Beyoncé country: How a shy girl from Texas became a cultural icon

You may know her as Bey, Queen B, Sasha Fierce or Bee – or, if you’re an ardent fan, as Mother. You may even be a proud member of the superfan community known as the Beyhive. But even the most casual observer is aware of her enormous impact on modern music. The question is, how did Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter go from a modest middle-class upbringing in Texas to become one of the most influential musical and cultural figures of her generation?

It’s not for nothing that the phrase “We all have the same 24 hours as Beyoncé” has made it on to mugs, fridge magnets and desks around the world as a motivational tool; the 42-year-old’s list of achievements is both exhausting and admirable. Now, as if to prove another point – or perhaps just to tick one of the few boxes that has so far remained unticked – Beyoncé is about to release a country album, Act II: Cowboy Carter.

Even when she was a teenager, it was clear that Beyoncé had what Simon Cowell would later refer to as the X-factor. Influenced by the likes of Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston and Tina Turner as a kid growing up on Rosedale Street in Houston, she wasn’t from a particularly musical family, however. Her mother, Tina, was a hairdresser and her father, Matthew, was a sales manager for Xerox who quit his job to manage his eldest daughter’s burgeoning career in Girls Tyme, an early version – formed when Beyoncé was eight – of the band that would become Destiny’s Child.

Darlette Johnson-Bailey, her childhood dance teacher, has recalled that the young Beyoncé was incredibly shy. “Backstage, she would hold on to me for dear life,” she said in 2018. “Beyoncé was quiet and reserved and didn’t say much, but on the dance floor she was a force to be reckoned with. And she had a golden voice.”

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Tina Knowles has confirmed her daughter’s shyness, recalling that they first realised there was something special about her when she sang John Lennon’s Imagine in a contest at the age of seven. “When she got onstage she was just a different kid; she was so confident and she looked so happy, and we were, like, ‘Who is that?’” she told Vanity Fair magazine. “After that there was no stopping her – she was obsessed.”

It was as a member of Destiny’s Child that the world first heard of Beyoncé Knowles. The girl group, who began as a four-piece before slimming down to a trio of Knowles, Michelle Williams and Kelly Rowland, formed in 1996 and released their self-titled debut two years later. In 1999 songs such as Bills, Bills, Bills and Say My Name, taken from their second album, The Writing’s on the Wall, were all over MTV and international radio; the album sold eight million copies and established them as a force to be reckoned with in the increasingly popular R&B-pop crossover scene.

Destiny’s Child became the world’s biggest-selling female group, scoring global hits with songs such as Survivor, Independent Women Part I, Emotion and Bootylicious. Still, something bigger was calling for Beyoncé – although it wasn’t until 2002 that she took her first steps toward a solo career, featuring on the Jay-Z track ’03 Bonnie & Clyde, from his album The Blueprint²: The Gift and the Curse. The song acted as a soft launch for the pair’s relationship. (They would marry, with little fanfare, in 2008.)

Jay-Z returned the favour by guesting on Crazy in Love, Beyoncé’s debut solo single, which became a smash hit – as did her 2003 debut album, Dangerously in Love. While her former Destiny’s Child bandmates went through the motions with their own solo careers, including Rowland’s brief time in the spotlight with the singles Dilemma and Stole, in 2002, it was clear that Beyoncé was the breakout star of the group.

Her second album, B’Day, followed in 2006, hot on the heels of the final Destiny’s Child album and after a period that Beyoncé spent establishing herself as an actor, with roles in Dreamgirls and The Pink Panther, among other films. I Am ... Sasha Fierce, her 2008 album, was her attempt at cultivating a Ziggy Stardust-style alter ego – all the best musical icons have one, after all. It spawned songs that remain some of the singer’s most enduring: If I Were a Boy, Halo and, above all, Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It), the song with the eternally parodied choreography that will drag even the most flat-footed dad on to the dance floor at weddings.

[ Beyoncé becomes first black woman to top Billboard’s Country songs chart with Texas Hold ‘Em ]

That song also set Beyoncé on the road to becoming a feminist icon to many. On 4, her 2011 album, she continued the theme with songs such as Run the World (Girls), while Flawless, a song from her self-titled album from 2014, incorporated a Ted Talk by the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie entitled We Should All Be Feminists. It was certainly a far cry from earlier material such as the Destiny’s Child song Cater 2 U, whose lyrics included such subservient lines as “You all I want in a man, I put my life in your hands/ I got your slippers, your dinner, your dessert and so much more.”

That eponymous release proved to be another big turning point in Beyoncé’s career. “That was her big pop album – so it really influenced me, in the sense that her vocals were immaculate on every song, there was a visual for every song, and it was just such well-written music,” says Jade Roche, the Dublin-born, London-based pop artist who performs under the name Pastiche. “I think that’s when Beyoncé transitioned from being an artist to a brand. She doesn’t even do interviews any more; she doesn’t do the standard stuff [that most big stars do]. Even the Renaissance tour [in 2023] was her first tour in a good while, so she really does her own thing.”

That 2014 album explored more personal themes for Beyoncé, including sexuality and lust on tracks such as Drunk in Love and Blow; relationship issues and Jay-Z’s infidelity on Jealous; and, in an allusion on Mine, postnatal depression following the birth of her daughter Blue Ivy. It established Beyoncé as a bona-fide superstar, one of the most important artists of her generation and one of the most influential black woman musicians of the 21st century – distinctions that she later explored and celebrated in the 2020 musical film Black Is King, a visual companion to The Lion King: The Gift soundtrack, which she co-wrote and directed.

