For many years, Beyoncé has made genre-hopping a trademark of her profession; the Houston, Texas-born singer’s music has embraced the whole lot from reggaeton (“Standing on the Solar”) to EDM (“Candy Goals”) to rock (“Don’t Damage Your self”). A single album, and even tune, can criss-cross sounds with reckless abandon. But along with her newest album, Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé breaks from her traditional sample—barely—and houses in on a reasonably particular theme: making the style of nation music, particularly, match her, and never the opposite manner round.

Such a undertaking from a multi-hyphenate pop star was all the time going to ruffle just a few feathers. The Oklahoma nation radio station KYKC sparked outrage when it turned down a fan’s request to play one of many album’s lead singles, “Texas Maintain ‘Em.” “We don’t play Beyoncé on KYKC as we’re a rustic music station,” the station responded in a press release, earlier than ultimately bowing to pressures and reversing its stance. Consequently, Cowboy Carter turns into as a lot of a listening expertise as a question into who does and doesn’t get to take part in a style. (Rapper Lil Nas X impressed an identical reckoning along with his viral hit “Previous City Street” just a few years in the past.) Certainly, its spirit of inclusivity is among the album’s best strengths: Loads of names, each established and up-and-coming, Black and white, are invited to Queen Bey’s hoedown. Submit Malone, Miley Cyrus, nation singer Willie Jones, Nigerian-American artist Shaboozey, and others characteristic.

The yee-haw agenda has, after all, seen a spike in recognition in recent times, with everybody from Woman Gaga to Dua Lipa to Troye Sivan issuing country-leaning tracks. And Western sartorial codes have reigned supreme each on the streets and the runways; simply contemplate Pharrell Williams’s fall 2024 assortment for Louis Vuitton Males’s. Cowboy Carter is positioned as a follow-up (or “second act”) to 2022’s Renaissance, a broadly common album that featured ingenious and daring explorations of home and dance music. Now, nevertheless, the world-building facilities on extra simply identifiable tropes and motifs. That is obvious from one of many album’s earliest tracks: “Blackbiird,” a Beatles cowl, pulsates with a boot-tapping beat, twangy acoustic guitar, and accompaniment from a throng of latest Black feminine nation singers (Brittney Spencer, Tiera Kennedy, and Reyna Roberts). That tune, just like the album extra broadly, is each an homage to the previous (elsewhere on Cowboy Carter, there are appearances from nation greats resembling Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton) and a daring celebration of the oft under-appreciated contributions of Black artists to the style; “The Linda Martell Present,” for instance, spotlights a Black trailblazer who navigated nation throughout Jim Crow. However Beyoncé’s extra acquainted hip-hop and pop-leaning sensibilities are in proof, too, making for a sprawling and bold album that touches on the whole lot from adultery to familial roots to outlaw lovebirds. (Made up of 27 tracks, it runs for a commanding 78 minutes.) And, but, amazingly, all of it matches collectively.

Among the many file’s most poignant throughlines is a looking interiority—notably on tracks resembling “Simply For Enjoyable,” “16 Carriages,” and “Oh Louisiana.” Right here, Beyoncé leans into the artwork of storytelling that’s so central to nation music, reflecting on authenticity, roots, legacy, and function—and providing a pointy distinction to the unassailable pop star veneer we usually see from the singer. The battle wounds of a lone star life—on this case, pop stardom—are introduced in full view: “Don’t have time to waste, I’ve artwork to make,” she sings on “16 Carriages.” The theme of ephemerality returns within the refrain for “Only for Enjoyable”: “Trigger time heals the whole lot/ I don’t want something/ Hallelujah/I pray to her.” And Beyoncé’s youngest daughter, Rumi Carter, is a credited artist on the ballad “Protector,” an iridescent tune about uplifting and empowering another person, even when solely briefly.