Turn It Up - Country Beyoncé edition!

Charles and David tackle the two new singles

Well, then. Here are our early takes on Beyoncé’s two new country singles and what they might signify. We’ll surely be talking more about all this as the year progresses, but it’s a start. Also, please check out the list of readings at the bottom, which represent some of the older and newer writing that we think is crucial to understanding the moment. In fact, given their importance, we’ve boosted them from to merely “recommended” to flat-out “required.” (Oh, and make sure you’re supporting The Black Opry, Color Me Country, and the Linda Martell documentary. That’s required too, most of all.)

Beyoncé – “Texas Hold ‘Em” (single, 2024)

With “Daddy Lessons” in 2016, Beyoncé kicked off the musical plank of the now long-building Yee Haw Agenda. Her new “Texas Hold ‘Em” is a fantastic sequel and potentially consequential one too. Pushing a decade after “Daddy,” though, it also finds Beyoncé in the unusual position of playing catch up. To the phenomenon that was Lil Nas X and “Old Town Road,” most obviously, but also as to the best of Blanco Brown, Reyna Roberts and Tanner Adell, among several other Black country crowd movers, who’ve been steadily predicting a line-danceable workout like Beyonce’s latest for years. Not for the first time, I find Bey’s imperial class positioning here slightly off putting. Leaning into lives lived unabashedly in low places, for example, Roberts hits the Bass Pro Shop on her way to a barnyard “Country Club,” and “Beyoncé with a lasso” Tanner gasses up at the mini-mart and gets spoiled at The Cheesecake Factory. By contrast, Queen Bey pulls up in her Lexus with slumming memories, albeit fond ones, of “that dive bar we always thought was nice.” Beyoncé now has the power and privilege to do what she wants where she wants to do it (she’ll be damned if she can’t slow dance with you), though it’s too early to see if that includes even topping the country charts. But if this “real-life boogie and… hoedown,” led by Rhiannon Giddens on banjo, can open doors and stretch horizons for other Black country acts, and maybe even launch a new country dance craze (check out the irresistible instrumental version), then hold on tight. This is gonna be a party. –DC

Beyoncé - “16 Carriages” (single, 2024)

I hear multiple histories in the brooding, swelling “16 Carriages.” I hear Beyoncé offering her take on the musician-as-rambler story that’s structured country from Jimmie Rodgers to Waylon & Willie and beyond, and which is usually reserved for (white) men. In the dusty imagery and the lonesome steel guitar provided by Robert Randolph and Justin Schipper, I hear her working with the Black cowboy traditions explored so brilliantly by Dom Flemons, reimagined by Lil Nas X, and still animating the celebratory Yee Haw Agenda. I hear the blues, from the 16 coaches of that lonesome mystery train to the rumbling ruminations of her Houston predecessor Lightnin’ Hopkins. I hear two centuries of work songs, most clearly in the beat’s insistent stomp but also in the song’s main character seeing her “Daddy grind” and having her own feelings of being “underpaid and overwhelmed.” I hear the sonic and thematic echoes of Lemonade and other, earlier work by the artist that presaged this country turn. In the declaration that “I might cook, clеan, but still won't fold/Still working all my life, you know,” I hear the kind of hard-earned wisdom that marks so much of the best country music of any kind, especially that made by the women who have always been at its creative center. Most of all, I hear what I hope is a larger engagement with this remarkable moment in music made by Black country artists, like the ones mentioned by David above, whether they’re working in “mainstream,” “Americana” or whatever. In all respects, I like what I hear. - CH

Required reading:

-Tyina L. Steptoe’s book Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City and article “Beyoncé’s Western South Serenade”

-Francesca Royster’s book Black Country Music: Listening for Revolutions

-Pamela E. Foster’s book My Country, Too: The Other Black Music

-Diane Pecknold’s edited collection Hidden in the Mix: The African American Presence in Country Music

-Dom Flemons’ book and album Black Cowboys

-Charles L. Hughes’ book Country Soul: Making Music in the American South and Oxford American article on Millie Jackson

-Chris Molanphy’s book Old Town Road

-Rissi Palmer on Black country traditions, for Oxford American

-Holly G on The Black Opry and belonging” and interview with Rissi Palmer and Miko Marks, both for No Depression

-Jewly Hight on Beyonce and the Chicks in 2016, for NPR

-David Cantwell on what country music owes to Charley Pride, for New Yorker

-Jada Watson on race-based and gender-based “redlining” on country radio, for SongData

-Justin Hiltner on Beyoncé and Rhiannon Giddens, for The Bluegrass Situation

-Taylor Crumpton on how and why Beyoncé has always been country for Time

-Chris Willman on Beyoncé and country radio, for Variety

-Andrea Williams in 2020 on why country music hasn’t had a Black woman star for Nashville Scene, and this week on Beyoncé’s use of Black musicians and writers on the singles, for The Tennessean

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