Beyoncé's country album: The verdict
By Mark Savage
When Beyoncé turned up to the Grammys in a cowboy hat, we should have known that something was afoot.
A week later, she officially announced her country era – dropping two surprise singles in the middle of the Super Bowl.
One of them, the banjo-riffic Texas Hold ‘Em, became the star’s biggest hit in years. In the UK, it was number one for four weeks – her longest-ever spell at the top.
Nashville reacted with a shrug. Country radio only gave the song modest airplay, even as millions of streams propelled it to the top of Billboard’s country chart.
This was pretty much what Beyoncé expected.
As a Texan, country music is her birth right but, in an Instagram post last week, she wrote that her new album, Cowboy Carter, was “born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed”.
This was likely a reference to her appearance at the 2016 Country Music Awards, where she performed her song Daddy Lessons with The Chicks (then known as the Dixie Chicks).
Both performers were deemed unwelcome – The Chicks had faced a backlash in the US after criticising former President George W Bush during the Iraq War; while BeyoncĂ©’s vocal support of Black Lives Matter had upset many on the American right.
