
Cowboy Carter
Country
27 songs
2024
American Requiem
5:25
Blackbiird
2:11
16 Carriages
3:47
Protector
3:04
My Rose
0:53
Smoke Hour ★ Willie Nelson
0:50
Texas Hold 'Em'
3:53
American Requiem
5:25
Beyoncé, Raphael Saadiq & 10 more
Beyoncé, Jon Batiste & 6 more
‘AMERIICAN REQUIEM’ opens ‘COWBOY CARTER’ – Beyoncés eighth studio album and the second part of her trilogy project that began with the release of ‘RENAISSANCE’ in 2022.
The song “American Requiem” sets the stage by calling out the systemic racism that continues to oppress 60 years after the Civil Rights Movement.“Nothing really ends/ for things to stay the same, they have to change again/ Hello, my old friend/ You changed your name but not the way you play pretend/ American Requiem/ Them big ideas are buried here/ Amen.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates has described American whiteness as “an existential danger to the country and the world” and explains how white Christian Nationalism conflates a whiteness that “is neither national nor symbolic but is the very core of [its] power… But whereas [its] forebears carried whiteness like an ancestral talisman… [they have now] cracked the glowing amulet open, releasing its eldritch energies.” Similarly in “American Requiem,” Beyoncé calls on the listener to bury the “big ideas” of the past – born from colonization and systemic racism – and get ready for the truth she brings.
