Beyonce shared her thoughts on her new album Cowboy Carter on Friday morning.
The Texas-born star said her first country album is the best she has ever made.
‘The joy of creating music is that there are no rules,’ said Beyonce. ‘The more I see the world evolving the more I felt a deeper connection to purity.’
The mother of three added that with artificial intelligence and digital filters and programming she ‘wanted to go back to real instruments, and I used very old ones.
‘I didn’t want some layers of instruments like strings, especially guitars, and organs perfectly in tune.’
She added that she wanted some of the songs to be ‘raw’ and she ‘leaned into folk.’
The star ended with: ‘All the sounds were so organic and human, everyday things like the wind, snaps and even the sound of birds and chickens, the sounds of nature,’ she said.
The press release reveals the inspiration behind the album and how each ‘song is its own version of a reimagined Western film.’
Some of the films that lent inspiration include The Hateful Eight, Space Cowboys, The Harder They Fall, and the recent Oscar-nominated movie Killers of the Flower Moon.
The album is considered ‘a declarative frequency and academic shift, as the world prepares to shift again, that redefines and rebuilds what is Country and Americana, and who gets to be included.’
Beyoncé’s eighth studio album landed across nine different genres on US music charts including Pop, H๏τ AC, Country, Rhythmic, Urban, and R&B, and making history with Beyoncé becoming the first Black female artist to reach No. 1 on the H๏τ Country Songs chart and No. 1 on the H๏τ 100 Chart with a Country song.
It also spent four weeks at the top of the UK music charts.
The album is about genres, all of them, while deeply rooted in Country.
‘This is the work of an artist who thrives in her freedom to grow, expand, and create limitlessly. It makes no apologies, and seeks no permission in elevating, amplifying, and redefining the sounds of music, while dismantling accepted false norms about Americana culture. It pays homage to the past, honoring musical pioneers in Country, Rock, Classical, and Opera,’ the press release added.
The album is a cornucopia of sounds that Beyoncé loves, and grew up listening to, between visits and eventually performances at the Houston Rodeo – Country, original Rhythm & Blues, Blues, Zydeco, and Black Folk, it was added.
‘The album wraps itself in pure instrumentation in a celebratory authentic gumbo of sounds using among others, the accordion, harmonica, washboard, acoustic guitar, bᴀss ukulele, pedal steel guitar, a Vibra-Slap, the mandolin, fiddle, Hammond B3 organ, tack piano, and the banjo. There’s also plenty of handclaps, horseshoe steps, boot stomps on hardwood floors and yes, those are Beyoncé’s nails as percussion,’ the release added.
