake of that performance, the Grammys’ country music committee rejected “Daddy Lessons” from that year’s nominees, despite the fact that she’d go on to become the first artist nominated in four different genre categories (Pop, Rap, Rock, and Urban Contemporary) for Lemonade.
“It was just a weird vibe in that building,” Chicks’ singer Natalie Maines recalled of the CMA performance during an appearance on The Howard Stern Show in 2020. “I guess they can rate those shows now by the 15 minutes. It’s the highest rated 15 minutes in CMA history. And then they start getting racist assholes bombarding their website with comments and emails and whatever. And so they take her down. They took our performance down and caved to that bullshit. And then they, I guess, got so much bad press for doing that, within 24 hours they put it back up again. Just cowards. It’s just crazy. She just gave you your greatest ratings that you’ve ever gotten, how dare you take her song off. It was ridiculous.”
Beyoncé doesn’t directly name the CMAs specifically, or any aspect of the “Daddy Lessons” response at all, as the thing that lit her fire about country music. However, she writes that because of the experience of feeling unwelcome in that unnamed space, “I did a deeper dive into the history of Country music and studied our rich musical archive. It feels good to see how music can unite so many people around the world, while also amplifying the voices of some of the people who have dedicated so much of their lives educating on our musical history.”
Unearthing, uplifting, and rejuvenating the African or Black American roots of certain sounds has also been a major aspect of Beyoncé’s work over the last decade; look at Black Is King or Renaissance. Fans suspected this would be the case for Act II, especially when the new music features artists like Rhiannon Giddens, who played the banjo on “Texas Hold ’Em” and has worked to educate others on the Black legacy of the instrument. The Beyoncé effect is already creating something of a renaissance (pun intended), with streams for other Black country artists like Tanner Adell, Mickey Guyton, and Reyna Roberts shooting up in the wake of Beyoncé’s new tracks, according to CNBC.
Beyonce promises collaborations “with some brilliant artists” (and perhaps a Dolly Parton cover?) as well as “love and passion” on Cowboy Carter. “The criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me,” she writes. “act ii is a result of challenging myself, and taking my time to bend and blend genres together to create this body of work.”
It seems symbolic that “Daddy Lessons,” the song that sparked all the controversy and subsequently this new album, starts with the murmured invocation of Beyoncé’s home state “Texas,” while her first Cowboy Carter single starts with the declaration, “This ain’t Texas.” Act II is, appropriately, a second act for “Daddy Lessons,” but a whole new chapter for Beyoncé. Remember, “This ain’t a Country album.” But it is born from country, from Beyoncé’s rejection, rediscovery, and yes, renaissance within the genre.