Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter reviews are in! Critics praise Queen Bey’s first foray into country music with some even claiming it will ‘revive’ the genre
The first wave of reviews for Beyonce’s first country album – Cowboy Carter – are in and they’re showering Queen Bey with praise.
Cowboy Carter is the 42-year-old Houston native’s first foray into the genre, which has already raised eyebrows with covers of Dolly Parton’s Jolene and The Beatles’ Blackbird.
The album dropped Thursday at 12pm ET/9pm PT, with one review even claiming that the singer could completely “revive” the country music genre.
That review is coming out Page six critic Nicholas Hautman, whose opening line of the review reads: “Country music is a livelihood.”
He adds that Cowboy Carter is “the revival country music so desperately needed,” calling the 27-song album “instantly timeless.”
The first wave of reviews for Beyonce’s first country album – Cowboy Carter – is in and they’re showering Queen Bey with praise
Cowboy Carter is the 42-year-old Houston native’s first foray into the genre, which has already raised eyebrows with covers of Dolly Parton’s Jolene and The Beatles’ Blackbird.
The album dropped Thursday at 12pm ET/9pm PT, with one review even claiming that the singer could completely “revive” the country music genre.
The review adds that Cowboy Carter is a “soulful celebration of Southern values and the genre’s African American roots,” adding that the singer has stated that she recorded the album after feeling “unwelcome” during a presentation at the 2016 CMA Awards.
One of the most anticipated songs is Bey’s cover of Dolly Parton’s 1973 classic Jolene, on which Parton himself croons the now infamous “Becky with the good hair” before the song.
He adds that Bey “pours gasoline on the already fiery lyrics, with menacing changes including: ‘I can easily understand why you’re attracted to my man / But you don’t want this smoke, so shoot someone else.’ ‘
The review also highlights her cover of Blackbird, The Beatles’ 1968 classic that Paul McCartney wrote about racial tensions in the American South.
“Her tear-jerking performance is a career highlight, an impressive achievement for a superstar whose back catalog is packed with unforgettable moments,” he added.
The timesWill Hodgkinson admitted that the album is “too long” but has “a refreshing sense of fun and adventure.”
When news broke that Beyoncé was releasing a country album, there was a lot of discussion about the genre’s African-American roots and her adoption of patriotic American imagery on the cover. And she seems to have guessed that when she came up with the songs,” he added.
“There’s a lot of talk while I’m singing my song,” she sings on American Requiem, an epic that’s somewhere between country dirge, psychedelic ballad and modern pop. “Can we stand for something?” she asks,” he says.
The review adds that Cowboy Carter is a “soulful celebration of Southern values and the genre’s African American roots,” adding that the singer has stated that she recorded the album after feeling “unwelcome” during a presentation at the 2016 CMA Awards.
One of the most anticipated songs is Bey’s cover of Dolly Parton’s 1973 classic Jolene, in which Parton himself croons the now infamous “Becky with the good hair” before the song.
Hodgkinson admits that the album is “stylistically all over the place,” but adds that it also “expands Beyonce’s reach.”
The guardAlexis Petridis also praised American Requiem, adding that it is more of a “state-of-the-nation address.”
He also spoke about Jolene – saying Parton herself has long lobbied Bey to record her own version – commenting on the new lyrics.
He states that Jolene boasts, “a new middle eight and coda alongside new lyrics that replace the desperate pleas of the original with stirring menace and threats.”
Petridis admits that songs like Daughter (“a murder ballad-like storytelling”) and 16 Carriages (“recasting her early years in Destiny’s Child in Nashville-friendly terms”) can be “a bit thick on the tongue,” though he admits that they ‘They’re both ‘great songs.’
Since the second half of the album, ‘Goes Nuts’, he’s wondered if Bey might have been better off splitting this into two albums, but ‘Cowboy Carter still impressively proves that Beyoncé is capable of doing what she want to.’
The Sydney Morning HeraldRobert Moran adds that Cowboy Carter is “a lot like 2022’s Renaissance, Beyonce’s reclamation of dance music’s black roots,” adding that Cowboy Carter is the second album in her Renaissance trilogy.
He also praises Daughter as “an evocative murder ballad that straddles flamenco and fado,” and Spaghetti, “a drill-meets-Sergio Leone cut in which Beyonce furiously sings, ‘I’m not in a gang, but I got shooters and I pop. pop!”‘
Alexis Petridis of The Guardian also praised American Requiem, adding that it is more of a ‘state-of-the-nation address’;
Moran adds that he “can’t wait to hear how country radio or the Grammys handle Sweet Honey Buckin, an epic song that begins with Beyoncé reverently covering Patsy Cline’s I Fall To Pieces and ends with her singing “Buck it, like a Mechanical Bull!” to a pounding Jersey Club beat.”
The BBC’s Mark Savage also echoed Beyoncé’s statement: ‘This is not a country album. It’s an album from Beyoncé, as she shows how she turns the genre on its head.
“With more than 27 interlocking songs and interludes, Cowboy Carter lassoes the country’s sonic signifiers, twisting them into something unique: Appalachian fiddles are spliced with pop melodies, and lap steel guitars punctuate rap verses with crushing sub-bass,” says Savage. .
He adds, “That the genres overlap so seamlessly is a testament to Beyoncé’s technical mastery, but also to her central thesis: that Nashville’s marginalization of outsiders, and black women in particular, weakens the music in the long run. ‘