Despite the wealth of issues that large parts of America have with Cowboy Carter (the album, this tour) or whatever it was meant to stand for, one thing remained clear in the rain, the mist and the breezy cold of the sold-out MetLife Stadium: Nearly 90,000 wet Beyoncé fans decked out in western wear can’t be wrong.
For anyone (like me) who has witnessed every Beyoncé tour since the end of Destiny’s Child, the Cowboy Carter And The Rodeo Chitlin’ Circuit Tour isn’t different than the last or the last before that, save for its shifts in imagery. Disco balls for horseshoes, metal for fringe, silver for gold, Studio 54 mares for mechanical bulls. Like the album this tour is named for, Cowboy Carter isn’t as much a deep country experience as it is a Beyoncé experience, despite her Houston-born bona fides and line dances.
The Beyoncé experience pretty much starts, then, with the might of her vocals, the manner in which she manipulates quickly progressing shifts in rhythm as a singer and movement artist, and how explosively and inventively she and her musicians, dancers and voguers entertain. Because Bey and her troupe do manage to wildly entertain in a broad way for their stadium setting—and without skipping the little things and quiet nuances.
That means, little things like the Fosse-esque use of eyes, fingers and wrists in the most minimal fashion to express the physicality of “dance,” not to mention nuances such as the slowly stewing, clearly enunciated operatics of “Daughter” and its interpolation of 18th-century Italian aria “Caro Mio Ben.” If you can do that in the chill of an evening with your hair blowing in your mouth while decked out in an electric-horseman dress of changing-color lights, you win. She wins. She won.
Though ripe with socio-political commentary—lighting her cigar with a Statue Of Liberty, wearing a newsprint-covered outfit for a ferocious “America Has A Problem,” a constantly running Greek chorus of voices talking the headlines—these moments of the Cowboy Carter live showcase aren’t what made the concert great. Nor did the display of her children make it great. (Despite it being odd to see Blue Ivy, right behind her mom onstage, looking exactly Bey-like.)
A constantly motoring, snarling, cooing, crooning, shouting Beyoncé singing rhythm-changing, singularly Beyoncé songs is what made this show epic. And without genre-classification.
The Cowboy Carter show is hardly a rodeo, despite the country line dances, the mechanical bull-riding during “Tyrant” and sailing through the air atop a giant horseshoe during her growly remake of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.” (Bey also did the Beatles’ “Blackbird” as a gently folkish ballad, performed a rousingly funky take on Frankie Beverly’s “Before I Let Go,” infused her own jittery “Crazy In Love” with Cassidy’s “I’m A Hustla” and covered “The Star-Spangled Banner.”)
Moments from the album of the same name such as the country funk of “Desert Eagle,” a stompy “Riiverdance” a lushly beautiful “II Hands II Heaven” and the hillbilly trap of “Tyrant” unfurled in one bracing mash-up. Presenting a dense and damning “Texas Hold ’Em” before smash hits such as “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It),” “Irreplaceable” and “Love On Top” turned it into an equally anthemic track and a sure-fire signature going forward. “Thique” was swollen with sensuality. The robotic electronics of “Alien Superstar” merged voguing ballroom metaphysics with dazz-disco funk. “If I Were A Boy,” like “Daughter,” proved that despite all of her Cowboy Carter concert’s kinetic motion, Beyoncé’s powerful, swerving, curling vocals were the warmful, soulful eye of a chilly, cutting storm.
Yee-hah.
—A.D. Amorosi
