Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter Tour Remixes American History, and Her Own

New York Times

29-04-2025

The last time Beyoncé performed 'Daddy Lessons,' the stomping, biting number from her 2016 album, 'Lemonade,' was at that year's C.M.A. Awards, in a blistering rendition alongside the Dixie Chicks (now the Chicks).
Not everyone in country music embraced Beyoncé's experimentation. 'I did not feel welcomed,' she wrote in album notes leading up to the release last year of 'Cowboy Carter,' her eighth solo album, an exploration of the many tendrils of American roots music and their connections to Black music of all stripes and generations.
So it was meaningful, and pointed, that at the opening night of the Cowboy Carter Tour at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., on Monday, Beyoncé played 'Daddy Lessons' for the first time since that rejection. It came right after she sang her renovated version of Dolly Parton's 'Jolene' — approved by the country royal herself — while soaring over the rapturous crowd in a flying horseshoe.
Full-circle moments don't just happen — they are the products of intention and diligence and allergy to loose threads. Throughout this roisterous and clever show, there were suggestions that loop-closing has been very much on Beyoncé's mind, along with culmination.
'Cowboy Carter' is proof of that writ large: It is album as historical remedy. And it was in part inspired by her chilly Nashville reception — if you can't join them, beat them.
And beat them she did, all the way up through earning album of the year at the Grammys in February, ending a controversial career-long drought in the awards' top category (even though she is the most decorated Grammy winner of all time).
That said, calling this the Cowboy Carter Tour was a mild headfake — even though Beyoncé performed most of the album's songs, it was as a purposeful reframing of this latest album as a kind of DNA-level source material that has been lurking beneath her music all along.
At almost three hours long, her seventh solo headlining concert tour was a characteristic Beyoncé epic. It came alive during the second act, beginning with the sparkly 'Renaissance' flirtation 'America Has a Problem,' which she delivered from behind a Lucite lectern, followed by 'Spaghettii,' one of the most ferocious and fun songs on 'Cowboy Carter.' That led to 'Formation,' by now a crucial entry in her canon, and before long, 'Diva,' which made clear the connections between her politics and her physicality: Freedom reigns in both.
By the time Beyoncé arrived at the fifth section, which began with 'Jolene' and 'Daddy Lessons,' she appeared to be, improbably, gaining strength. On 'Bodyguard,' her voice was ostentatious. Her ease of motion on 'Tyrant' and 'Thique' was luminous.
She was well past the two-hour mark when she landed on the slick 'Texas Hold 'Em,' by far the most successful single on 'Cowboy Carter.' (Though that album had a gangbusters release week, it did not spawn many broad-impact singles, certainly not by comparison to earlier Beyoncé albums. ) This was the platonic ideal of a Beyoncé country song that might have feasibly been embraced by the country mainstream, but Beyoncé — performing from the hood of a semi truck — upended it here, blending it into the rollicking 'Crazy in Love.'
That was one of several new-old partnerships in her set: 'II Most Wanted' and 'Blow'; 'Thique' and 'Bills, Bills, Bills'; 'Spaghettii' and 'Flawless.' The music on 'Cowboy Carter' she was underscoring wasn't just American roots music, but also Beyoncé roots music, dating all the way back to Destiny's Child.
There were visual and sonic echoes of earlier tours and live shows, too: a red lip couch previously used on The Beyoncé Experience; her version of 'Before I Let Go,' the Maze featuring Frankie Beverly classic she revisited on 'Homecoming'; and wholesale set pieces from the Renaissance World Tour, down to the stars of vogueing working the stage. (Kudos especially to Honey Balenciaga.) She'd sprinkle in bits of hip-hop songs — David Banner's 'Like a Pimp,' Goodie Mob's 'Cell Therapy,' BigXthaPlug's 'The Largest' — making even more plain the threads she's stitching between genres and generations.
Even though the musicology lessons dominated her performance, Beyoncé's true subject was the mutability of American iconography, and how to put it to work in her favor. That began with wardrobe — she played various stripes of cowgirl throughout the night, from regal to down-home.
The crowd dressed for the occasion, of course: fringed leather chaps, silver cowboy boots, denim dusters, neckerchiefs, sashes that read 'Cowboy Carter' or, in some cases, ones that replaced Beyoncé's surname with the wearer's. Outside the stadium, vendors were selling cowboy hats and folding fans: 'Got that good snap,' one promised, spreading it out to read 'Bey-Haw.'
At the merchandise stands, you could buy, for $75, a T-shirt depicting Beyoncé sitting side saddle and pointing a shotgun, next to the phrase 'Never ask permission for something that already belongs to you.'
That phrase flashed onstage when she was singing 'The Star-Spangled Banner' early in the night. She wore an American flag dress for the night's finale, 'Amen,' and just before that, she was hoisted around the stadium in a red car, with a flag at her side. Reverence was just one of her postures, but not one she wore for long. At the end of the show, a huge bust of the Statue of Liberty appeared onstage with a bandanna covering its mouth, as if protecting itself. One video sketch found a giant Beyoncé stomping past the White House — wonder who's hanging out in there? — then drawing a wink from the Lincoln Memorial.
Beyoncé has long been friskier than she gets credit for, but now, she appears looser than ever: At various points in the interstitial videos, she was smoking a cigarette, a cigar, a joint. She played along with the memes and mash-ups that trickle up to her from the Beyoncé-stan internet.
Like she was on her Renaissance World Tour — a stadium show she mounted just two years ago — she was joined onstage for several songs by her daughter Blue Ivy, who serves as a backup dancer for her mother as well as a narrative foil and fan magnet. (Rumi, Beyoncé's other daughter, appeared onstage during 'Protector.' Her mother, Tina, was in the audience as well.)
That was part of a family through line during this show that extended in both directions, past and future. Toward the end of the night, the huge screens onstage filled with childhood photos, old rehearsal videos, the clip where Beyoncé revealed her baby bump on MTV, singing at Barack Obama's inauguration, and so on.
This, too, felt like the closing of a loop. A valedictory address. For more than two decades, Beyoncé has worked to redefine the boundaries of what a pop star can achieve, and how. She set bars, then leaped over them.
But what do you when you run out of goals, win all the accolades, become one of one? Accept that your future may well be a remix of your past — and that's a whole new gift.