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      What to Know About Beyonce’s Country Album, ‘Cowboy Carter’

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      The singer and her collaborators have been dropping hints about “Cowboy Carter,” her upcoming album and first full-length foray into country music.It started with a western-style Grammys outfit, complete with a cream-colored cowboy hat, studded string tie and matching Louis Vuitton jacket and skirt.After a year and a half of Beyoncé’s “Renaissance,” the lauded dance music spectacular that included a world tour and a concert film, the awards show outfit signaled to fans that a new era was beginning. From the start, Beyoncé had described “Renaissance” as the first part of a three-act project, and fans wondered if the second act was on its way.One week later, the pop star made herself abundantly clear, this time in a Verizon ad that aired during the Super Bowl.“Drop the new music,” she said at the end of the intricately produced commercial, which featured the comic actor Tony Hale, a robot Beyoncé and the real version, who showed off 10 outfit changes.She had our attention.At her command, her team released a minute-long teaser video that culminated with a small crowd staring at a roadside billboard displaying another cowboy hat-wearing Beyoncé. Then came two new singles, “Texas Hold ’Em” and “16 Carriages,” filled with the kind of Southern twang and country instrumentation seldom heard in her catalog.Confirmation of the new album, Beyoncé’s eighth solo release, came via an Instagram post last week. “Cowboy Carter,” due on March 29, is her first full-length foray into country music. It is expected to tap into her Houston upbringing and reclaim the Black origins of the genre while challenging the largely white country music establishment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Beyoncé Becomes First Black Woman to Top Billboard Country Chart

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      Her single “Texas Hold ’Em” debuted atop the country airplay chart after its release during the Super Bowl.Beyoncé’s new country single “Texas Hold ’Em” reached No. 1 on the Billboard country airplay chart this week, making her the first Black female artist to hold the top spot.Beyoncé’s other single, “16 Carriages,” released simultaneously on Feb. 11, also debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard country chart. The songs reached No. 2 and No. 38 on the Billboard Hot 100. “Texas Hold ’Em” has already drawn more than 19 million streams, and “16 Carriages” has 10.3 million streams.Historically, Black artists have struggled to gain recognition in the genre of country music, a field often dominated by white male singers. But the sudden success of Beyoncé’s country singles comes at a time when Black women have started to receive acclaim within that realm. At last year’s Country Music Awards, Tracy Chapman won song of the year for “Fast Car,” which topped country charts three decades after it was released, thanks to a cover by Luke Combs. Black female country artists like Mickey Guyton and Brittney Spencer have also gained popularity in recent years.Beyoncé is the first woman to top both the Hot Country Songs chart and the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart since they were established in 1958, according to Billboard. Both Beyoncé singles are part of her upcoming album, a country-themed follow-up to “Renaissance,” which she referred to as “Act II.” The full album, announced during a Verizon ad that aired during the Super Bowl, is expected to be released March 29. More

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      Beyoncé Rolls Into Her Country Era, and 10 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Vampire Weekend, Pearl Jam, Saya Gray and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes), and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Beyoncé, ‘16 Carriages’In a flex of genre-spanning musicianship that’s also a workaholic’s lament, Beyoncé announces her next realm to conquer — country, one of her birthrights as a Texan — while she recalls her past and doubles down on her ambition, singing, “Ain’t got time to waste, I got art to make.” The music is an arena-country crescendo, from acoustic-guitar strum to full-band impact topped by pedal-steel guitar, along with gospel-organ underpinnings and country quavers in Beyoncé’s vocal lines. At a moment when country music is being pushed to acknowledge Black roots and current Black musicians, Beyoncé is not only claiming an expanded demographic base. She’s also using her celebrity clout to force some doors open. JON PARELESVampire Weekend, ‘Capricorn’Vampire Weekend channels a generation’s exhaustion, disillusionment and overload in “Capricorn,” a stubbornly slow ballad about being “too old for dying young” and “sifting through centuries for moments of your own” from “Only God Was Above Us,” a new album due April 5. The music layers stately chamber-pop with heaving, squealing noise, then eases toward folky resignation. PARELESWaxahatchee, ‘Bored’We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Popcast (Deluxe): Usher, Beyoncé and Ye Lead a Busy Week in Pop

