Black & Country: Something old, something new

I’m very excited by the recent discourse about the place of Black artists in the notoriously insular country music world sparked by Beyoncé’s 2024 singles “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages.” While the Americana and alt-country circuits have been welcoming places for artists like Allison Russell, Valerie June, and the Carolina Chocolate Drops, the mainstream country industry, especially radio stations, continue excluding women and people of color. In February 2017’s “Ear adjustment: Exploring the untold history of Black Music” I highlighted the role of Black artists in a wide range of genres including classical and country music, and I welcome you to revisit that essay. ( Ear adjustment: Exploring the untold history of Black Music — Riffs, Beats, & Codas (riffsbeatsandcodas.com)

Today’s launch of Beyoncé’s newest album Cowboy Carter (reviewed at the end) inspired me to share the country listening journey I’ve been on for the last few years. After watching, and re-watching, the documentary on Black artists in country, For Love & Country I started listening to the music of several Black country and Americana-oriented artists. They include Blanco Brown, Our Native Daughters, and Reyna Roberts.

Below I discuss two of my favorite recent country albums by Black artists, Brittney Spencer’s My Stupid Life (2024) and Breland’s Cross Country (2022). As a bonus I end with a link to a playlist I curated featuring Black artists singing country songs ranging from Aretha Franklin to lesser known artists like Stoney Edwards. I hope it inspires a look back into a vastly overlooked past and a glimpse into the future of music freed from the artificial confines of genre.  

My Stupid Life

Brittney Spencer’s My Stupid Life is the stunning debut album of an emerging artist who sounds unburdened by the commercial demands of genre boundaries and, relatedly, unbound by a fear of telling her story. The hushed acoustic ballad “New to This Town” which opens the album honestly recounts the false friends and unanswered calls she experienced in moving to Nashville. Undefeated, Spencer hints that she has since moved on made friends and made peace on the next cuts. The syncopated, freeform lyrics and non-stop pulse of the buoyant “I Got Time” fuses dance pop, folk flavored songwriting, and country textures seamlessly. Similarly, “Night In,” preceded by a humorous phone call interlude, is confident anti-FOMO anthem that struts Spencer’s penchant for crunchy guitar-driven rock and country.

The depth and eclecticism hinted at in these tunes reaches an apex on several trenchant ballads. “Bigger than the Song” is one of the most thoughtful and endearing odes to the power of music in recent memory. In addition to showcasing her prowess as a composer (the song was co-written by Spencer with Jennifer Wayne, Tofer Brown, and Marcus “MarcLo” Lomax) she flexes her vocal muscle belting with the power and control of a soul singer. Her R&B inspired vocal approach shines with equal aplomb on a trilogy of remarkable torch songs including the rock flavored “Desperate” and the heart-on-sleeve ballads “My First Rodeo” and “The Last Time.” Her ability to synthesize soul, rock, and country is remarkable feeling like a natural outgrowth of her interests rather than a lack of focus. Spencer’s gift for levity, heard in “I Got Time” and “Night In,” balance out some of the album’s romantic angst including the fond look back on adolescent thrills on “First Car Feeling” and the clear-eyed declaration of independence on the title track.  On the latter she owns the tension between her relative freedom (e.g., weed, free speech, musical expression) and feeling “Legally grown, but I’m still a child.”

The album’s concluding song “Reaching Out” is a searing self-reflection that hooks you gently and never lets you go. If on “New” Spencer unmasks the sometimes chilling, transactional nature of Music City quietly, “Reaching” plunges further into her state of mind. She recalls her personal fears—of change, of loneliness, of having to be OK, as well as her family history—and asserts that she will no longer say she is “fine” but rather “I’m trying.” Her refrain that “And I’m reaching out for something better than this/I don’t know what it is/But I’m reaching out for something easy to miss/Oh, I think I did” is a profoundly vulnerable insight; we are witnessing her becoming and its anything but stupid.

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New Jersey born, Georgetown educated singer-songwriter Breland (first name Daniel) gained fame in 2020 with his humorous country anthem “Don’t Touch My Truck.” Unwilling to be defined by what could’ve been a one-off novelty he expands his wins considerably on his 2022 debut LP Cross-Country. Though Breland is working in the country realm, with elements of hip-hop and gospel, the singer he parallels most is a young Ne-Yo—whose initial work presented him as a talented, appealing, and genuinely nice guy. Breland had a background in largely R&B and hip-hop songwriting and producing before going solo. This has paid off sonically—he has an advanced penchant for sleek ear candy that makes Cross Country uncommonly listenable. One listen to his homage to his hometown, “County Line” built around a sample of Sylvia’s glossy 1983 hit “Nobody,” and you’re instantly hooked. Beyond its catchy lope is its warm lyric “I went to high school with half of these heathens/Yeah it’s a small town ain’t nobody leavin’ /Yeah it’s a rough crowd but they’re my kinda people.” Similar melodic triumphs include the gospel rave “Praise the Lord” whose chorus blends the sacred and secular with lyrics like “Praise the Lord/ For Southern women Hemi engines/Crispy chicken” resolved by “Praise the Lord that I got everything I want and need and more,” and tongue-in-cheek odes to lust such as “Thick” and “Throw it Back” that blend in comfortably beside the latest trap hits.

