Beyoncê (real name Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter) is wildly popular, but it’s a popularity I find baffling. I have listened to a fair amount of her music, trying to understand the key to her musical fame—perhaps the use of catchy tunes or inventive lyrics—but I have come up dry.

Beyoncé - Wikipedia

It is, as modern rock and pop tends to be, formulaic and trite. But most such music vanishes without a trace, yet forgettable songs like hers get Grammys. 35 of them!

Take, for example, song below, “Texas Hold Em”, the flagship song of her recent Grammy-winning album, “Cowboy Carter.”  As Wikipedia notes:

Music critics praised “Texas Hold ‘Em” for its playful tone, authentic sound, Beyoncé’s vocal performance, and its celebration of the Black roots of country music. Country artists and country radio managers also praised the song for elevating the accessibility of country music for a wider audience.

It ignited discussions on Black musicians’ place within country music, boosted the listenership of Black country artists and country radio in general, and increased the popularity of Western wear and culture.

It was nominated for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Country Song at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards.

I am stymied. The “playful tone” involves rhyming words like “Texas” and “Lexus”, and it is not in any sense authentic country music: it just uses country tropes and a country rhythm to convey essentially meaningless sentiments. I suspect the vocal performance is autotuned. The only part I like is the banjo introduction.

The song is a failed attempt to meld two genres, but the critics love. love, love it.  As for igniting interest in black country music, well, this is not black country music (see Charlie Pride for that); it is standard pop music striving to be countrified. It’s like putting a drop of Cointreau in a cocktail and calling it French.

But listen for yourself. Is this a song for the ages? I don’t think so.

Here are the lyrics, and—please forgive me—they seem so incompetent and ham-handed that I laughed when I read them. The first verse, with its risible rhyming of “Texas” and “Lexus”, is especially rich. Likewise rhyming “panic” and “dramatic.” I’ve put the dumbest lines in bold:
Lyrics
This ain’t Texas (woo), ain’t no hold ’em (hey)So lay your cards down, down, down, downSo park your Lexus (woo) and throw your keys up (hey)Stick around, ’round, ’round, ’round, ’round (stick around)And I’ll be damned if I can’t slow dance with youCome pour some sugar on me, honey tooIt’s a real life boogie and a real life hoedownDon’t be a bitch, come take it to the floor now, woo, huh (woo)
There’s a tornado (there’s a tornado) in my city (in my city)Hit the basement (hit the basement), that shit ain’t pretty (shit ain’t pretty)Rugged whiskey (rugged whiskey) ’cause we survivin’ (’cause we survivin’)Off red cup kisses, sweet redemption, passin’ time, yeah
Ooh, one step to the rightWe headin’ to the dive bar we always thought was niceOoh, run me to the leftThen spin me in the middle, boy, I can’t read your mind
This ain’t Texas (woo), ain’t no hold ’em (hey)So lay your cards down, down, down, downSo park your Lexus (woo) and throw your keys up (hey)Stick around, ’round, ’round, ’round, ’round (stick around)And I’ll be damned if I can’t slow dance with youCome pour some sugar on me, honey tooIt’s a real life boogie and a real life hoedownDon’t be a bitch, come take it to the floor now (woo)
And I’ll be damned if I cannot dance with youCome pour some liquor on me, honey tooIt’s a real life boogie and a real life hoedownDon’t be a bitch, come take it to the floor now (woo)
Woo-hooWoo-hooWoo-hoo
There’s a heatwave (there’s a heatwave) coming at us (coming at us)Too hot to think straight (too hot to think straight)Too cold to panic (cold to panic)All of the problems just feel dramatic (just feel dramatic)And now we’re runnin’ to the first spot that we find, yeah
Ooh, one step to the rightWe headed to the dive bar we always thought was niceOoh, you run to the leftJust work me in the middle, boy, I can’t read your mind
This ain’t Texas (woo), ain’t no hold ’em (hey)So lay your cards down, down, down, down, ohSo park your Lexus (hey), throw your keys up (hey)Stick around, ’round, ’round, ’round, ’round (stick around)And I’ll be damned if I cannot dance with youCome pour some sugar on me, honey, tooIt’s a real life boogie and a real life hoedownDon’t be a bitch, come take it to the floor now (woo)
And I’ll be damned if I cannot dance with youCome pour some liquor on me honey, tooIt’s a real life boogie and a real life hoedownDon’t be a-, come take it to the floor now, ooh
Take it to the floor now, oohHoops, spurs, bootsTo the floor now, oohTuck, back, oops (ooh, ooh, ooh)ShootCome take it to the floor now, oohAnd I’ll be damned if I cannot dance with youBaby, pour that sugar and liquor on me tooFurs, spurs, bootsSolargenic, photogenic, shoot
Unlike some of the hard-to-understand songs of, say, Steely Dan, these are just a bunch of fragmentary thoughts strung together, and one sense there’s no message beneath them.
Now some of her songs, like “Lemonade”, do tell a story (in that case, the unfaithfulness of her partner), but I find the music lame.  And while words can be lame in a song that’s nevertheless good, it is good because of the music.

