Music review
Cowboy Carter
Country music has been on life support.
With legendary trailblazers like Johnny Cash, Tammy Wynette and Charley Pride long gone, we’re left with Walker Hayes and his god-awful Applebee’s jingle.
Maren Morris and Cassadee Pope fled Nashville faster than you could say, “Yeehaw!” to get away from their racist peers.
Even all-time greats Loretta Lynn and Alan Jackson declared the genre is “dead” and “gone.”
Enter Beyoncé, whose new album, “Cowboy Carter” (out Friday), is the revival that country music so desperately needed.
The instantly timeless 27-track project is a soulful celebration of Southern values and the genre’s African American roots, one that the Houston-born superstar decided to record after feeling unwelcome when she performed at the 2016 CMA Awards.
“The criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me,” she wrote on Instagram ahead of its release.
Beyoncé, 42, saddles up right away, taking on her naysayers on the album’s revolutionary “Ameriican Requiem” intro: “Tread my bare feet on solid ground for years / They don’t know how hard I had to fight for this.”
And fight she does — with the staunch support of collaborators Miley Cyrus (on the gorgeous “II Most Wanted”), Post Malone (the slinky “Levii’s Jeans”) and two of country’s most famous names.
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Willie Nelson lends his smoky voice to a pair of radio-themed interludes, while Dolly Parton hilariously trashes the infamous “Becky with the good hair” as a “hussy” before Beyoncé takes on “Jolene.”
Queen Bey’s highly anticipated remake of Parton’s 1973 classic is so much more than a cover; she…
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