The latest album by American music star Beyoncé, “Cowboy Carter” rose to the top of the sales chart which refers to the United States “Billboard 200” and to the top of the ranking for the country genre, a first for a black artist.
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According to the Billboard website, which is due to publish its detailed ranking on Monday, this is the eighth album in Beyoncé’s career to reach first place in sales.
With the equivalent of 407,000 copies sold in the week ending April 4, “Cowboy Carter” achieves the best performance of 2024, and the best since the release of “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” by another mega star, Taylor Swift, with 1.6 million albums sold as of November 11, 2023.
Announced on February 11 in the middle of the Super Bowl, the final of the American football championship, with the release of the singles “Texas Hold ‘Em”, punctuated by the sound of the banjo, and “16 Carriages”, “Cowboy Carter” is a powerful tribute to the global pop and R&B star with African-American roots in country, a genre today dominated by white, male artists.
In 27 tracks, the album, the second act of his “Renaissance” musical trilogy, also gives pride of place to dance, soul and hip-hop. It was widely praised by critics.
Beyoncé covers, among others, the classic “Jolene” by absolute country star Dolly Parton as well as “Blackbird” by the Beatles, a song composed by Paul McCartney in the 1960s about nine black teenagers who became icons of the rights movement civic by integrating a high school reserved for white students, during the era of segregation in the South of the United States.
The Beatles star applauded the cover, calling it “a beautiful version that reinforces the civil rights message that inspired me to write this song” on his website.
