Beyonce topped Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart with “Cowboy Carter,” which also debuted in the number one spot on the Billboard 200 country music chart and has sold more albums in 2024 than any others.
The 42-year-old pop singer’s foray into country music was released on March 29 debuting with 407,000 equivalent album units, as of the week ending April 4, Billboard magazine reported.
The singer also topped the Americana/Folk Albums and Top Album Sales charts with “Cowboy Carter,” that brings her version of such famed songs as Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” and Paul McCartney’s “Blackbird,” the outlet noted.
“Cowboy Carter” gave Beyonce her biggest week, by units, since the release of her “Lemonade” album in 2016, which debuted in No. 1 with 653,000 units (mostly from traditional album sales). Her latest, has also given the pop star her biggest streaming week ever and she became the first black woman ever to lead the Top Country Albums list, dating back to January 1964, when it launched.
With ‘Cowboy Carter,’ @Beyonce Becomes First Black Woman to Lead Top Country Albums Chart https://t.co/Tb8Y8SqtEq
— billboard (@billboard) April 8, 2024
“Cowboy Carter” claimed the biggest week for a country album, by units, since Taylor Swift’s release of “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version),” which opened in July last year with 716,000 units.
The new album became Beyonce’s eighth No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, breaking her out of a tie with Janet Jackson now with the fourth-most toppers among women. It brings her closer to beating Madonna with nine, Barbra Streisand’s 11, and Swift who leads with 12, Variety magazine noted.
Beyonce’s country album includes songs like “Texas Hold’ Em,” “16 Carriages,” and the remake of Parton’s 1973 hit “Jolene.” However, it is Beyonce’s cover of Parton’s song that has generated more headlines than any of her other new songs on the album.
Daily Wire podcast host Matt Walsh said on his April 1 show, “What makes this song unique and interesting, which has caused it to resonate over the five decades since it’s been made, is the vulnerability, and the heartbreak, and the longing in the lyrics and the performance.” Walsh said the insecurity of the main character in Parton’s song is what makes her so relatable. The fact that Beyoncé chose to strip it away made the song demonstrably worse.
Daily Wire host Michael Knowles went even deeper, saying that Beyoncé’s “Jolene” was a statement on how modern society views marriage, divorce, and starting over after two decades of marriage.
“Women have a special power,” Knowles says. “They have a seductive power to them. That’s real. You gotta be on guard, if you’re the wife, if you’re Dolly Parton, or if you’re the husband. We deny all this though. We deny it at our peril. Is it any wonder that the thing that’s supposed to be protected, the marriage, the family, is falling apart?”
Amanda Harding contributed to this piece.