Music

Can Beyoncé’s Foray into Country Music Change the Genre’s Conservative Views?

Beyoncé’s much-anticipated country album, Cowboy Carter, drops on Friday, March 29. Beyoncé’s immense success in country music is a clear signal that there is a huge audience for country music around the world, but that audience won’t settle for the music’s often conservative conventions. Black music and musicians are at the heart of country music, and recognition of Black women’s music on this scale is long overdue.

Beyoncé doesn’t need country music. But, if it’s going get the global traction the CMA and other parts of the industry desire, country music needs artists like Beyoncé.

The Ms. Q&A: Singer-Songwriter Carrie Newcomer on Writing Her 20th Album, ‘A Great Wild Mercy’

Singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer has been making music that inspires, challenges, questions, and affirms for nearly 40 years now, and she just released a new album, A Great Wild Mercy, in late 2023. 

Susan M. Shaw sits down with Newcomer to discuss her songwriting process, what it’s like being a musician at 65, and just what it means to have, or show, “great wild mercy.”

From ‘Fast Cars’ to Self-Gifted ‘Flowers’: What Pop Music Reveals about the Status of Women

The narrator of “Fast Car,” who finally finds the strength at song’s end to tell her no-count trifling lover to “take your fast car and keep on driving,” is an earlier version of Sza’s narrator on the heartbreak and revenge-fantasy songs that comprise her Grammy-nominated album SOS—a worthy project that many had hoped would break the 25-year-drought of a Black woman winning the Album of the Year Grammy, since Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.

Still, we have come a long way from passively waiting for someone else’s “fast car” to move us out of poverty—and failing to doing so—while the latest songs imagine us killing our exes or shimmering like diamonds once we move on. We have arrived at that moment in which we are more than eager to celebrate the women who can drive in their own fast cars—accrued debts and generational poverty be damned.

2023’s Top Feminist Moments in Pop Culture

In a year when women seemed to dominate both culturally and economically, it was not hard to find many feminist moments in pop culture that defined 2023.

Here are our top 10 favorites—including Rihanna’s historic Super Bowl performance; breakthroughs for women in TV, film and music; iconic moments in women’s leadership, and more.

Shine Your Light: Reflections on ‘Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé’

Renaissance—Beyoncé Knowles-Carter’s fifth self-directed film—is about how to shine your light, how to give others shine, and how to sit in darkness until the light comes again.

In this season of light, we have a tremendous opportunity to observe a Black woman in her prime at 42 years old making art, working at her craft, raising her children, and surrounded by a strong network.

Strong of Song: The Women’s Music Movement Turns 50

Both a product (albums! cassettes! posters!) and a destination (rallies! concerts! festivals!), women’s music fused feminist politics, woman-staffed sound production and grassroots folk traditions to create a bold new recording and performance network. When we had no rights at all, women’s music was also the sound and site of the lesbian revolution. This year we celebrate the musicians and producers who, across five decades, gave us the soundtracks and spaces affirming our lives.

In the Summer of ‘Barbie’ and ‘Renaissance,’ Will All Women Finally Get the Recognition They Deserve?

Currently, three women—Barbie, Beyoncé, and Taylor Swift—seem to be running the world, or at least the economy judging by record-shattering tour and box office revenues. But, as in the case of Beyoncé and other female artists of color, this success does not translate to deserved recognition from prestigious institutions.  

“The message young women absorb is that unless you are a one-in-a-generation talent like Lauryn Hill or Whitney Houston, female artists of color can kiss goodbye any hope of wide-scale recognition by the Recording Academy.”

Southern Hip-Hop Feminists Got Something to Say: The Ms. Q&A on Hip-Hop’s Reverse Migration

Aisha Durham and Regina Bradley are both hip-hop feminist scholars who focus on the South. Both spoke with Ms. contributing editor Janell Hobson to discuss the upcoming 50th anniversary of hip-hop, the origins of Southern hip-hop, how women continue to shape the genre—and, of course, their favorite feminist hip-hop anthems. (This article is part of “Turning 50,” which recognizes the women who shaped hip-hop.)

“Hip-hop started in New York but it didn’t end there,” said Bradley. “You probably wouldn’t have a robust hip-hop scene today without the Southern sound.”