5 months ago
33 ARTICLE AD
Beyonce barely gives interviews to promote any of her albums or art pieces these days. When she does appear on a magazine cover, usually it’s just about the visuals and then the magazine just creates a cover story out of thin air. So it is with Beyonce’s W Magazine digital cover. She was photographed by Pamela Hanson, and Alex Hawgood wrote a pretty great piece about how Beyonce has ALWAYS been country. Beyonce didn’t wake up one day and decided to “go country.” She’s always been pure Texas, she’s always had a twang, she’s always celebrated her country roots. From W:
COWBOY CARTER is a reminder: Beyoncé wasn’t born a cowboy. She became one. Growing up in Houston, she was a regular at the famed Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo and quickly became transfixed by riders wrestling bulls beneath bright lights. When Destiny’s Child hit the MTV TRL scene, in the late ’90s, the group blended R&B realness with an authentic Texan twang. (A cover of “Sail On,” a country-flavored ballad written by Lionel Richie for the Commodores, appeared on the group’s 1998 self-titled debut.) She returned to her hometown rodeo four times as a member of Destiny’s Child and a budding solo performer. To promote “Dangerously in Love” in 2004, she rode into the stadium on horseback.
Long before yee-haw aesthetics entered the mainstream, Beyoncé was rocking Western getups in the music video for “Bug a Boo,” thanks to her mother, Tina Knowles, a seamstress with Louisiana Creole roots. As Beyoncé put it in a 2016 Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) Fashion Awards speech, designers hardly jumped at the opportunity to dress “Black country curvy girls,” so Ms. Tina took control and dressed the group as rhinestone cowgirls in matching chaps in a rainbow of colors, glitter-trimmed rancher hats, and asymmetrical rawhide crop tops.
In the years that followed, Beyoncé dueted with the country duo Sugarland for a performance of “Irreplaceable” at the 2007 American Music Awards, wore cowboy couture alongside Lady Gaga for the “Telephone” music video in 2010, taught the world “Daddy Lessons” in 2016, and set off a small-business boom on Etsy for silver 10-gallon hats during last year’s Renaissance World Tour. The long, winding path from chewing fashion gravel to being one of the most revered pop stars of our time no doubt informs the trajectory of her current full-circle cowboy moment.
I love the richly detailed history of Beyonce’s cowboy/country aesthetic. I didn’t know that she appeared at the Houston rodeo as a young performer and then again when she was coming out as a solo performer. It just occurred to me… is Beyonce a Horse Girl?? Anyway, I love Cowboy Carter and, even more than that album, I love that Beyonce is reclaiming this space for herself and other Black artists.
Cover & IGs courtesy of W Magazine.
