The "Cowboy Carter" Album Turns Rejection into Historical Recovery
How Beyoncé's latest creative work teaches a lesson about studying the past
I enjoy a catchy song as much as anyone, and Beyoncé’s latest work “Cowboy Carter” has plenty of them.
But as a historian, I am most interested in what this album says about the importance of recovering a past that has been obscured and overlooked.
There’s a backstory to Beyoncé’s genre-bending and instant classic album.
On an Instagram post revealing the album cover art, Queen Bey explained:
This album has been over five years in the making. It was born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed…and it was very clear that I wasn’t. But, because of that experience, I did a deeper dive into the history of Country music and studied our rich musical archive.
The painful experience Beyoncé alludes to is her surprise appearance at the 2016 Country Music Awards, where she performed the song “Daddy Lessons” from her album Lemonade with the Dixie Chicks (now just the “Chicks”).
Some Country music fans were incensed at the mere presence of Beyoncé—an über-successful Black woman pop star—at the show. They were even more apoplectic that she would write and perform a Country song.
A Washington Post article explained:
“Many viewers argued that the superstar didn’t belong in the genre—or on the stage of ‘country music’s biggest night,’ as the show’s tagline says. Much of the criticism was seen as racially and politically charged in the wake of liberal-leaning political statements in Beyoncé’s ‘Lemonade’ album.”
Like a true artist, though, Beyoncé turned the pain of rejection into a work of art and historical recovery.