The 20 Best Albums of 2024 (So Far)
variety.comVariety‘s music staff — executive editor Jem Aswad, senior writer Steven J. Horowitz, associate editor Thania Garcia and senior writer/chief music critic Chris Willman — to playlist your summer and beyond.
In her artistic quest to reclaim traditional Black art forms, Beyoncé initially subsumed herself in the world of dance and house music on 2022’s “Renaissance,” a shimmering exploration of club culture and the sounds of queer abandon.
With “Cowboy Carter,” she turned to country — or Americana, however you choose to parse it — for a sprawling examination of ownership over genres and their demarcations.
In turn, “Cowboy Carter” smears the boundaries of what country music can be, in a way that the best country artists often do, careening from more dead-on interpretations (“Texas Hold ‘Em,” “Just for Fun”) to satiating approximations (“II Most Wanted”).
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