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Our Sweetheart of the Rodeo
Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter chronicles an artist with a voice pliable enough (and a following large enough) to crash whatever scene she pleases.
Jim Crow’s talons touched every pie: Harmonica virtuoso DeFord Bailey was the first Black performer on “Grand Ole Opry,” the state’s now nearly century-old radio institution, but after over a decade on the broadcast, he was let go in 1941; founder George Hay suggested that “the crippled colored boy who was a bright feature of our show” was simply too lazy to learn new songs. Cowboy spotlights Black artists on the rise with co-writes from Indiana singer-songwriter Mamii, a duet with Louisiana X-Factor alum Willie Jones, and a cover of “Blackbird,” Paul McCartney’s Beatles classic decrying the violent resistance to racial integration in America, with Brittney Spencer, Tanner Adell, Tiera Kennedy, and Reyna Roberts. Post Malone, the only mainstay on the pop charts capable of making music with YoungBoy Never Broke Again and Joe Diffie in the same year, raises the hit potential on “Levii’s Jeans” as an undeniably talented singer-songwriter whose swing from rap to rock and folk has frustrated genre purists as much as this album’s restless shuffling through styles has.
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