Only Beyoncé could drop new music during the Super Bowl and still make headlines—sorry to Mr. Usher Raymond but it’s all anyone’s talking about the morning after! On Sunday, in the midst of America’s Sunday Mass Football, Beyoncé released not one but TWO new songs: Texas Hold ‘Em and 16 Carriages, both catchy AF and both are from her upcoming album Renaissance: Act II. Based on the heavy-handed hints she’s dropped—including her bougie cowgirl outfit at this year’s Grammys—the album will usher (ha) in a new Beyoncé era of country music.
It’s a pivot that’s both surprising and not, but mostly it’s a big deal for lots of reasons. Most of all, to me, it’s an aspirational manifestation of the diva’s greatest power yet: the assertion to do whatever the hell she wants.
I am by no means a Beyoncé historian (even though I’m old enough to remember when Destiny’s Child had four members!), but I do know this will be her first attempt at an all-out country-style album. Regardless, she’s more than equipped for it. Besides being a Texas girl bred on country music, she was also the first to shore up the Yee-haw Agenda through her country tune Daddy Lessons off her 2016 Lemonade album. Looking back, it makes perfect sense that Lemonade produced Beyoncé’s first proper country track since the album is uncoincidentally her most experimental to date. If she was doing rock (Don’t Hurt Yourself) and rap (Partition) on that album, why not throw in some bluegrass beats and pay homage to her southern roots, too?
But even with all her credentials, Beyoncé going full cowgirl is still a huge deal. Some might even say it’s a risk.
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I remember growing up, some of the first musical acts I gravitated toward were cowgirlies like LeAnn Rimes and Shania Twain. I wasn’t into much other country music, likely because the macho man iconography and deep southern drawls were too much for a Southeast Asian kid in midwest Oklahoma (my immigrant parents had moved us there so they could get fancy degrees from an American university). However, women country stars like LeAnn and Shania, with their big feminine energy and contemporary country tunes, made country music accessible to little girls like me.
In that sense, Beyoncé’s country turn certainly feels like a complete act of rebellion. Among the visuals released with the two new country tracks is a clip of her dressed like a sexy cowgirl alien cyborg cheekily shooting sparks out of her make-believe handguns, already a departure from the orthodox cowboy stereotype usually associated with country music that’s sure to get certain white folks riled up. Beyoncé’s hardcore fans, on the other hand, were very much primed and readied for this moment through galactic cowboy iconography during her Renaissance tour.
Most notably, in 2016, Beyoncé nearly broke the country music industry with her performance of Daddy Lessons at the Country Music Association Awards, when she had the Dixie Chicks (now rebranded as just The Chicks) perform the song with her on stage. For those not in the know or who’ve forgotten, the Chicks were famously banished from American country music in the early aughts after they came out publicly opposed to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. That anti-war stance seems like common sense but at the time being anti-war was almost a fringe opinion, especially after 9/11. Anyone who was against the U.S.’s—ahem—cowboy crusade against the Middle East was labeled an enemy of the State, a traitor, unpatriotic… you get the gist.
And then came Beyoncé, fresh amid her success with Lemonade—a groundbreaking album that was also unapologetically rooted in Black American culture—bringing the all-female feminist country group who dared defy the very male country industry, to perform a bop that was both deeply Americana and still very Beyoncé in front of the entire country music establishment. That performance has got to be one of the most iconic moments in country music history.
A lot of misogynists and racists cosplaying as music puritans got mad about it so in a clumsy attempt to pacify the angry masses the Country Music Association tried to scrub all evidence of Beyoncé’s performance with the Chicks off the internet. That same year, the Grammys also made sure to reject her submission of Daddy Lessons for the awards’ country music honors.
But if there’s one thing about Mrs. Carter, it’s that there is almost nothing that she does that isn’t deliberate. She knew exactly what she was doing with that Dixie Chicks collab and, given her longevity in the music biz, she also knew what kind of response it would elicit… and she went and did it anyway. The joke’s on everyone because now she’s going to give us a whole-ass country ALBUM with folksy songs written by her and sung in her Texan twang. The best part about it all is that nobody can check her on it. She has the agency to make it happen, so who’s gonna stop her?
You don’t become a supreme success like Beyoncé without defying the world every once in a while. Surely her romance with country music isn’t the first time she’s faced pushback in her career and I’m certain it won’t be the last. I may not be a billionaire musical talent but like Beyoncé I, too, have reached a point where I can finally not give a crap about other people’s BS and just do what I feel like doing—professionally and in my personal life. That kind of attitude is a philosophy—and, dare I say, a form of self-determination—that’s become more attractive as I’ve begun the universal process of becoming indifferent to what people will say or think as I’ve gotten older.
Beyoncé’s new cowgirl era is incredibly exciting, not just because of the innovative musicality it’ll bring but also because of what it embodies. It’s a reminder to let go of other people’s notions about yourself and—perhaps most crucially—to prioritize your desires ahead of external factors. And that rebelliousness, I think, is the true essence of the cowgirl persona.
Yee haw!
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