10 unexpected references in Beyoncé’s newest album
Review - Matilda Forss
Beyoncé’s new album Cowboy Carter is country music – and so much more. It’s twenty-seven songs, packed together, overlapping each other, and it is filled to the brim with references to other genres, artists and times. Without going into all of the album’s nods and interpolations – here are some of my personal favourite references!
The album cover, and screenshots of the interludes featuring Linda Martell and Willie Nelson. Photos taken from Beyoncés official lyric videos and the “Texas Hold ‘Em” music video on Youtube. Collage: Matilda Forss / PRESSET.
Context
Cowboy Carter has been heavily discussed since it was released – and it is by all means meant to create a stir and be disruptive. As a product the album is political, eccentric, and highly unconventional. It is a want to go back to one’s roots. However, what struck me most was not what Beyoncé’s mission was, but how she executed it. The research for this album is extensive and the lyricism is very skilled. Beyoncé does go back to her roots, and far beyond that, in order to paint a clearer picture of a future Black America.
I’ve always liked Beyoncé – and I remember being happily surprised with her song “Daddy Lessons” from Lemonade. That song can for sure be seen as a tease to the album we have today. Cowboy Carter is an odyssey of songs inspired by feeling unwelcome in the country music industry. The erasure of Black artists, and especially those who dabbled or pioneered in country music, are spotlighted in it. It is a mix of radio, rodeo, blues, and Black folk music influences.
It is Beyoncé’s “truest project”, and its mission is very ambitious. That is why this list of references by no means is complete! It is a selection and an effort at trying to dig into the details which outline the grandeur. The concept album is “immersive, but it’s a jerky, bucking rodeo ride”, one that intentionally throws country, blues, rap and more together. So without further ado, here are the ten references that stood out to me.
Trying to both encapsulate and enmesh, the album gets a lot done. Photos taken from Beyoncés official lyric videos and the “Texas Hold ‘Em” music video on Youtube. Collage: Matilda Forss / PRESSET.
Ten references made in “Cowboy Carter”:
The collaborations: Many of the songs are actively reinventing or playing with the legacies of other artists. Beyoncé samples and remixes Chuck Berry, Stevie Wonder, Linda Martell – all Black musical geniuses. The interlude “Oh Louisiana” “speeds up a Chuck Berry vocal to turn that rock and roll founder into helium”.
“Smoke hour ☆ Willie Nelson”: Like with Dolly Parton, in “Dolly P”, and Linda Martell, in “The Linda Martell show”, Beyoncé uses the country elder “to play the role of a DJ as short interludes”.
She also invites Miley Cyrus, in “II Most Wanted”, and Post Malone, in “Levii’s Jeans”, unto the album. They are both artists who have mixed the country genre with their own style succesfully.
The cover: With its American flag and country western symbols, the cover art tries to “expand the concepts of American patriotism and pride”. Beyoncé rides sidesaddle, while holding an American flag and wearing a sash that says “Cowboy Carter”. She stands out against a black backdrop. The white horse is especially meaningful, not only as a heroic symbol which conjures up Washington and Napoleon before our eyes, but also because of its breed. The horse is a Lipizzaner, a breed “that is usually born with a brown or black coat that grows gray and then white over time”. A telling choice of horse for this album.
The album title: “Cowboy Carter”, like the cover art, is a reference to the whitewashing of Black artists’ work within the country music industry. The Carter Family once formed the basis of the white country songbook “under the influence of Black musician Lesley Riddle”. Beyoncé highlights the ways Black artists have been neglected, harmed and exploited.
The instruments: The range of instruments used on the album also draws on a Black heritage — and includes “fiddles, Hammond B-3 organs, washboards, steel guitars, accordions, and harmonicas” — aiming to create something new with ancestral techniques. Beyoncé admitted in an Instagram caption that she was propelled by not feeling welcome, into doing “a deeper dive into the history of Country music”.
