When Beyoncé released her Cowboy Carter album on Friday (March 29), the second in a trilogy of albums following 2022’s Renaissance, one of the immediate standouts from the country music-influenced project was a lush, harmony-stacked version of The Beatles’ classic “Blackbird” (stylized as “Blackbiird” on the album).
Beyoncé’s lilting, gentle singing on the spare arrangement is accompanied by gorgeous, soaring backing vocals from a collective of rising Black female country artists — Tanner Adell, Tiera Kennedy, Reyna Roberts and Brittney Spencer — whose profiles are already rising less than 24 hours since the album came out.
“It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” says Kennedy, who also provides background harmonies on the Cowboy Carter track “Tyrant,” as do Spencer and Roberts. Of “Blackbiird,” she says, “It was so beautiful. It feels like we were having a little Destiny’s Child moment. To get to share that moment with them on such an important song, with Beyoncé, is cool.”
Paul McCartney, with contributions from John Lennon, wrote the original song as a tribute to the Little Rock Nine, a group of Black students who in 1957 endured racial discrimination after enrolling at Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas. McCartney told GQ in 2018 that according to slang used in England in the 1960s, “A bird is a girl, so I was thinking of a Black girl going through this – you know, now is your time to arise, set yourself free, and take these broken wings.”
The women did not know that their song had made the final cut until Beyoncé released the track list on Wednesday and did not hear the recording until the album was released first thing…
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