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Beyoncé’s New Country Songs Are Plain Ol’ Fun
And bound to upset the worst kind of people.
Understanding Renaissance to be a pandemic-era endeavor, it’s a trip to scan the lyrics to “16 Carriages” and find a timestamp: “It’s been 38 summers, and I’m not in my bed / On the back of the bus and a bunk with the band / Going so hard now I miss my kids / Overworked and overwhelmed.” Bey turned 38 in late 2019, giving the song’s wistful reflections on past traumas (“I saw Mama crying / I saw Daddy lying”) and present-day stresses an air of classic 2020 overthinking. The bustling horns, banjos, whoops, and whistles suggest familiarity with the scrappy sort of heartland rock of Zach Bryan’s “Overtime,” the cloying earnestness of equally beloved and reviled acts like the Lumineers, and the bluegrass retrenchments artists like Brad Paisley and Dierks Bentley embark on to get back in touch with their roots. The opportunity for new listeners to be enriched by folk, country, and bluegrass — and for talented Black artists like Rhiannon Giddens, Robert Randolph, and Raphael Saadiq to shepherd a powerhouse vocalist through joyful applications of rap and R&B cadences to the oldest American music forms — is more valuable than whatever gasket a conservative Establishment claiming Morgan “Apology Tour” Wallen as king may blow.
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