“Goodbye to what has been … I am the one to cleanse me of my father’s sins.”
—Beyoncé, “American Requiem,” Cowboy Carter (2024)
With all the upheaval, just two weeks in, that has accompanied the second term of the current presidential administration, the 67th annual Grammy Awards show came and went Sunday night like a welcome distraction. Even calling the event a “distraction” misses the serious work of art and its purpose in troubled times: to mobilize the masses, reaffirm our values and spread joy and light amid the darkness.
I had watched the Grammy Awards show with this joy, along with a certain calm—emotions that I had not felt of late when faced with recent headlines. The telecast maintained a striking balance between the dynamic performances and heartfelt acceptance speeches of an awards show and the earnest fundraising efforts of a telethon relying on audience members (both live and televised) to donate money for those affected by the Los Angeles wildfires. As far as awards events go, the telecast never dragged and, with the adept hosting of Trevor Noah, moved quite smoothly between light comedy, somber tributes and exciting appearances of our favorite music artists.
As I had already noted about last year’s show, women dominated the major award categories, and this year was no different. Apart from Kendrick Lamar’s massive hit “Not Like Us,” a diss record that garnered both Record and Song of the Year awards, women like Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter and Doechii lived up to their hype with their Grammy Award show premieres and first-time wins in the respective categories for Best New Artist, Best Pop Album and Best Rap Album.
Others took their winning moments to highlight the political urgency of our times: from Latin global star Shakira proclaiming solidarity with her “immigrant brothers and sisters,” to Lady Gaga affirming that “transgender lives” will not be erased, to Alicia Keys reminding the music community (and America at large) that “DEI is not a threat, it’s a gift.” These eloquent messages served as a balm against the negative forces seeking to bring back racial segregation, roll back women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights and reverse the demographic trends of our multiracial nation through plans for mass deportations and restrictions on birthright citizenship.
The big night, however, went to pop star Beyoncé, who not only made history as the first Black woman to win Best Country Album, but finally earned Album of the Year for her politically salient album Cowboy Carter, after previously losing in the category. These wins bring her Grammy awards count to 35—the most of any music artist recognized by the Recording Academy. Moreover, Beyoncé became the first Black woman in this century and only the fourth to win this top award: previously won by Natalie Cole (1992), Whitney Houston (1994) and Lauryn Hill (1999).
Beyoncé’s previous efforts were more than worthy of an album of the year Grammy: most notably her Peabody-Award-winning magnum opus Lemonade (2016) and the infectious 2022 dance album Renaissance (called Act I of a three-act project). However, Cowboy Carter earnestly speaks to our own times.
Interestingly, the pop star revealed that this album was conceived as Act I, but she rightly reversed the releases and put out Renaissance first, because she believed we needed to dance in a post-pandemic world. Cowboy Carter was a direct response to her feeling “unwelcome” when she had performed at the Country Music Awards show in 2016 with The Chicks, just one week before Election Day ushered in the first term of the current president. Beyoncé faced the kind of racist and misogynoir backlash that would come to define this moment. That she offered Cowboy Carter as resistance to this backlash, as well as a follow-up to the political offering of Lemonade, provides us with crucial lessons on how to move with purpose in this moment.
During both acceptance speeches, Beyoncé highlighted those who opened doors for her, like Black country legend Linda Martell; and the doors she has opened for others, like country artist Shaboozey, who had a phenomenal year with his hit song “Tipsy (A Bar Song)”; and the four country vocalists Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer, Tiera Kennedy and Reyna Roberts, who accompanied her on the Paul McCartney cover “Blackbird.” But mostly, she demonstrated through her album the politics of reclamation as Black feminist expression: the country music genre in and of itself, the history behind the country music and her own Southern, Gulf Coast roots.
The 27-track album could be divided into three parts (nine tracks each) tracing her journey: first as music star and mother; then as a mentor (the second part is filled with collaborations with artists as diverse as country artist Willie Jones, Shaboozey and pop artists with country roots like Miley Cyrus and Post Malone); and finally as a divine remixer blending the genres of rock, blues, dance, trap and gospel in the third part.
The album cohesively narrates the story of “America” and the ways that her people—Black people, Black Southern people—have shaped and redefined the elements that have come to signify “country”: the banjo (as heard on “Texas Hold ’Em,” played by Black country legend Rhiannon Giddens), the horse (with the image of the Lipizzan stallion on the cover art and all her artistic collages signifying its blackness at birth before its transformation into performative whiteness), the buckin’, the Levi’s jeans (and its historic melding of the indigo blue and cotton defining the labor of our enslaved ancestors), the sweet honey, the harmonica (played by Stevie Wonder on her rendition of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene”) and the “Chitlin’ Rodeo Circuit” heralding a long tradition of Black cowboys, rodeo queens and Juneteenth carriages.
This rich tradition unfolded during the “Beyoncé Bowl“—which premiered last Christmas on Netflix, a superb 13-minute performance that perhaps ushered the album toward its Grammy win just two months later. She is an intentional visual artist and curator, whose remixing talents echo in her sound assemblage artistry reflected in the excellence of her different album projects. For this NFL halftime show, Beyoncé crafted an immaculate display of Black excellence wrapped up in an all-white aesthetic, which recalls African retentions of the color white signifying ancestors, as well as the more modern callback to “white parties” among the Black middle class. Her incorporation of Houston-based culture—from Cadillac cars to HBCU marching bands and ho-down dances—reclaimed all the affectations of “country music” and made it Black again, like the Lipizzan horse being re-birthed, now broadcast to a global audience.
As the BeyHive fans prepare for the Cowboy Carter tour this year, we should all at least appreciate the artistry of an album that never claimed to be “a country album.” It was always “a Beyoncé Album” that dares to reclaim a genre and bust it wide open.
All arguments of “authenticity” or “popularity” with regard to this project are clearly missing the point. Cowboy Carter, which opened with a “requiem” for America and closed on a prayer that “we’ll be the ones to purify our fathers’ sins,” calls on all of us to witness this nation’s history and its present, to reckon with its “sins” of exclusion and discrimination and demand that we purify it toward the democratic promise it has always held out for all of us and not just a select few determined to set us back on a backward course.
