Beyonce goes Country with help from Dolly Parton... and I love it! ADRIAN THRILLS reviews the pop icon's Cowboy Carter album as she goes back to her rodeo roots

Beyonce: Cowboy Carter

Verdict: Back to her rodeo roots

Rating:

Having established herself as one of the world's biggest popstars, Beyonce Knowles is now adding another string – a twangy one, made in Nashville – to her mighty bow. 

Cowboy Carter is her first full-length foray into country music and, to ram home the point, the album sleeve depicts her as a Stetson-wearing rodeo queen perched (side-saddle) atop a great white horse. 

'Got folks down in Galveston, rooted in Louisiana,' she drawls on Ameriican Requiem (the unusual spelling is hers). 

'They used to say I spoke too country.' 

It's an opening gambit that sets the tone for an epic, 80-minute gallop through American musical history that sometimes feels more like a series of themes from a Western-orientated stage blockbuster than a pop album – but raises the bar high all the same. 

Texas-born Beyonce, 42, made her name with slick R&B trio Destiny's Child, but her earliest musical memories involved visiting the Houston Rodeo, where she was exposed to country music, folk and 1950s rhythm and blues. 

She sang there four times, and took inspiration from southern fashion and culture as much as music. 

Cowboy Carter certainly boasts a kaleidoscopic array of sounds. 

Rather than the electronic dance rhythms that fuelled 2022's Renaissance, we have gentle acoustic strumming, pedal steel guitar, accordion, harmonica, washboard, fiddle and banjo. 

There are handclaps, boot stomps on wooden floors… and Beyonce's long nails as a percussion instrument. 

This isn't a wholly country record. The genre-hopping singer is keen to point out it's simply 'a Beyonce album' and – amid the yee-haws and fiddles – there are steps into country rock and reminders of her background in R&B and dance. 

Its southern credentials are enhanced by appearances from Nashville grandees Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton, but she stamps her own identity forcefully throughout. 

At the core is that powerful, versatile voice. She shines on acoustic hoedown Texas Hold 'Em and, at the other extreme, delivers a harmony-soaked cover of Paul McCartney's Blackbird from The Beatles' White Album, which was partly inspired by racial segregation in 1960s America. 

Dolly Parton's spoken-word interlude ('Hey miss Honey B, it's Dolly P') precedes a version of the country icon's classic Jolene. 

The clear template here is Whitney Houston's powerhouse 1992 cover of Ms Parton's I Will Always Love You, and Beyonce doesn't disappoint, adding lyrical and musical twists. 

Cowboy Carter loses some sharpness as it enters the home straight. 

Ya Ya opens with a sample of Nancy Sinatra's These Boots Are Made For Walkin' and veers off into The Beach Boys' Good Vibrations, while dance track II Hands II Heaven could be an out-take from Renaissance. 

But you can't fault its ambition. 'The joy of creating music is that there are no rules,' says Beyonce. 

If there were any doubts as to her latest exercise in confounding expectations, she dispels them in the best way possible – by co -writing some superb songs and delivering them with dazzling aplomb.