A country with no borders

Guest reviewer TAMI NEILSON gets to grips with the sound and significance of Beyonceé’s country album Cowboy Carter.

- TAMI NEILSON

‘This isn’t country music!” angry bigots have been screaming since the first single dropped. More accurately, this isn’t their country music. This is Cowboy Carter’s country music, the genre experienced through the lens of an unapologetic black Texas woman, the gender-bending title casually defiant. We have entered Beyoncé Country, where she makes the rules, and we are blessed to visit for 1 hour, 18 minutes.

Cowboy Carter holds layer upon layer of deeply informed, intentional education. To the masses, it’s full of bangers for listeners to sing or dance to on TikTok, but for many others, especially black women who have been pushed into the margins of a genre that has been designed to exclude them, it is a manifesto. But is this the Trojan horse-full of hope that the fierce fire of Queen B will finally vanquish the gatekeepers whom those with less power and fame do not have the resources to defeat? I can’t even scratch the surface of its importance, so I urge you to read and listen to the words of black women who have fought for decades to make their home in the hostile terrain of country music. Women like Mickey Guyton, Rissi Palmer (host of