15 Musical Artists Who Tried Going Country Before “Cowboy Carter”
Posted on July 25, 2024
by Eric P
At the end of March, Beyoncé released her new album Cowboy Carter, which was eagerly awaited not just for the usual reason – because, y’know, Beyoncé – but because she had signaled that it would be her first album-length foray into country music, and teased the record with an advance single called “Texas Hold ‘Em,” a classically catchy Beyoncé banger reborn as a banjo-infused line-dance shuffle-stomp. It was too country to be plausibly excluded from country music radio, and too Beyoncé not to qualify as a defiant provocation to country music hegemony.
Of course once the full album dropped, it turned out Beyoncé’s scheme wasn’t so simple. Cowboy Carter is a country album the way her outfit on the cover is just something she threw on. She’s taken the tropes and sounds and conventions of country music and run them through the Beyoncé-ator on high purée. She refracts the genre rather than replicating it. And because she’s Beyoncé she lets you know she knows exactly what she’s doing – not for nothing does the album include one of her guest artists, country music legend Linda Martell, saying “Genres are a funny little concept, aren’t they?”
But if Beyoncé and Martell are highlighting how confining genre can be – in the service of blasting right through those boundaries, with some trenchant commentary along the way about how Black contributions to country music have been erased – other artists have historically found the constraints of genre to be useful, even fun. The defining elements of country music are so recognizable that non-country artists can try them on like a costume, donning the hat and the belt buckle and the brushpopper shirt just long enough to put out one album of fiddle and pedal steel before reverting back to the comfort of their usual sound for the rest of their career.
Sometimes the country pose is such an exaggerated pastiche that it feels like it might just be an album-length goof, as with Elvis Costello; sometimes it’s such a comfortable fit with the artist’s typical vibe that you almost can’t tell that they’re trying something new, as with Dan Fogelberg. Either way, here are fifteen examples of musical artists getting their yee-haw on, with variable results.
Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music by Ray Charles
Ramblin’ Rose by Nat “King” Cole
Nashville Skyline by Bob Dylan
Beaucoups of Blues by Ringo Starr
Tina Turns the Country On by Tina Turner
Almost Blue by Elvis Costello
High Country Snows by Dan Fogelberg
Jonathan Goes Country by Jonathan Richman
12 Golden Country Greats by Ween
Perfectly Clear by Jewel
Tuskegee by Lionel Richie
Detour by Cyndi Lauper
My Love of Country by Teddy Thompson
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