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Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ Is a Sprawling, Endlessly Entertaining Tour de Force: Album Review
Cultural impact aside, Beyoncé's 27-song 'Carter Country' is a hugely fun, shape-shifting set that never stops being fascinating for a second.
We’d already picked up a good idea of what country means to her culturally, in her few public statements in advance of “ Act II: Cowboy Carter,” amplified in the one trillion thinkpieces published during the last two months, many of which really did help spur a vital conversation about Black exclusion and reclamation in one of America’s most important indigenous artforms. There are some clever segues throughout the album, and one of them is when “Jolene” gives way to what might actually count as a murder ballad, albeit a realistic and not-at-all campy one, “Daughter.” The hilarious and frankly scary first verse has Beyoncé laying out an apparently lifeless body, noting that, despite the bloody scenario, “Bathroom attendant let me right in / She was a big fan.” Later in the song, she may have moved on to another killing, if this is about erasing a triangle: “How long can he hold his breath / Before his death?” Beyoncé lightens up the scenario just a little by praying to get rid of the “fantasies in my head,” but she sure is a cool cucumber when it comes to imagining taking care of business: “Double cross me, I’m just like my father / I am colder than Titanic water,” she warns. Beyoncé was so taken by the idea of adopting this song for her own purposes that she didn’t just bring Adell onto it as a second lead voice; she forsook doing her usual own backup vocal stacking in favor of forming a small choir of other featured artists, including Brittney Spencer, Reyna Roberts and Tiera Kennedy.
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