When she first teased the March 29 release date of her upcoming eighth solo album during a Super Bowl commercial, Beyoncé simply promised an "Act II" to her mega-selling 2022 house- and disco-themed album Renaissance. On March 12, she finally gave the country-leaning project a proper name, and you certainly can't accuse her of false advertising: the album will be titled Cowboy Carter.
As you'll well know if you've turned on a country radio station over the last several weeks (or a pop radio station, for that matter), Beyoncé has already released two singles from the project: "Texas Hold 'Em" and "16 Carriages." The former track made history over the last several weeks: reaching the top spot on the Hot Country Songs chart, it made her the first Black woman to claim a country chart-topper, as well as the first woman to notch No. 1s on both the Hot Country Songs chart and the Hot Hip-Hop/R&B Songs chart. (Morgan Wallen, Billy Ray Cyrus, Justin Bieber and Ray Charles are the only other artists to do so.)
"Texas Hold 'Em" has since landed at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, while "16 Carriages" has reached No. 38, and also broke into the top 10 of the Country chart at No. 9.
Beyoncé became the first Black woman to top the Hot Country Chart with her single 'Texas Hold 'Em.'
The songs' release helped resume a long-simmering conversation about race in country music, especially when an Oklahoma country radio station responded to a caller request for "Texas Hold 'Em" with the message: “Hi – we do not play Beyoncé on KYKC as we are a country music station.” After the response went viral, the station reversed course, and began playing it.
The issue is a particularly sensitivity one where Beyoncé is concerned, considering the hesitation from some in the country community to accept her 2016 country single "Daddy Lessons." Though clearly country in style -- enough so that she performed it with the Chicks on that year's Country Music Association Awards -- the song was reportedly rejected by committee from consideration for the Grammy Awards in the country categories, and some veteran country stars like Travis Tritt spoke out against Beyoncé's inclusion on the show.
Renaissance tour stage designer Es Devlin discussed the star's burgeoning interest in country music and Western iconography in a British Vogue article prior to the new album announcement. "She discovered that 50 percent of cowboys were black, in the 19th and early 20th century, and country music, of course, has been largely appropriated," Devlin said. "She wanted to reappropriate American and country music from a Black perspective, hence the cowboys and why they are wearing red. They are her eliding those two ideas of redlining in those towns and the cowboys."
The singer's interest in country music and Western iconography has reignited long-simmering debates over the genre's historical treatment of race.
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Aside from those two singles, everything else about Cowboy Carter has been kept under wraps thus far. Though Dolly Parton may have spilled the beans on a portion of the album's contents, revealing that Beyoncé may have covered her canonical 1973 single "Jolene" during studio sessions for the album.
"I think she's recorded 'Jolene,' and I think it's probably gonna be on her country album, which I'm very excited about," Parton said. "I love her! She's a beautiful girl and a great singer."
