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Is Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter really a country album? No - it’s bigger · The Front

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: From the Australian. This is the weekend edition of The Front.
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  Speaker 1: I'm Claire Harvey. Today we're looking at this year's Grammy
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  Speaker 1: winning Album of the Year, Cowboy Carter by Beyonce. It's
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  Speaker 1: an album that has fueled conversations about race, genre and femininity.
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  Speaker 1: Joining me to dig through this album is Jasper Leak,
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  Speaker 1: who joined The Australian's audio team in twenty twenty two.
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  Speaker 1: Jasper sits a couple of desks away from me in
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  Speaker 1: our office, but as far as I know, he's the
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  Speaker 1: only person in our building to have worked on a
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  Speaker 1: Grammy nominated album. Jasper co wrote Australian singer Sears song
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  Speaker 1: Broken Glass, which appeared on This is acting nominated for
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  Speaker 1: Best Pop Vocal Album in twenty seventeen. But despite the
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  Speaker 1: bona fides, dissecting a Beyonce album has Jasper a bit rattled.
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  Speaker 2: I feel like I've been cramming for a bloody exam.
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  Speaker 3: Ladies and gentlemen, this particular tune stretches across a range
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  Speaker 3: of genres and that's what makes it a unique listening experience.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, that's the voice of Linda Martel, the first
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  Speaker 1: commercially successful black woman in country music, introducing the song
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  Speaker 1: yah Ya on Beyonce's genre bending album Cowboy Carter.
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  Speaker 4: Hello Girls, Hell, Hello Fellows.
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  Speaker 1: Artists from Duke Ellington to Billie Eilish have shunned the
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  Speaker 1: idea of dividing music into genres. One of the big
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  Speaker 1: movies of the moment, A Complete Unknown, starring Timothy Schallamay
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  Speaker 1: as the Young Bob Dylan, is about Dylan pushing back
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  Speaker 1: at the people who wanted his music to be folk forever.
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  Speaker 4: I hear Bob is playing electric.
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  Speaker 1: That on our stage, he isn't.
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  Speaker 4: But what is folk? For that matter? What makes something jazz? Punk?
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  Speaker 4: Post punk?
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  Speaker 1: Those labels help us place music in history, working out
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  Speaker 1: how they fit in with values, politics. The big trends
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  Speaker 1: in society. Think the jazz of the Roaring twenties, which
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  Speaker 1: reflected the era's freedom and excitement. Hair metal was emblematic
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  Speaker 1: of the hedonism of the eighties, and hip hop, which
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  Speaker 1: gave a voice to marginalized voices, held a mirror up
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  Speaker 1: to America's urban experience starting in the seventies and eighties.
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  Speaker 1: But genres don't stay the same for long. Eventually, someone
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  Speaker 1: comes along with something so unique that the culture shifts
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  Speaker 1: and sounds change, which I guess takes us to Beyonce.
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  Speaker 5: As selected by the thirteen thousand voting members of the
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  Speaker 5: Recording Academy, the Grammy goes to.
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  Speaker 4: Cowboy Carter Beyonce Beyonce.
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  Speaker 1: At the twenty twenty five Grammys, one of the most
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  Speaker 1: remarkable moments was what looked like genuine surprise on the
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  Speaker 1: face of one of the world superstars, Beyonce, when her
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  Speaker 1: album Cowboy Carter was announced as Album of the Year overall.
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  Speaker 1: What did you think of it as an Album of
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  Speaker 1: the Year choice?
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  Speaker 6: I thought it was an interesting choice. I can also
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  Speaker 6: understand Beyonce herself being really surprised to win it for
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  Speaker 6: this particular album. In the past, Beyonce has fronted up
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  Speaker 6: to the Grammys fully expecting to win Album of the Year,
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  Speaker 6: specifically for Lemonade and Renaissance.
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  Speaker 2: This is a very very.
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  Speaker 6: Different album compared to those two albums. So even if
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  Speaker 6: this award came as a surprise to Beyonce, there was
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  Speaker 6: a general sense that she was overdue to win this
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  Speaker 6: Album of the Year category, which we've seen in the
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  Speaker 6: past with artists like Phil Collins, who had been nominated
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  Speaker 6: twelve times and never won anything, and then finally won
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  Speaker 6: a Grammy for his song Another Day in Paradise, which
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  Speaker 6: is kind of a crap song, especially when you compare
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  Speaker 6: it to other songs and his catalog like Against All
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  Speaker 6: Odds and In the Air Tonight, which have connected with
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  Speaker 6: huge audiences across generations.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's start from the very basics of these.
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  Speaker 4: Is it a country album? O?
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  Speaker 6: There we go, It's not a country album. I don't
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  Speaker 6: think Beyonce set out to simply make a country album.