“Blackbiird”: The second song on the album is a cover of Beatle’s classic “Blackbird”. With the Beatles, like with Dolly Parton and “Jolene”, Beyoncé reshapes a classic by singers who “have been able to remain playful and light-footed as their public images have hardened into marble”. She admires these titans in the industry, but isn’t afraid to play around with their work. She also leans into the history of this very song. Many don’t know that Beatle’s “Blackbird” was written after the Little Rock Nine integration of an Arkansas high school. The event consisted of nine black student facing discrimination. Black women inspired McCartney’s songwriting. Beyoncé covers the song with four young Black rising stars within the country music industry, taking the song back to its origins, back to Black women.
“Bodyguard”: With the lyrics “Wheels in the gravel, Davis in my bones”, Beyoncé alludes to Miles Davis, the iconic trumpeter and innovator – “who arguably invented cool with his 1957 album Birth of the Cool’”. In doing so, Beyoncé claims Davis as a form of forefather for herself, both of them exploring boundaries and creating with innovating style.
“Daughter”: The mixed bag of the album is perhaps best exemplified by the fact that Beyoncé in this song switches over into Italian opera, displaying her vocal width with the aria “Caro Mio Ben”.
“Spaghettii”: The song is introduced by Linda Martell herself musing that “genres are a funny little concept, aren’t they?” The song is a pointed attempt at liberating the country genre. Its title may also be a statement on genres in general, since “Spaghetti Westerns were films that drew on genre conventions of American Westerns, but were filmed in Italy by Italians, and sometimes subverted the themes of other Western films”. Subverting genre expectations is exactly what this song is exploring.
It succeeds in doing so as it in form borrows from Brazilian funk tradition, while in content paying homage to the discrimination of African-American cowboys, with the help of Virginia country star Shaboozey.
“Ya ya”: Now this track, my personal favourite, samples both Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin” and The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations”. All the “ya-ya”s of the chorus also end with Beyoncé spelling her mother’s maiden last name B-E-Y-I-N-C-E. The origin of the name Beyoncé was namely “due to an error by hospital staff”, who spelled it wrong. Beyoncé’s mother tried to make them correct it, but was told to be “happy that you’re getting a birth certificate’ because, at one time, Black people didn’t get birth certificates”.
The chorus of the song also mixes the Harlem Shake dance move (“we shakin’”), the 1960s dance move “swim” (“we swimmin’”), the hip hop dance move the jerk (“we jerkin’”), with twerking (“we twerking”) and Christina Aguilera’s “Genie in a Bottle” (“come rub it, won’t you?”).
In verse three she even sneaks in an interpolation to “Love is Strange” by Mickey and Silvia with a quick “lover boy”. The song in all its messiness and glory is a celebration of the artists who toured the Chitlin Circuit, a string of venues dedicated to Black performers, primarily in areas of the segregated south. It is a wide tribute, shaped as an epic dance anthem.
“Ameriican requiem”: The opening line of the album “nothin’ really ends” conveys “the idea that racism never really “ended” in America”. At her 2016 CMA’s performance Beyoncé preformed “Daddy Lessons” and was met with “abrasiveness, rejection and racism in many forms” by conservative country fans. This was the experience that lead to the genesis of this album. Other lyrics in the song confirm that this is not just country for the sake of country. The “pretty house that we never settled in” is most likely a reference to a racist America, and the “Father’s sins” are then referring to the American founding fathers.
Directly connected to the opening song is the closing song “Amen”. With its lyrics “This house was built with blood and bone, and it crumbled” the outro song decides that herinafter lies a different relationship between not only country music and Black people, but America and Black people. The song includes a melody that bookends the album and which has already been heard in that first track: “Them old ideas (Yeah) are buried here (Yeah), Amen (Amen)”. Both the start and finishing songs are grasping at something larger than them alone. The album, with its far-reaching span, is entangling and disentangling the American dream, Black history, and legacies.