Beyoncé's country kingdom

Beyoncé in the Cowboy Carter video

Beyoncé began a track on her new album, Cowboy Carter, with a self-narrative by Linda Martell, as shown above.

In 1970, Linda Martell became the first Black female artist to experience some success in country music, a genre traditionally associated with white audiences.

Soon after, a conflict with her record label led her to leave the music industry, taking on various jobs to make ends meet, from driving a bus to singing at weddings. After her appearance on Beyoncé's album, Martell's music streaming numbers reportedly increased by 127,430%!

More than 50 years after Linda Martell, Beyoncé became the first Black woman to reach number 1 on Billboard's country music chart.

Renaissance Concert Film: A Film by Beyoncé

Cowboy Carter was released shortly after One Thing At A Time, Morgan Wallen's country album, had its 19th week at number one on the Billboard 200, becoming the highest-charting album since Adele's 21 in 2011-2012.

One Thing At A Time is an album that couldn't be more country-themed. Its creator is a white man from Tennessee. His songs tell stories of working-class people with red necks from working in the fields and born with a bottle of beer in their hands.

When compared to One Thing At A Time, Cowboy Carter is something that doesn't fit any definition of country music.

Before Cowboy Carter, eight years earlier on her album Lemonade, Beyoncé had a country-inspired song called Daddy Lessons.

Beyoncé's Daddy Lessons

Beyoncé recounts the story of a father's admonitions to his daughter in a musical setting reminiscent of a small roadside tavern on a night out in America.

Her voice was like wine overflowing in a glass, like flames dancing in a fireplace.

Cowboy Carter is truly a galloping journey through the heritage of country music. On the album cover, Beyoncé holds an American flag upside down on the back of a white horse, and the music she sings isn't the typical "pleasant" country music of Morgan Wallen.

Beyoncé

Beyoncé's show not only featured legends like Willie Nelson – a voice sculpted from the American countryside – but also Dolly Parton – one of the biggest names country music has ever produced.

The party expanded to include young people, from Miley Cyrus – the girl from Tennessee – to lesser-known artists. And perhaps only Beyoncé has the ability to invite giants like Stevie Wonder or Paul McCartney to play music for her.

It's impossible to describe the sublime moments Beyoncé had in Cowboy Carter, an album whose classic status Stevie Wonder also foresaw.

That was the moment when Beyoncé sang an 18th-century opera falsetto about loneliness in the track "Daughter," which explores feelings of hatred and remorse.

It was the moment when she brought her honey-like voice to a lively track about the American West nightlife in Texas Hold'Em.

It was the moment she transformed Jolene, Dolly Parton's classic song, from a wife's plea to her husband's mistress into a haughty, threatening, and intimidating warning.

As a Texan, Western and country music were always in Beyoncé's nature. But it wasn't until she was at the height of her career that she released an album centered around these genres.

She had to fight to achieve that, battling the prejudice that she was "not country enough," as she confessed in American Requiem.

Now no one can stop Beyoncé anymore. She remixed The Beatles' Blackbird, a song McCartney wrote inspired by the Black liberation movement, with the lines: "The black bird sings in the fading night, learning to fly with broken wings, all its life it has waited for this moment to soar high."

Beyoncé has probably been waiting for this moment her whole life.

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/vuong-quoc-dong-que-cua-beyonce-20240407101935974.htm