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  Speaker 6: I think her ambitions for this album go way beyond
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  Speaker 6: making a country album. Based on the first two singles
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  Speaker 6: which came out, which were sixteen Carriages and Texas Holdham,
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  Speaker 6: there was an expectation that we were in for a
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  Speaker 6: country album. But this is as much a country album
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  Speaker 6: as it is a rock album, a folk album, a
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  Speaker 6: soul album, a hip hop album. I mean, I think
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  Speaker 6: the whole point of this album for Beyonce was to
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  Speaker 6: sort of take aim at our ideas around genre generally,
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  Speaker 6: and also to take aim at the ideology of country music.
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  Speaker 4: What is a country song? What makes something country?
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  Speaker 6: When I think of country, I think of the three
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  Speaker 6: chords and the truth principle. Three chords and the truth
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  Speaker 6: suggests that these songs are built on simple harmonies. And
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  Speaker 6: the truth part is the lyric, which is usually devoid
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  Speaker 6: of any sort of ambiguity and is very direct in
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  Speaker 6: terms of what the sentiment of the song actually is.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, And as a listener to Cowboy Carter, what really
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  Speaker 1: struck me, especially as I listened you know the fourth
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  Speaker 1: and fifth times after you and I had some initial conversations,
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  Speaker 1: is that every song is like a symphony. At one
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  Speaker 1: point it feels like she's singing an operatic aria. Every
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  Speaker 1: song has what sounds to me like multiple instruments, huge
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  Speaker 1: numbers of voices or replications of Beyonce's own voice. None
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  Speaker 1: of this is particularly simple.
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  Speaker 6: That's because the songs need that sort of elaborate level
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  Speaker 6: of production to bring them to life. I think if
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  Speaker 6: you stripped away all those layers from the production, I
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  Speaker 6: don't think you'd actually have something that you could really
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  Speaker 6: hang your hat on as a listener and appreciate the
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  Speaker 6: song purely from a songwriting point of view. There's no
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  Speaker 6: songs that are just sort of playing rent free.
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  Speaker 5: In my head.
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  Speaker 6: I don't keep coming back to any hooks or melodies
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  Speaker 6: or even feelings from any particular songs that I think,
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  Speaker 6: as a country listener you would come to expect from
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  Speaker 6: something that's marketed as a country album. But Beyonce herself said,
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  Speaker 6: this isn't a country album. This is a Beyonce album,
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  Speaker 6: And I think to apply these genre titles to her
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  Speaker 6: album is to simplify it in a way that is
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  Speaker 6: out of step with Cowboy Kada.
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  Speaker 1: I was really intrigued by Joline in particular. So this
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  Speaker 1: is a song, originally, of course, written by Dolly Parton
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  Speaker 1: as a plea to a beautiful woman with auburn hair
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  Speaker 1: not to take her man. In Beyonce's retelling of this
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  Speaker 1: story with her own lyrics, it's about basically threatening to
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  Speaker 1: rip this woman's hair off if she comes anywhere near
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  Speaker 1: Beyonce's man, you know who famously is Jay Z. You know,
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  Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton might have called him a hard dog to
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  Speaker 1: keep on the porch. You know. It's something about feminism
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  Speaker 1: and this modern take on that part of country, this plaintive,
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  Speaker 1: kind of self pitying sense that you sometimes get from
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  Speaker 1: country songs. Beyonce is all about kind of kicking people's
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  Speaker 1: heads in Isn't She Yeah?
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  Speaker 6: The bit that really jumped out at me, and that
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  Speaker 6: maybe speaks to her brand of feminism is the lines
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  Speaker 6: we've been deep in love for twenty years. I raised
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  Speaker 6: that man, I raised his kids. I know my man
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  Speaker 6: better than he knows himself.
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  Speaker 1: When I heard that for the first time, I was
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  Speaker 1: trying to think how my husband would feel if I
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  Speaker 1: described our marriage like that, without wanting to criticize Beyonce,
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  Speaker 1: because obviously she's a bit of a goddess, you know,
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  Speaker 1: like it's a very self centered idea of what a
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  Speaker 1: marriage is. I can't imagine too many husbands or partners
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  Speaker 1: hearing that and thinking, oh, yeah, she did raise me,
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  Speaker 1: you know, I imagine having that level of hoodspa to
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  Speaker 1: go out into the world.
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  Speaker 4: I guess you need that to be Beyonce, right, Yeah,
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  Speaker 4: I guess so.
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  Speaker 6: I guess so.
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  Speaker 1: Coming up the catalyst for Beyonce's venture into country music,
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  Speaker 1: let me cast your mind back to the twenty sixteen
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  Speaker 1: Country Music Awards when Beyonce stepped on stage with the
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  Speaker 1: Dixie Chicks now known as The Chicks. After a funky
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  Speaker 1: New ORNs inspired intro, Beyonce at Chicks performed Daddy Lessons.
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  Speaker 1: That was a single from Beyonce's Lemonade album we The
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  Speaker 1: bit of the chicks two thousand and two hit Long
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  Speaker 1: Time Gone woven into the arrangement. The crowd rose to
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  Speaker 1: its feet and clapped through the almost six minute performance,
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  Speaker 1: but the end of the song marked the beginning of
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  Speaker 1: a heated debate between Beyonce's fan base, also known as
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  Speaker 1: the Beehive, and country's traditional fans.
