Did you know that country music was spread from a Mexican AM radio station, owned by a guy who wanted to sell his plastic Jesus statues? And the job he had before that was even weirder. This might not be something Beyoncé knows, but her teaser video for Act II is replete with country-radio imagery. The short starts with a taxi driver driving down country roads (presumably in Texas), listening to AM radio. A sign reads, “RADIO TEXAS, 100,000 Watts of healing power,” alluding to the illegally high wattage of the “border blaster” radio stations. Folks of all stripes gaze at her billboard in a “You look lonely, I can fix that” kind of way. And Beyoncé, a.k.a. Cowboy Carter, can fix that. “I focused on this album as a continuation of RENAISSANCE …,” Beyoncé shared on Instagram. “I hope this music is an experience, creating another journey where you can close your eyes, start from the beginning, and never stop.” Below, everything we know about her upcoming album.
She faked us out again. After a month of letting us believe her new album’s title was Renaissance Act II, Beyoncé revealed the record will really be called Act II: Cowboy Carter. After faking us out with the album cover as well, she unveiled the proper art on March 19. It features Beyoncé on a white horse in a red, white, and blue bodysuit and “Cowboy Carter” sash, holding an American flag. Yeehaw! And no, that’s not Reneigh: This horse’s name is Chardonneigh, according to Justine Omokhua at Parkwood.
Beyoncé pays homage to her mother’s maiden name with the Cowboy Carter exclusive limited edition album cover (available through her official online store). Knowles wears nothing but a sash that reads “act ii BEYINCÉ,” which to fair-weather fans looks like a typo. But Miss Tina Knowles-Lawson explained what’s really up on the In My Head With Heather Thomson podcast. “It’s interesting, because a lot of people don’t know that Beyoncé is my last name,” she said. “It’s my maiden name. My name was Celestine Beyoncé, which at that time was not a cool thing.” The rest of the Beyincé family has a different spelling of the name, and Beyoncé is actually a birth certificate typo perpetrated by indifferent and racist clerks. Knowles-Lawson said her mother tried to get the birth certificate corrected, but she was told “‘Be happy that you’re getting a birth certificate,’ because at one time Black people didn’t get birth certificates.” “They were like, ‘How dare you have a French name.’ Like, ‘We’re gonna screw this up real good for you,’” Knowles-Lawson said. “And that’s what they did. So we all have different spellings.”
“This ain’t a Country album. This is a ‘Beyoncé’ album,” Bey declared in an Instagram post ahead of Cowboy Carter on March 19 (and then on the side of the Guggenheim Museum March 20). But it’s not not a country album, either. She shared that the album has been in development for over five years, after “an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed … and it was very clear that I wasn’t.” She seems to be referring to performing “Daddy Lessons” on the CMA Awards with the Chicks in 2016, where some country artists and fans criticized her presence. “But, because of that experience, I did a deeper dive into the history of Country music and studied our rich musical archive,” Beyoncé said. But she alluded that Cowboy Carter might be something more genre-defying. “The criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me,” she continued. “Act ii is a result of challenging myself, and taking my time to bend and blend genres together to create this body of work.”
Imagery-wise, it’s hella country. The teaser video featured allusions to Paris, Texas, the aforementioned AM radio stations that propagated country in the ’50s, and some hits from that time when country, rock and roll, and R&B were kind of undifferentiated. Sonically, we only know so much. “Texas Hold ’Em” is banjo-heavy (provided by Rhiannon Giddens). “16 Carriages” starts as a country ballad, but builds to something more cinematic.
There’s allegedly even more twang to come. Dolly Parton let slip that Beyoncé covered her song “Jolene” in a recent interview. “I think it’s probably gonna be on her country album, which I’m very excited about that,” she told Knox News. Parton — already a fan of Bey’s country era — reportedly clarified that she only “heard” about the cover and “hopes” that it’s on the album. We know what you mean, Dolly.
Fans speculated Beyoncé’s next album was imminent when she appeared at the 2024 Grammys in a white Stetson. And took pictures with everyone like she was Minnie Mouse at Disneyland. At that event, only Taylor Swift announced a new album, and yet Yoncé’s silence spoke as loud.
The album rollout was presaged with a Verizon Super Bowl commercial as well. Because why shouldn’t Tony Hale be one of the first people to know Act II was coming?
Beyoncé’s 16 carriages are stuffed to the brim. Cowboy Carter has a whopping 27 tracks competing in the hour-and-18-minute rodeo, we can confirm. Dolly Parton, Miley Cyrus, Post Malone, Willie Nelson, and country legend Linda Martell join Queen Bey for the ride, according to lyric aggregator Genius, which is usually right about these pre-release spoilers. Plus the song “Blackbiird,” is, in fact, a cover of the Beatles tribute of the same name to the Little Rock Nine. It’s the same deal for “Jolene” — Beyoncé does cover the Good Golly Miss Dolly’s watershed hit. As for the rest of the sprawling track list, Cyrus appears on “II Most Wanted,” while Malone pulls up on “Levii’s Jeans.” Parton, Nelson, and Martell MC album interludes for Beyoncé’s KNTRY station.
“Texas Hold ’Em” and “16 Carriages” hit streaming after Beyoncé’s Super Bowl ad on February 9. “Texas Hold ’Em” later made Beyoncé the first Black woman to earn a country No. 1, on February 20, and it has been getting spins at country radio as well. Beyoncé said she felt “honored” to top the “Hot Country Songs” chart, and thanked her fans for supporting “Texas.” “My hope is that years from now, the mention of an artist’s race, as it relates to releasing genres of music, will be irrelevant,” she wrote on Instagram.
Cowboy Carter will feature Elizabeth Lowell Boland, Raphael Saadiq, Hit-Boy, Nathan Ferraro, Killah B, and Rhiannon Giddens. Beyoncé also teased “a few surprises” on the album and said she worked with “some brilliant artists who I deeply respect.”
Giddens, who is breaking Beyoncé’s internet as Banjo Auntie, is known in other circles as a folk polymath often interested in projects spanning Black music history. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 2023 for co-composing the opera Omar, based on a slave memoir.
“You are the visual, baby,” Beyoncé rudely told audiences, begging for a crumb of visual content à la Lemonade or Black Is King, during last year’s Renaissance World Tour. Instead, Bey gave us a concert film that temporarily sated widespread thirst, though we know that the Hive won’t be satisfied for long. Could Act II give us those long-awaited visuals? Probably! Director and visual artist Nadia Lee Cohen appears to have worked on the Paris, Texas–esque teaser trailer and is rumored to have helmed the full video album. Yeehaw!
We’ll officially meet Cowboy Carter on March 29.
This post has been updated.
