How Beyoncé Shaped ‘Cowboy Carter’ Around the Pandemic, ‘Renaissance,’ and Martin Scorsese
Beyoncé‘s Cowboy Carter was created over the past five years. During that span of time, the world was upended by a global pandemic and social strife; Martin Scorsese grappled with the blood on the hands of American history with Killers of the Flower Moon; and Beyoncé brought diamonds and disco to the dance floor on Renaissance. All these vastly different occurrences are components that informed the creation, imagery, and release of Beyoncé’s first-ever country album.
“My process is that I typically have to experiment,” Beyoncé shared in a statement via Parkwood Entertainment on Friday. “I enjoy being open to have the freedom to get all aspects of things I love out and so I worked on many songs. I recorded probably 100 songs. Once that is done, I am able to put the puzzle together and realize the consistencies and the common themes, and then create a solid body of work.”
That process began long before Renaissance was set for release, but the hedonistic release that the dance music opus was more urgently needed in the aftermath of the pandemic. “I was initially going to put COWBOY CARTER out first, but with the pandemic, there was too much heaviness in the world,” Beyoncé explained. “We wanted to dance. We deserved to dance. But I had to trust God’s timing.”
She added that it was “really great to have the time and the grace to be able to take my time with it.” Without a tight deadline, the musician was able to explore the themes of the genre more deeply than the other times she had dabbled in it throughout her career. It was a project born from life experiences, and one in particular that left her feeling unwelcome in a genre that saw her as an outsider. In preparation for Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé dove deep not only into the history of country music but also into the culture, media, and fashion that informs it.
According to the press release, the 27-song track list reimagines Western films with an often dramatized twist. Beyoncé drew inspiration from Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), but also from Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight (2015), Clint Eastwood’s Space Cowboys (2000), Jeymes Samuel’s The Harder They Fall (2021), Michael Matthews’ Five Fingers For Marseilles (2017), and James Bridges’ Urban Cowboy. While she was in the recording booth, it was often these films that played on screens during the process.
Across Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé honors pioneers — both celebrated and forgotten — within country music but also dips into rock, classical music, and opera. Ahead of the album release, when she declared, “This ain’t a country album. This is a Beyoncé album,” the musician stated: “The criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me. Act II is a result of challenging myself, and taking my time to bend and blend genres together to create this body of work.”
Her collaborators span genres, too. There are country legends like Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, and Linda Martell, but also newcomers like Taner Adell and Tiera Kennedy. Pop giants Post Malone and Miley Cyrus appear on the track list as well, and the behind-the-scenes writing and production credits list contributions from Pharrell Williams, Ryan Beatty, Tyler Johnson, Raphael Saadiq, and more.
“The joy of creating music is that there are no rules,” says Beyoncé. “The more I see the world evolving the more I felt a deeper connection to purity. With artificial intelligence and digital filters and programming, I wanted to go back to real instruments, and I used very old ones.” There are chicken and birds featured on the album, vocals left out-of-tune for a grounding effect, and even the sound of wind — elements that make it all the more human and tangible.
“I think people are going to be surprised because I don’t think this music is what everyone expects,” Beyoncé shared. “But it’s the best music I’ve ever made.”