“I need to hear an American poem,” rings out the voice of Ras Baraka to introduce the second act of Beyoncé’s stadium-conquering Cowboy Carter Tour. “One thing American, you recognize. Some sassy s–t, or South Carolina slave shouter, Alabama backwoods church shack name and response… Are there any American poets in right here?”
Baraka — the present mayor of Newark, N.J., spoken phrase poet and son of Black Arts Motion luminaries Amiri and Amina Baraka — asks a query that Beyoncé sketches out a solution to by means of her career-spanning, three-hour Cowboy Carter spectacle. When the 35-time Grammy-winner appeared on the prime of the present on July 4, together with her cowboy hat tipped down and an American flag fur coat draped over her shoulders, for just a few seconds, the bitter realities of life exterior of Northwest Stadium appeared to dissipate.
Happening only a 25-minute drive from the White Home and on the identical day President Trump signed his damaging new invoice into legislation, the Cowboy Carter Tour arrived in Landover, Md. in a season ripe for discourse — although that’s been the secret for the singer’s present period since she kicked issues off with the Billboard Hot 100-topping “Texas Maintain ‘Em” in the course of the 2024 Super Bowl. Given its guardian album’s themes of illuminating the oft-obfuscated Black roots of nation music and her implementation of Americana symbols and aesthetics, many individuals anticipated Beyoncé to make some kind of assertion throughout her July 4 show.
However past a fast “Blissful Fourth” close to the highest of the primary act, Beyoncé didn’t say a lot concerning the vacation (or its urgent current context) in the course of the present. In a means, that made the tour’s general message much more poignant — whereas additionally exposing a few of its shortcomings.
After opening with the rousing “Ameriican Requiem,” a dirge of types for “a fairly home that we by no means settled in,” Beyoncé segued into “Blackbiird,” her trustworthy cowl of the Beatles traditional. On the file, Beyoncé’s model of “Blackbird” invitations a number of ascendant Black ladies in up to date nation music (Brittney Spencer, Tanner Adell, Reyna Roberts and Tiera Kennedy), whereas her solo reside rendition comes after a verbal and visible acknowledgement of the boundary-pushing Black ladies in leisure who paved the way in which for her. After taking the Founding Fathers to job with the primary track and honoring her trailblazing foremothers within the second, Beyoncé then delved right into a medley of the Nationwide Anthem and “Freedom” — maybe her most direct commentary of the night time.
Taking notes from Jimi Hendrix’s iconic Woodstock ‘69 model of “The Star Spangled Banner” — a brooding tackle the anthem streaked with startling octave jumps and distorted regressions — Beyoncé’s equally unnerving rendition of the anthem completely captured the ominous power of the present administration. It’s not a second of satisfaction or patriotism in any respect; simply as Hendrix referred to as on the anguish of the Vietnam Struggle and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination the earlier 12 months, Beyoncé funneled the stomach-churning anxiousness of the present administration’s Venture 2025 rollout into her rendition.
After reaching precisely halfway by means of the anthem’s first verse, Beyoncé sings, “You have been solely ready for this second to be free” from “Blackbiird,” signaling the transition to “Freedom,” a Grammy-nominated observe from her 2016 Lemonade album that served because the official track for Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign. With its cries of “Freedom, freedom, the place are you/ ‘Trigger I want freedom too,” the anthemic observe — born out of early Black Lives Matter-era fury — well complemented her Hendrixifed “Star Spangled Banner” rendition. Sure, she’s draped in pink, white and blue, however her imaginative and prescient of America is constructed on the innate understanding of its numerous evils and atrocities.
She continues to hammer this level together with her subsequent medley of “Ya Ya” and “Why Don’t You Love Me?” As she takes inventory of America’s fault within the former — albeit in a means that’s not almost as ballsy as Baraka’s “American Poem” — she makes use of the latter to course of the feelings of a individuals continuously denied entry to a dream that might be incomprehensible with out their contributions, each by power and by alternative.
In his close reading of Hendrix’s anthem rendition, author, musician and tutorial Paul Grimstad writes: “We discover that an electrical guitar might be made to convey the sensation that the nation’s historical past may very well be melted down, remolded, and given a brand new form.” And that’s the precise feeling Beyoncé makes an attempt to faucet into all through the Cowboy Carter Tour. It’s why she kicks off the subsequent act with “America Has a Drawback.” When she launched the Miami bass-laced observe alongside the remainder of Renaissance in 2022, Beyoncé made it clear that she is America’s drawback. As she recontextualizes the track to introduce the present’s Southern hip-hop-rooted part (“My Home,” “Diva” and “Formation” all make appearances), America’s drawback is now not simply her — it’s all Black individuals staking their declare to “nation,” the fearless innovation of the Black queer neighborhood that grounded Renaissance and the resounding confidence of younger Black women like Blue Ivy, who kills her dance solo in the course of the track every night time.
It’s additionally why “Daughter,” an opera-inflected Cowboy Carter observe during which Beyoncé performs America’s scorned daughter, introduces the Renaissance act, a section lifted from 2023’s Renaissance World Tour that makes use of home music and ballroom to think about a model of America that embraces and uplifts all of its residents. It’s additionally why she closes the present with an infinite bust of a masked Statue of Liberty, throughout “Amen.” Clearly, the American mission continues to be in progress — and for Beyoncé, the promise of what the nation may very well be is sufficient to maintain preventing for it.
Beyoncé has been one of many defining artists of our time from a sociopolitical standpoint since no less than 2013’s eponymous shock album. However the Cowboy Carter Tour begs the query of whether or not her artwork is definitely assembly the current second. With Trump’s newly signed invoice effectively deading upward class mobility for future generations and the continued battle in Gaza, numerous Individuals understandably don’t simply really feel betrayed by the American flag, they’re outright rejecting it. For them, the price of America isn’t outweighed by its promise, so why proceed to stake a declare in its present iteration when it may be discarded in favor of one thing fully new? From the instability of the housing and job markets to the upheaval of federal establishments as they relate to healthcare and the humanities, the present second appears to name for one thing a bit stronger than allusions and metaphors.
