It’s official, y’all: Beyoncé has named her forthcoming album Act II: Cowboy Carter. Serving as a followup to Renaissance, Cowboy Carter is the second of Beyoncé’s three-act project spanning across three varying musical genres. Notably, the project will be a country record, which is almost clearly pointed out in its title. Despite the album title including part of her last name (i.e. Carter), fans think Act II isn’t named after her whatsoever.
By now, I’m sure you’ve heard Queen B’s latest songs “16 Carriages” and “Texas Hold ‘Em,” which were dropped jointly and confirmed fan theories that Beyoncé’s second-act project would be country. Almost immediately, the country music industry didn’t open their arms to Beyoncé’s trek into the genre after Oklahoma-based country radio station KYKC made waves by announcing they wouldn’t be playing “Texas Hold ‘Em” because “[they] are a country music station.”
The backlash towards Beyoncé releasing country music sparked conversation around the origins of country music pioneered by the Black community. Beyoncé naming the album Cowboy Carter may seem like an easy reference to herself, but it’s more deeply rooted in country music’s history than I knew before.
After she announced the album title, TikTok creator @beysus.christ posted a video theorizing that Cowboy Carter is a reference to “The First Family of Country Music,” aka the Carter family.
The group consisted of three members — A.P., Sara Doughtery, and Maybelle Addington Carter. Most prominently, Maybelle is regarded as the creator of the “Carter scratch/lick,” a revolutionary picking style used in country music.
In the TikTok video, @beysus.christ explained that Black artist Lesley Riddle actually introduced Maybelle to this specific picking style. A.P. and Riddle formed a close friendship, which led Riddle to teach Maybelle how to play the guitar in his signature fashion. Riddle would go on to travel with the Carter family on “song-hunting trips” where he would use his great memory skills to continue teaching Maybelle how to play the music that would become popularized on the radio.
“The Carter family would not have been as successful as they were without Lesley Riddle,” @beysus.christ said. The title of the album serves as another educational pointer in which Beyoncé is highlighting the influence of Black culture on country music.
“Beyonce is a historian and scholar of music in its entirety,” one TikTok user commented on the viral video. “The way she pulls from every single genre and style and period is so wild.”
Of course, Cowboy Carter would be a really cute and fun reference to Beyoncé’s name, but we should’ve expected way more from her than a simple alliteration for an album title.