Beyoncé's New Country Album 2024 - ‘Renaissance Act II: Cowboy Carter’: Everything We Know So Far

One of the most eagerly anticipated albums of 2024 – across any genre – has now landed on streaming platforms, with Beyoncé's COWBOY CARTER serving as a seismic moment for the genre.

Featuring contributions from Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Miley Cyrus, Post Malone, Shaboozey, Tanner Adell and more, COWBOY CARTER is simultaneously a journey into history and a preview of the future of the genre.

It looks like Lainey Wilson's declaration that ‘Country's Cool Again‘ was right on the money - after Post Malone and Lana Del Rey announced their debut country albums, the Queen B herself has thrown her cowboy hat into the ring.

During the 2024 Super Bowl, Beyoncé appeared in a Verizon advert, which found the global megastar carrying out a plethora of stunts in an attempt to break the internet, such as performing in space, creating an AI version of herself (wittily titled Beyonc-AI) and running a Presidential campaign for ‘Beyoncé of the United States’.

At the end of the advert, Beyoncé teases, “Okay, they ready. Drop the new music”. Following this, Beyoncé released two brand new country songs, the joyously twangy ‘TEXAS HOLD ‘EM’ and the sparser, more stripped-back ‘16 CARRIAGES’.

Fans had speculated that the global megastar might have a country project on the way, after she wore a white cowboy hat to the 2024 Grammys the weekend prior to the Super Bowl.

The two new tracks appear on Act II: COWBOY CARTER, the second instalment of Beyoncé's three-part album series, which was launched with the house-inspired Renaissance in 2022.

At the end of a clip of ‘TEXAS HOLD ‘EM’, which Beyoncé shared on Instagram, ‘Act ii’ and ‘3.29’ are shown against a black screen. On March 12, the megastar confirmed that the project will be called Act II: Cowboy Carter and would be released on March 29.

This isn't the first time Beyoncé has dabbled in country music, with the ‘Hold Up’ singer-songwriter briefly venturing into the genre for her 2016 Lemonade stand-out, ‘Daddy Lessons’.

Ahead of and in tandem with the album's release, many country music fans and beyond partook in debates as to whether the decorated megastar should dabble in the genre with COWBOY CARTER. Becoming quite the heated topic and showing the deep-seated issues surrounding race and general acceptance within the format at large, Beyoncé has described the genre as a "Beyoncé album" rather than a country one, and that couldn't be a more accurate portrayal.

In addition to the history-making ‘TEXAS HOLD ‘EM’ and the history-tracing ‘16 CARRIAGES’, she challenges this argument on tunes like ‘AMERIICAN REQUIEM’, while offering up personal reflection on loss, hardship, lust, longing and more throughout COWBOY CARTER's 27 tracks.

Given how infectious the new tracks are, it looks like this time next year Beyoncé will be vying for the Best Album Grammy that JAY-Z said she deserves.

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