Take Bob Vylan, for instance, the English punk-rap duo that was not too long ago dropped by their talent agency, UTA, after calling for a free Palestine and “death to the IDF” on the 2025 Glastonbury Pageant. There’s additionally the way in which Kendrick Lamar explicitly referred to as out the U.S. utilizing its imagery throughout his Super Bowl halftime show performance earlier this year — however even that, arguably, pales compared to the fearlessness of protester Zul-Qarnain Kwame Nantambu, who crashed the present in help of Gaza and Sudan and was later arrested. Extra not too long ago, Dangerous Bunny referred to as U.S. dates for his upcoming Debí Tirar Más Fotos World Tour “unnecessary,” presumably as a result of present administration’s concentrating on of immigrants and Latino individuals. The identical day Beyoncé performed Landover, Dangerous Bunny dropped his “Nuevayol” music video, during which he references the 1977 takeover of the Statue of Liberty by Puerto Rican nationalists and trolls Trump by having an imitator apologize to immigrants in America. These are the sorts of in-your-face, specific actions that the present local weather requires. They’re naturally divisive and inherently messy moments (significantly Bob Vylan’s), certain, however they make the purpose unignorable and unmistakable.
These artists are placing one thing on the road: touring {dollars}, business illustration, and even their visas. Sure, a lot can and ought to be mentioned about America’s declining literacy charges and the misogynoir individuals carry when interacting with Beyoncé’s work, nevertheless it’s additionally price interrogating the effectiveness of artwork (and its presentation) that in the end leaves fairly a lot to interpretation. Queen Bey’s want to let her artwork converse for itself is paramount to her model, however with out her talking on her personal intentions as they relate to Cowboy Carter’s political parts, the mission can solely stand for a lot. For what it’s price, she has spoken plainly and explicitly by means of the Democratic electoral framework — the effectiveness of which varies wildly relying on who you ask — for the previous decade and alter, stumping for Obama, Clinton and Harris throughout their respective races. (She additionally shared an Instagram post in help of Biden in 2020.)
Maybe one in every of Beyoncé’s targets with the Cowboy Carter Tour is to say that the American flag and commonplace Americana imagery belong to all its individuals, not simply white nationalists or those that favor a WASP-steeped model of the nation. By means of her costuming alone, she’s difficult whitewashed concepts of who’s “allowed” to be seen and understood as American. Perhaps one other a type of targets is to deliberately lean into these aesthetics to supply a critique of the nation, irrespective of how milquetoast.
These are admirable intentions, however they’re borderline unimaginable to do successfully in a rustic that always errors protest for patriotism. Take a look at Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the united statesA.” turning into an Independence Day anthem regardless of being a few disillusioned Vietnam veteran’s return house. Or Ethel Cain’s “American Teenager,” an anti-war song that critiques American gun tradition and deconstructs the idea of the American Dream, which Barack Obama named one in every of his favorite songs of 2022. At minimal, hopefully, Cowboy Carter and its tour mark the start of some individuals’s questioning and critique of the American mission — even when it might not really feel potent sufficient for individuals who are already a lot additional down that path.
All through the Cowboy Carter Tour, Beyoncé additionally consists of bits of Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” to name for a kind of metaphorical, cultural and religious revolution that makes an expansive model of America the default. Right here, she’s buying and selling on the identical revolution-minded aesthetics she employed in the course of the Lemonade album period — bear in mind her recreating Huey P. Newton’s iconic peacock chair pose on the Formation World Tour? Or the Malcolm X and Black Panther Occasion tributes throughout her “Formation” cameo on the 2016 Tremendous Bowl halftime present?
If Beyoncé was totally invested within the rules and framework behind these symbols and aesthetics, then she would doubtless agree that the first means her cultural revolution will end in a big enchancment of the lived realties and materials situations of oppressed individuals is thru a mass redistribution of wealth and the dismantling of capitalism — two issues which can be at direct odds to the ethos and essence of what we perceive to be the Beyoncé model. All that is to say, for all its technical achievements and improvements, the Cowboy Carter Tour is a stark reminder that an establishment like America will solely embrace revolutionary aesthetics in artwork as long as it may maintain promoting the dream and idea of revolution, while guaranteeing a fabric and bodily revolution stays nearly unimaginable.
Taken as a second of private and inventive catharsis, Cowboy Carter and its accompanying tour are two of the strongest musical choices of the twenty first century. Taken as a political assertion, issues get a bit shaky. However that’s exactly why Beyoncé stays this century’s greatest pop star; no different artist is inspiring this degree of debate and dialog on so many various planes on the similar time. They usually’re definitely not packing stadiums and breaking data outside of their core genre whereas doing so. Because the tour interludes remind us, Cowboy Carter is simply the second installment of Beyoncé’s yet-to-be-concluded album trilogy. In fact, nothing is confirmed, nevertheless it’s doubtless these interludes additionally embody bits of a movie that may presumably thread collectively all three albums.
And that’s in all probability an important factor to bear in mind because the Cowboy Carter Tour approaches its shut in Las Vegas on July 26. As a lot as components of Renaissance gained new meaning upon Cowboy Carter’s launch (the “un-American life” she sings of in “I’m That Lady,” for instance), Queen Bey’s imaginative and prescient continues to be incomplete till Act III arrives. Till then, we’ll proceed to take a seat with Cowboy Carter and all its complexities, an apt soundtrack for a rustic slowly crumbling beneath the load of its personal contradictions.