One more musical success for Beyoncé. According to the Billboard website, which is due to publish its detailed ranking on Monday, the star's latest album, "Cowboy Carter", 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 release of “1989 (Taylor's Version)” from another mega star, Taylor Swift, with 1.6 million albums sold as of November 11, 2023.
Also read “Cowboy Carter”: Beyoncé fans claim songs are missing on the vinyl of the star’s new 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", "Cowboy Carter" is a powerful tribute to the global pop and R&B star, with African-American origins in country, a genre today dominated by white and male artists.
In 27 tracks, the album, the second act of his musical trilogy “Renaissance”, also gives pride of place to dance, soul and hip-hop. It was widely praised by critics.
A Beatles cover praised by Paul McCartney
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 rights movement civic by integrating a high school reserved for white students, during the era of segregation in the South of the 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" on his website.