But is there a greater meaning here?  A site purporting to give this “meaning” resorts almost completely to simply reiterating what Texas tropes appear in the lyrics. For example (lyrics in bold; dodo’s interpretation in plain text):

“There’s a tornado (There’s a tornado) in my city (In my city)
In the basement (In the basement), that shit ain’t pretty (Shit ain’t pretty)
Rugged whiskey (Rugged whiskey) ’cause we survivin’ (‘Cause we survivin’)
Off red cup kisses, sweet redemption, passin’ time, yeah”

Texas has more tornadoes passing through it than any other US state, and here, Beyoncé regales the listener with a tale of how a twister has forced her and her partner underground.

She subsequently paints a visceral picture of a crude, sparse setting, as they resolve to get through the violent weather with the help of country music’s No. 1 – or perhaps more accurately, No. 7 – painkiller: some good old Jack Daniels whiskey.

Beyoncé throws in another country trope by referencing the red solo cups that regularly pop up in Friday night anthems by the likes of Luke Combs, Morgan Wallen and more.

“Ooh, one step to the right
We headin’ to the dive bar we always thought was nice
Ooh, run me to the left
Then spin me in the middle, boy, I can’t read your mind”

Here, Beyoncé details some of the moves as she guides her hesitant partner through the dance in their local dive, putting him at ease. She again underlines her hopes that he’ll open up to her more, as she frustratedly highlights how she can’t read his mind.

The Brand and Business of Beyoncé

Well, isn’t that special?  I wanted to listen to this song again, for the fourth or fifth time, before I posted this, but I find I can’t bear to hear it again. If any reader wants to tell me why this is such a great song, I’ll be glad to hear it—but I doubt I’ll agree.

I’m not alone in my criticism here; just read the Washington Post‘s article, “Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ isn’t a country album. It’s worse.”

This is an album that posits its lack of ideas as big ideas. Only in its final seconds, when Beyoncé sings about how “old ideas are buried here,” does “Cowboy Carter” start to feel less like an extravagant awards telecast, and more like a clear-eyed comment on the state of the nation — a grand, sprawling, overcrowded place with nowhere else to go.

Freddie deBoer  gives us what I think is the main reason why Beyoncé is so lauded (his piece is largely about Kendrick Lamar, but the lessons apply). The bolding is mine:

We’re left in this bizarre space where no one is willing to flourish, to succeed, without simultaneously calling themselves an underdog, their talents unrecognized and their tastes disrespected. This is planet “Nobody believed in me!,” and facts never get in the way.

Thus, to pick a paradigmatic example, we still get a thousand thinkpieces a year arguing that Beyonce is terribly mistreated and overlooked – Beyonce, a billionaire with the most Grammys in history, every other kind of award that humanity has to bestow, influence in every sphere of human achievement, multiple films and books about her genius, every material, social, artistic, and cultural laurel we as a society can give.

Look how fucking long this list of awards is! The only human being on earth who enjoys a combination of celebration and wealth and access and privilege and power that equals that of Beyonce is Taylor Swift, and both are constantly referred to as disrespected and marginalized underdogs in our most prestigious publications.

Beyonce has thirty-five Grammys. What would be enough? Seventy? Seven hundred? Honey, the whole point is that nothing could ever be good enough for her.

Indeed, the evidence that Beyonce is an immensely lauded human being is so vast that this kind of talk inspires an admonition I get a lot in my career – you’re right, but we don’t talk about that.

. . . . The idea that your moral value is determined by what you do has given way to the assumption that your moral value is determined by what you like. 

If you’re an aging dad who likes Sabrina Carpenter, you must be an open-minded and discerning feminist. And if you’re a white person who likes Kendrick Lamar, well, you must have all the right attitudes about race.

And so it is with Beyoncé. Calling her mediocre, as I just did, is just asking for vilification.