A study in contrasts - Beyonce as Etta James in Cadillac Records, an uneven biopic about Chess Records.
Alongside all the awful news coming out across the globe – Israel and Russia doing their worst to kill as many civilians as possible, brutal gangs wreaking havoc in Sudan and Haiti, global temperatures rising and deforestation increasing at ever faster rates, misinformation and hate intensifying online – there’s an even worse announcement: Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter album is a turkey.
I wanted to like Cowboy Carter. I tried to like Cowboy Carter. But its pitiful. A marketing plan of an album created to get Brand Beyonce ever more media coverage (and thus increased sponsorship + super lucrative private gigs for billionaires). OK, Texas Hold ‘Em is a passable ersatz Americana but the rest of the album sounds as if designed to be one long promotional campaign, songs designed as gestures rather than music. The entire project is so flat it exudes a sheen of corporate committee decision making. Inspiration? In the marketing, sure, but such is absent in the music.
Thing is, I’ve been enamoured with Beyonce ever since I first heard Say My Name in 1999. That song, with its demanding chorus and shifting rhythms, leapt out of the radio and demanded my attention – Say My Name is easily the best pop r&b tune since En Vogue’s Don’t Let Go. I liked Say My Name so much I went to Woolworths in Camberwell – the closest we then had to a record store in South East London – and purchased Destiny’s Child’s second album, The Writing's on the Wall. Back then you had the option of buying a CD single (£3.50) or the album (£12 in Woolies).