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:Usher’s Super Bowl halftime show performance, which was a showcase for his biggest hits and his obsession with small detailsThe announcement of Beyoncé’s imminent return with a pair of songs suggesting her long rumored country turn is afootTaylor Swift’s big day at the Super Bowl“Vultures 1,” the new album from Ye and Ty Dolla $ign (or ¥$) and how it intersects with Ye’s recent public misbehaviorsNew songs from Mk.gee and Chief Keef & Mike Will Made-ItSnack of the weekConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Beyoncé Fan’s Radio Request Reignites Country Music Debate

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      A fan asked his Oklahoma radio station to play a new Beyoncé song. The request was rejected, spurring hundreds of calls and emails about the exclusion of Black musicians from the genre.In Oklahoma, a small country music station that refused a listener’s request to play a new song by Beyoncé was forced to change its tune after an uproar from fans who say that Black artists are too often excluded from the genre.On Tuesday morning, Justin McGowan requested that the D.J.s at KYKC, a country music radio station in Ada, play “Texas Hold ’Em,” one of two new songs Beyoncé released as announced in a Super Bowl commercial on Sunday.Beyoncé, who grew up in Houston, sings about hoedowns, and the twangy song also features a fellow Black Grammy winner, Rhiannon Giddens, on banjo and viola.The station manager, Roger Harris, emailed Mr. McGowan back with a concise rejection: “We do not play Beyoncé at KYKC as we are a country music station.” In sending the email, Mr. Harris unwittingly ignited a new flame in a long-simmering debate over how Black artists fit into a genre that has Black music at its roots.In the Super Bowl ad, Beyoncé joked that her new release would “break the internet.” She wasn’t kidding.Mr. McGowan put a screenshot of the rejection on social media, tagging a Beyoncé fan group in a post that drew 3.4 million views on X and sparked conversations on Reddit and TikTok.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Beyoncé Announces New Country Album, ‘Act II,’ After Super Bowl Commercial

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      The pop superstar used a Verizon ad to tell fans fresh music is on the way. A country-themed follow-up to “Renaissance,” which she referred to as “Act II,” will arrive on March 29.After days of speculation and online sleuthing by fans — just another week, in other words — Beyoncé used her appearance in a Super Bowl commercial on Sunday to announce that she would soon be releasing new music.In a Verizon ad that ran shortly after halftime, Beyoncé joked with the comedian Tony Hale about doing something that would “break the internet” (i.e. Verizon’s 5G network). She ran through a few riffs, like “Beyonc-A.I.,” a Barbie-like “Bar-bey” and a presidential “BOTUS.”Then she said, “Drop the new music,” before the commercial ended. Soon after, Beyoncé’s website updated with the announcement that a new album, identified as “Act II,” would be released on March 29.It appeared to be the second part of Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” album project, and perhaps one with a country-rock theme, given the sound and look of two new songs, “Texas Hold ’Em” and “16 Carriages,” that quickly appeared online.“Texas Hold ’Em” begins with rapid-plucked guitar and moves into a stomping beat, with Beyoncé rhyming “Texas” and “Lexus” and singing lines like, “It’s a real live boogie and a real live hoedown.” On “16 Carriages,” an epic ballad, the guitars swell with organ-loud percussion as Beyoncé sings about looking back at a life after losing innocence “at an early age.”The visuals for both picture Beyoncé in cowboy hats — a feature of last year’s Renaissance World Tour and Beyoncé’s continued style signature, as seen last week at the Grammy Awards.As with the first “Renaissance,” the new album announcement represents a kind of shift in communication for Beyoncé. She released her 2013 album, “Beyoncé,” with no warning — instantly grabbing global attention and setting off a music industry craze for surprise “drops.” Its follow-up, “Lemonade,” in 2016, was teased by a Super Bowl appearance but still made an instantaneous splash. In the “Renaissance” era, Beyoncé’s revelations have been more like conventional advertisements.When Beyoncé unveiled “Renaissance” in July 2022, she posted a statement on Instagram that explained it was merely part one of a “three act project” that she recorded during the pandemic. She referred to that album as “Act I,” and described it as “a place to dream and to find escape during a scary time for the world.” That album, with a 1990s retro dance theme, went to No. 1 and was the centerpiece of her tour last year, which sold $580 million in tickets, according to the trade publication Pollstar — second only to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.Beyoncé dabbled in country music on “Daddy Lessons” on her 2016 album “Lemonade,” and a remix featured the Chicks. She teamed with the Nashville group for a performance on the Country Music Association Awards that November, which received a mixed reception from country fans online but was vigorously defended by the singer’s loyal fans. More