“There is no summarising Beyoncé,” says the Irish photographer Bríd O’Donovan, who has been an obsessive fan since she was 11 and says that the star’s work ethic has hugely influenced her own creative process. “There is no denying she was born to do what she does, and how hard she has worked to become a master in her industry is so inspiring. As a live performer, no one does it better: sing phenomenally, dance phenomenally and be the visionary that makes her live shows visually and conceptually cohesive. She gives every single performance 110 per cent, and that’s why we are all so devoted to her. She is so incredibly captivating on stage.”

“We’re taught that you have to be the young, new, fresh thing – and if you’re not, especially as a woman, you’re kind of useless,” adds Pastiche. “So being in my mid-20s and seeing how Beyoncé has reinvented herself time and time again – and killed it every time – without age being a factor at all has been really inspiring.”

In 2016 the singer’s next studio album, Lemonade, was accompanied by a 65-minute film, marking the importance of the visual in her overarching creative vision. That album’s lyrical content delved deeper into the fallout from Jay-Z’s infidelity and led to feverish speculation about the identity of “Becky with the good hair”, in the song Sorry.

O’Donovan is correct, though: it is Beyoncé’s pristine, powerhouse live performances that have elevated her above her peers. Her appearance at the 2013 Super Bowl was hailed by many as the event’s best halftime show. Her jaw-dropping headline set at Coachella in 2018 was documented in the 2019 film Homecoming, which has been cited as one of the best concert films of all time. And even though Irish fans were forced to go overseas to see her recent Renaissance tour, after she unforgivably skipped Ireland, they travelled in their droves. O’Donovan went to Stockholm to see it, and “it was beyond anything I could have imagined”, she says. “I’m 35, and I have been going to gigs since I was 16. To have that feeling of sheer excitement and wonder, like I was a teenager again, was unparalleled.”

Perhaps one of the most remarkable aspects of Beyoncé’s success is her rise to becoming one of the most influential musical artists of the 21st century with a minimum of scandal or salacious headlines. Even her announcement that she was pregnant with twins was carefully curated, with a tasteful photograph of the veiled star surrounded by flowers.

That said, she has hit some speed bumps along the way. Last year she was criticised after she was paid a reported $24 million to perform a private concert in Dubai – a country that outlaws homosexuality – despite celebrating and pilfering from queer club culture on Renaissance. And of course there was the infamous CCTV footage from a hotel elevator after the Met Gala in 2014, in which Beyoncé’s sister Solange attacks Jay-Z; the incident was later brushed off with a collective statement saying that they have “moved forward as a united family”.

Beyoncé has also proven herself a canny businesswoman, aligning, among other brands, with Adidas for her Ivy Park clothing range and, most recently, launching a haircare brand, Cécred. At the end of 2023 Forbes magazine estimated her wealth at $800 million, or about €730 million, including earnings of $100 million, after tax, from her Renaissance world tour, and a property portfolio, owned with Jay-Z, that is worth more than $300 million. (At $200 million, the couple’s 40,000sq ft Malibu mansion is reportedly the most expensive home in California history.)

Now the singer’s sense of musical inquisitiveness has led us to this most unexpected of junctures: country-inspired music, as heard on the album’s first two singles, Texas Hold ’Em and 16 Carriages. The accompanying Instagram teaser was influenced by the film Paris, Texas and featured a Chuck Berry track – and there’s even an Irish link to Texas Hold ’Em, as the Limerick-based Grammy winner Rhiannon Giddens plays banjo on the track.

So what can we expect of Cowboy Carter? As its name suggests, the second in Beyoncé’s three-album Renaissance cycle pays homage to the often-overlooked fact that many cowboys in the 19th and early 20th centuries were black. The stage designer Es Devlin, who worked with the singer on the Renaissance tour, told British Vogue recently that the star was inspired to delve into the black roots of country music following her initial foray into the genre on the song Daddy Lessons, from Lemonade; the backlash (much of it racist) following her appearance with The Chicks at the Country Music Awards in 2016 only seems to have strengthened Beyoncé’s resolve to pursue the genre more purposefully.

Beyoncé confirmed this in an Instagram post on Tuesday. “It was born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed ... and it was very clear that I wasn’t,” she wrote. “But, because of that experience, I did a deeper dive into the history of country music and studied our rich musical archive ... The criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me.” The album, she added, is a “result of challenging myself, and taking my time to bend and blend genres together”.

“When it was announced she was doing a country album, a lot of people were very protective of it, saying, ‘She can’t come in and invade our space,’” says Pastiche. “There was even a radio station” – KYKC, in Oklahoma – “that refused to play Texas Hold ’Em because they didn’t consider it ‘proper’ country music. But I think, with Beyoncé, anything she does, she does so well – and she’ll do it just to show them that she can.”

With “a few surprises” and collaborations promised, even Dolly Parton has given the project her blessing. Could one of those revelations be a cover of one of the queen of country’s most iconic tracks? “I think she’s recorded Jolene and I think it’s probably gonna be on her country album, which I’m very excited about,” she told the Knoxville News Sentinel this month.

Whatever happens, Beyoncé looks set to remain an enduring inspiration for a generation of musicians by simply continuing to make music on her own terms. One of them, Lizzo, perhaps put it best when she told Elle magazine: “She doesn’t just put out music for the sake of putting out music – there’s going to be something real, you know what I mean? A teachable moment. Every time I hear her, it’s like, ‘Man, I want to make people feel this way. How can I make people feel this way, too?’”

With Act III still to come, it sounds as if there may be many surprises yet to come from Beyoncé, even if she insists that “this ain’t a country album – this is a ‘Beyoncé’ album.” If Garth Brooks has proved anything, it’s that Irish audiences love any excuse for a hoedown – so next time, Bey, make sure your tour stops on Irish shores. It’s what glittery cowboy hats were made for, after all.

Cowboy Carter is released by RCA Records on Friday, March 29th