Here’s A Possible Explanation Behind Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ Album Title

Earlier this week, Beyoncé revealed the name of her upcoming country album, Cowboy Carter. While the title may reflect both the album’s country music leanings and Beyoncé’s married name (courtesy of Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter), fans who did a little digging unearthed another potential meaning behind the phrase.

This information comes by way of a TikTok creator’s deep dive, so take it with a grain of salt as stan social media is rife with conspiracy theories and “explanations” about our favorite artists that often come to nothing. But according to this creator, there could be a deep meaning associated with the phrase “Cowboy Carter.”

One of the earliest country music acts to rise to stardom was The Carter Family from Virginia. Their recordings, made from 1927 to 1956, were among the first to become commercially successful and also influenced country, bluegrass, folk, and more for decades to come.

The group’s patriarch, A.P. Carter, traveled around southwestern Virginia to find new songs after the success of their first recordings in 1930. He befriended a Black guitar player from Tennessee named Lesley “Esley” Riddle, who composed a number of the group’s songs, and his guitar technique was adopted by Maybelle Carter. That technique eventually became known as “the Carter scratch,” which is about how things work in America — if you know, you know.

Now, if this all sounds like a stretch, that’s probably because it is, but that also doesn’t mean it can’t be a little bit true. Ultimately, this fan theory is based in a belief that Beyoncé’s upcoming album will be an attempt on her part to reclaim the history of Black musicians’ influence on country music, the way Renaissance did for electronic dance music originally pioneered by Black, queer DJs in warehouse raves across urban America.

While Beyoncé might not have been thinking specifically about Esley Riddle when she named “Act II” Cowboy Carter, she certainly was thinking of a rich history that has been whitewashed by generations of effort on the part of radio DJs, record executives, and music historians who either ignored, overlooked, or erased Black artists’ contributions to a genre and American culture.

Cowboy Carter is out on March 29 via Parkwood and Columbia.