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      Jay-Z Criticizes Grammys, Points Out How Beyoncé Never Won Album of the Year

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      During a speech at the Grammys on Sunday, Jay-Z criticized the awards show for what he described as its snubs and inconsistencies in giving out honors to Black artists, pointing out that his wife, Beyoncé, has the most Grammys but has never won for album of the year.“Even by your own metrics it doesn’t work,” he said.He added, “We want you to get it right — at least get it close to right.”Jay-Z also referred to Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff’s boycott of the 1989 Grammys because the rap category was not televised at the time. He noted that he had boycotted the show when DMX released two No. 1 albums but was not nominated.“Some of you may get robbed,” he said, adding, “Some of you don’t belong in the category.”He also conceded that the process of awarding Grammys is subjective. “It’s music and it’s opinion based,” he said.Jay-Z made the remarks during his acceptance speech for the Dr. Dre Global Impact Award, which recognizes personal and professional achievements in the music industry.Through his record label, Roc Nation, Jay-Z has advocated social justice causes, particularly for racial equality in the United States. In 2022, he convened an inaugural summit for social justice leaders to meet in New York to raise awareness about racial justice and policy.He has also served as an executive producer on two docuseries about the killings of Black Americans: “Time: The Kalief Browder Story” and “Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story.” When George Floyd was killed by the Minneapolis police in 2020, Jay-Z, through Roc Nation, took out full-page ads in major newspapers that quoted a passage from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1965 speech in Selma, Ala. More

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      Study Tracking Women’s Music Credits Has a Surprise: Good News

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      The Annenberg Inclusion Initiative’s latest report finds that women’s involvement in the biggest hits of 2023 was greatly improved over previous years.Each year since 2018, the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative has tracked the number of women credited on the music industry’s biggest hits, and the numbers have usually been dismal — year after year, female artists, songwriters and producers have been crowded out by men, sometimes by extraordinary margins.In their latest report, however, the study’s researchers found some good news. Women’s involvement in the biggest hits of 2023 was greatly improved from previous years, and in some measurements reached higher proportions than the researchers have found in more than a decade of data.For example, of last year’s most popular tracks — as defined by Billboard’s year-end Hot 100 singles chart — 35 percent of the credited performing artists were women. That is a higher number than U.S.C.’s researchers have found for any year going back to 2012, and only the second time (after 2022) that the number has been over 30 percent.And for the first time in the study’s research window, a majority of the year’s 100 most popular songs — 56 percent of them — had at least one female songwriter.Stacy L. Smith, an associate professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and the study’s lead author, was cautiously celebratory of the findings. While the latest numbers are up, she noted, women still represented an average of only about 23 percent of performer credits on all surveyed songs since 2012. (Some years that figure has been as low as 17 percent.)“For the second year in a row, the percentage of women artists on the popular charts has increased,” Dr. Smith said in a statement. “This is a notable milestone and worthy of celebration. However, it is still important to recognize that there is room to grow. Women filled less than one-quarter of artist roles across all 12 years examined, and these figures are still far from representing the 50 percent of women in the population and the music audience.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More