“COWBOY CARTER” – Béyonce

Album: COWBOY CARTER

Artist: Béyonce

Year: 2024

Genre: Country Pop, Pop

Grade: B+

“16 Carriages,” the third track on Béyonce’s sprawling 2024 album Cowboy Carter, wholly fulfills the singer’s country music promise: a sweeping, pedal steel-soaked, mini-epic that paints a panoramic canvass; with coming-of-age lyrics that place the singer and the listener on the forefront of the great American frontier; with a twangy backing track giving way to hi-fi pop grandeur; as Béyonce’s rhythmic verses float like storm clouds over the dusty vistas below. It’s an impressive song, no doubt one of the best she’s ever released.

But while every song on Cowboy Carter can more or less be categorized as country, “16 Carriages” is the only one that fully embodies the genre’s pioneer spirit. Then again, genres are a funny little concept that can confine an artist, as guest speaker Linda Martell reminds us on hip-hop banger “Spaghetii” (one of the album’s lesser tracks). Béyonce still identifies as a pop superstar more than anything else, so think of the country influences throughout Cowboy Carter as histrionic rather than a history lesson. She incorporates the familiar sounds of the south into her own readymade style.

Those expecting an earth-shattering political statement are setting themselves up for disappointment. Likewise, if you’re expecting Cowboy Carter to come even remotely close to Renaissance, the glorious dance-pop 2022 album that remains the best work of Béyonce’s career, you too will be let down. And certainly don’t expect Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music Volume 3 or anything like that.

But if all you want is well-crafted pop with occasional banjos and steel-string acoustic; if all you want is enjoyable but non-essential lyrical references to Levi’s and Texas and horses; if all you want is memorable yet sporadic appearances by Miley Cyrus and Post Malone (the features by country artists like Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton are relegated to spoken word); if all you want are covers of The Beatles, Chuck Berry and The Beach Boys — then, yes, you’ll enjoy Cowboy Carter for the fun songwriting experiment that it is.

The album is very long; daunting, even. At 27 songs and 79 minutes, it’s easy to say Cowboy Carter is overstuffed, but it’s also easy to say the sprawling nature is exactly the point. No song comes close to the majesty of “16 Carriages,” yet all the songs taken as a whole is a tapestry worth getting lost in. It’s a worthwhile listen, even if some parts of the album are less engaging than others. I give it an A for ambition but a B for bloat, which rounds out to a fine but somewhat flawed B+.

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