Ultimately, Cross Country is a coming of age album whose slicker, trendier songs are upstaged by Breland’s innate sincerity. On the journeyman title track, harmonized with country musician Mickey Guyton, he recalls his past struggles to please his parents, fit in with peers, and learn how to be himself, and tells us he’s still searching.  The opener “Here for It” is a sweet natured anthem of support in which he assures a friend “You know I’m here for it/Got a whiskey and a beer for it/Or if you wanna have a dead sober/Head shoulder cry it out kind of night.”  He also delves into romantic angst on “I Told You I Could Drink” (sung with country group Lady A) which takes what could’ve been a cliché and connects it to a lover’s distorted image of him.   Comparatively, songs like “Growing Pains” and “Don’t Look at Me” are well-crafted but thematically familiar. These examples reflect Breland’s age in the sense that they might feel new for him because of a lack of exposure. The overall album suggests that with time he will deepen his gift for fusing melodicism with unique personal experiences as he does throughout much of this fine debut set. He is crafting his sophomore album as I write this and I look forward to the result.

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So how is Cowboy Carter?…..

Cowboy Carter is Beyoncé’s genre flex. It is apt that she posted on social media that her new set is not a “country album” but a “Beyoncé album.” In this case that means unerring eclecticism anchored by a sense of humor and a shadiness to those who have tried to confine her. As the second album in her trilogy, kicked off with Renaissance, she pointedly lists the “I”s in her songs as “II”s. From the anthemic tunes that open and close the album (“American Requiem,” “Amen”) to the rollicking surf anthem (“Ya Ya”) to the classical vocal flourishes in “Daughter” she is very consciously stretching the boundaries of what people expect, and then some. And you know what—it works. 

As a person who enjoys her best-known hits and recognizes her iconicity but is not a member of the Hive Cowboy took me on a very enjoyable ride. While her diehard fans are already convinced of her greatness she makes it clear repeatedly that she can add her own stink to a classic like Dolly Parton’s “Jolene,” whose lyrics she tweaks to suit her persona, and harmonize with the most unlikely of sources (Miley Cyrus on II Most Wanted” and Post Malone on “Levii’s Jeans”) and make it work. Among the country flavored tunes “Texas Hold ‘Em,” already a chart-topping hit, is the most successful by virtue of her gift for melody, beat, and pop songcraft. She is not just a writer-singer-producer but a student of pop music period. While each song feels carefully curated some of the more casual tracks like “Bodyguard” feel so effortlessly melodic they’re disarming.

Her gift for baiting a hook grabs your attention at precisely the moments an album of this length might flag. For example, toward the end of the album her chant “Bounce on the shit/Dance” adds a mantra like quality to the already throbbing “Riverdance.” Similarly, on the incessantly catchy “Ya Ya” she inverts the Beach Boys’s classic “Good Vibrations” into something as genre-defying as veteran Black country singer Linda Martell declares in its spoken word intro. “Sweet*Honey*Buckiin” a collaboration with rapper Shaboozey is equally raucous and inventive. More of a musical movement than a single song it begins by interpolating melodic fragments from Patsy Cline’s classic “I Fall to Pieces” over a distorted guitar and a backbeat then transforming into a stomper then a sweet lush ballad then back to the backbeat. An ambitious an eye-opening approach that awakens you right before the album concludes.

Though Beyoncé is a gifted singer with a flexible voice and a talent for unusual phrasing and syncopations her talent differs from the powerhouse vocal style of inspirations like Whitney and Mariah, and peers like Adele. Her approach to album making is more conceptual and denser in texture. There is an intentional everything-but-the-kitchen-sink element to Cowboy Carter making it less of a singular coherent statement, by design, than a kaleidoscope of musical styles full of textures, harmonies, fragments, and voices giving it a quilt like quality. Whether enlisting Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, or rising country song queens like Brittney Spencer and Tanner Adell (on her cover of the Beatles “Blackbiird”) she anchors the set which wants you to laugh, cry, dance, and think, sometimes all at once and it mostly works. A few tracks, like the standard trap tune “Tyrant” or the sincere but familiar parental sentiments of “Protector,” have a work(wo)man like quality but neither detracts from the album’s intimate vibe.

In drama the mantra of “show me don’t tell me” prevails. In that regard the notion that America’s obsession with its past glory glosses over the darker parts of its history unites the opening “American Requiem” with the closer “Amen.” These are her most political songs yet and they make their points eloquently. Over 78 minutes the music shows you no amount of historical revisionism (“The statues they made were beautiful/ But they were lies of stone”) and distortion can dampen what Black people are capable of creating and achieving. When she sings, “American Requiem/Them old ideas/Yeah/Are buried here/Yeah/Amen” you hear her loud and clear.

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