American music star Beyoncé's latest album,
Cowboy Carter
, topped the country album sales chart, a first for a black artist. According to the Billboard website, which is due to publish its detailed ranking this Monday, April 8, this is the eighth album in Beyoncé's career to reach first place in 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
1989 release (Taylor's Version)
of another mega star, Taylor Swift, with 1, 6 million albums sold in the ranking of November 11, 2023.
Read alsoCowboy Carter: Beyoncé releases her first country album
Announced on February 11 in the middle of the Super Bowl, the final of the American football championship, with the release of the singles
Texas Hold 'Em
, punctuated by the sound of the banjo and
16 Carriages
, the album
Cowboy Carter
is a powerful tribute to the world star of pop and R&B with the African-American origins of country, a genre today dominated by white and male artists. In 27 tracks, the album, the second act of his “Renaissance” musical trilogy, also gives pride of place to dance, soul and hip-hop. It was widely praised by critics.
Beyoncé covers, among others, the classic
Jolene
by 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 integrating a high school reserved for white students, during the era of segregation in the southern United States. The Beatles star applauded the cover, calling it
"a beautiful version that reinforces the civil rights message that inspired me to write this song."