‘Cowboy Carter’, Beyoncé’s country album, tops US sales charts

Queen Bey sets a new record by becoming the first female and black artist to be at the top of the “country” ranking produced by the specialized magazine “Billboard”.

The latest album from American music star Beyoncé, Cowboy Carter, rose to the top of the sales ranking which refers to the United States “Billboard 200” and to the top of the ranking for the country genre, a first for a black artist.

According to the Billboard website, which is due to publish its detailed ranking on Monday April 8, this is the eighth album in Beyoncé’s career to reach first place in sales.

Historical sales

With the equivalent of 407,000 copies sold in the week ending April 4, Cowboy Carter achieves the best performance of 2024, and the best since the release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) by another mega star, Taylor Swift, with 1.6 million albums sold as of November 11, 2023.

Announced on February 11 in the middle of the Super Bowl, the final of the American football championship, with the release of the titles Texas Hold ‘Empunctuated by the sound of the banjo, and 16 Carriages, Cowboy Carter is a powerful tribute from the global pop and R&B star to the African-American origins of country, a genre today dominated by white, male artists.

Famous covers

In 27 pieces, the album, second act of his musical trilogy Renaissance, also gives pride of place to dance, soul and hip-hop. It was widely praised by critics.

Beyoncé covers, among other things, the classic Jolene of absolute country star Dolly Parton as well as Blackbird by the Beatles, a song composed by Paul McCartney in the 1960s about nine black teenagers who became icons of the civil rights movement by joining a high school reserved for white students, during the era of segregation in the South of the United States . The Beatles star applauded the revival with a salute on his website “a beautiful version that reinforces the civil rights message that inspired me to write this song.”