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  Speaker 4: I hate it, I mean I love Beyonce. I thought
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  Speaker 4: it was just ridiculous.
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  Speaker 1: Who remembers when Alan Jackson walked out on Beyonce's performance,
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  Speaker 1: Alan said he hoped they would play some real country music,
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  Speaker 1: you know, since it was the Country Music Awards.
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  Speaker 5: Beyond Daddy's Lessons Country Music Awards. Yeah, she can be
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  Speaker 5: there as well as the BT Awards, Explosive Grammys, as
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  Speaker 5: well as everything else.
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  Speaker 1: The lafties in the entertainment industry just won't leave any
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  Speaker 1: area alone, right.
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  Speaker 2: They've got to make their mark, just like a dog
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  Speaker 2: in a dog walk park.
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  Speaker 6: At the time, Beyonce had become more and more outspoken
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  Speaker 6: around issues like police reform. She had thrown her support
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  Speaker 6: behind the Black Lives Matter movement, and she was up
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  Speaker 6: there performing with the Dixie Chicks, who had criticized George
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  Speaker 6: Bush's decision to invade Iraq in the early two thousands,
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  Speaker 6: and as we know, country fans are known for being
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  Speaker 6: socially conservative, often white men aged twenty to forty, and
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  Speaker 6: they couldn't get to their laptops fast enough to complain
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  Speaker 6: about the fact that this wasn't country Daddy lessons that
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  Speaker 6: is a country song.
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  Speaker 2: You know.
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  Speaker 6: That's when you kind of have to appreciate the role
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  Speaker 6: that race and politics play in American culture and specifically
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  Speaker 6: the country music scene.
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  Speaker 1: Beyonce announced Cowboy Carter on Instagram, saying the album was
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  Speaker 1: born out of an experience she had years ago where
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  Speaker 1: she did not feel welcomed. It was widely interpreted she
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  Speaker 1: was referring to that experience in twenty sixteen, dipping her
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  Speaker 1: toe into the country well for the first time at
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  Speaker 1: the CNAs. The experience set Beyonce on a mission digging
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  Speaker 1: into the black roots of country music, which would become
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  Speaker 1: part of the album's DNA. On Cowboy Carter, interludes come
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  Speaker 1: in the form of a mock radio show hosted by
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  Speaker 1: Willie Nelson, who highlights the contributions of black artists like
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  Speaker 1: Chuck Berry, Sister, Rosetta Sharp, and Roy Hamilton. To country's roots.
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  Speaker 6: The Willie Nelson moments on this album, and the Linda
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  Speaker 6: Martel features and even the choice of collaborators that she's
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  Speaker 6: brought in are all tools that she's really used to
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  Speaker 6: strengthen her overall argument, which is, if you're a talented
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  Speaker 6: musician living in America, you should make whatever music you want,
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  Speaker 6: regardless of skin tone. None of these labels that we
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  Speaker 6: assign to what is ultimately sound should matter.
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  Speaker 4: This was something that surprised me a little on Cowboy Carter,
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  Speaker 4: that Birdsing and then the Dead.
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  Speaker 1: Suddenly Beyonce is doing a cover of Paul McCartney's nineteen
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  Speaker 1: sixty eight songs Blackbird, a cover of a nearly sixty
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  Speaker 1: year old Beatles song in this album made my head
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  Speaker 1: snap a little.
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  Speaker 4: What did you think was going on here?
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  Speaker 6: In a way, the way I feel about Beyonce's cover
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  Speaker 6: of Blackbird is sort of the way I feel about
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  Speaker 6: Cowboy Carter as an album. It's probably not an album
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  Speaker 6: i'll revisit after we released this podcast. But what I
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  Speaker 6: did appreciate was the questions that this album asked me
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  Speaker 6: as a listener, And in Blackbird's case, I wondered why
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  Speaker 6: she would cover that song. Beyonce is somebody who is
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  Speaker 6: completely aware of her staff power. I think she is
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  Speaker 6: aware of the effects that for other artists, being included
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  Speaker 6: on a Beyonce album is likely to have on their career.
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  Speaker 6: I know that Shaboozis come out and applauded Beyonce for
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  Speaker 6: this album because he feels like it's going to busted
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  Speaker 6: the door open for other black artists who are in
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  Speaker 6: that country space. And I didn't know this, but the
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  Speaker 6: four singers who sing backing vocals on Blackbird with Beyonce
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  Speaker 6: are all black female country artists. And so I think
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  Speaker 6: Beyonce used Blackbird Paul McCartney civil rights song to amplify
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  Speaker 6: four black women's voices in the country scene.
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  Speaker 1: Jes Belik edited this episode of The Front and composed
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: our original music.
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  Speaker 4: Thanks for joining us on the Front this week.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Our team includes Kristin amyt Lead Sammerglue, Tiffany Dimack, Joshua Burton,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Stephanie Coombs, and mate Claire Harvey.