I’m not done discussing Beyoncé’s "Cowboy Carter," y’all! In this episode, I respond to your comments about my first Cowboy Carter reaction. I’ll say it again and again: the people who engage with my work are some of the most thoughtful people on the internet, so I’m working through my thoughts on what makes an album/artist great in real-time while you provide new insights and challenge my ideas.
P.S. The final round of the Pop Girl Power Bracket is Bey vs. Nippy. Vote here!
The black women featured feel more like accessories, in the background. Miley, Post Malone, Willie Jones, Shaboozey all got moments to shine. Why didn't the black girls get that?
Flamenco is definitely one of my favourite songs from this album, its just such a genuinely moving vocal performance. I think it could stay and Just for Fun and Alligator Tears could go as tonally they're kind of expressing similar ideas.
Also this hasn't been mentioned much but I don't like how the song titles are stylised for lack of a better term. I don't care for the all capitalised titles and the use of the letter I twice for some songs. Also I think a way to circumvent the issue around Black Bird (apart from rerecording the song) would have been to highlight in the lyric video who was singing which part, so at least you've got that. I've seen reaction videos where people think it's just Tanner singing which is kinda sad.
Finally I was on Beyoncé's website looking at the lyrics and I noticed on Smoke Hour 2 there's a part at the end where Willie says "Next up is Just for Fun by Beyoncé, that's with an I". So it seems like they've put the lyrics up from when the title of the album was supposed to be Beyince. I don't feel like this album had a clear narrative through line and I can see that's because Beyoncé seemed to have drastically changed some of the key ideas behind it at the last minute. Some have speculated that this was in some part an ode to her mother, similarly to what she did with her uncle on Renaissance, and I just think it's notable that she hasn't addressed the original title as far as I've seen in any of her statements.