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A new moment to arise: Beyoncé’s cover of the Beatles’ Blackbird is a timely masterstroke


Penned by Paul McCartney as tribute to the civil rights movement, and featuring Black female country artists, it makes perfect sense for the superstar to feature it on Cowboy Carter

The incident attracted national attention because it was a test case of Brown v Board of Education, a supreme court ruling that said segregation in such schools was unconstitutional. Later, back home in the kitchen of his farm in Scotland, he took up an acoustic guitar and allowed the idea to develop using the chord progressions of Bach’s Bourrée in E Minor, which he and George Harrison had learned to play in childhood. Photograph: Bettmann ArchiveThe finished recording – which features McCartney, his guitar and tapping foot, along with blackbird sounds from an effects tape – took the Beatle 32 takes before he was happy with it.

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