There has never been a better time to be a Yeehaw Queen. A little over a week ago, Beyoncé released Cowboy Carter, a 27-track-long Tennessee whiskey-infused opus. A few weeks before that, fellow Texan Kacey Musgraves released her emotionally and sonically soothing album Deeper Well. And many months before that, Luke Combs released a yeehaw cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” which admittedly, I think has had less of a cultural impact but, regardless, has had a profound impact on me personally. All this combined, Country music and Yeehaw Culture is having a moment.
My Yeehaw Return started with a bag. I was sitting with my mom as she was cleaning out her closet when she pulled out a black leather saddle bag. The leather was still glossy and stiff. The silver rivets holding it together gleamed. Deep paisley-like swirls were embossed on the front. But the main design element was a leather panel that came over the front of the bag revealing a miniature saddle that sat at the top. The little saddle had similar swirly embossing and additional brown suede patches. I had never seen anything like it.
My mom explained that the purse had been a gift from my paternal Grandfather, a figure in my family who was/is dearly loved but one I didn’t have the privilege of knowing. He gave it to my mom before she and my dad made a trip to Zacatecas (my father’s family’s home state in Mexico) because he knew all the girls there were wearing them. My Grandpa assumed that my mom would want to be spotted in Mexico in the latest local fashions and thought the purse would be an easy way for her to do that without getting a completely new wardrobe. But despite the best of intentions, the bag could not be further from my mother’s tastes. She said she used the bag during the trip and tucked it away in the closet we were excavating. “Can I have it?” I asked. She chuckled and asked me if I seriously liked it. I seriously did. “If you like it, you can have it,” she responded skeptically as she handed it over. The purse has been mine ever since.
Over the years, I’ve worked to add more and more Western wear into my wardrobe, seeking to strengthen my connection to a culture and a place I am removed from. I have not been back to Mexico since childhood, and even then, I’ve never visited the specific places where my family comes from. I hear about the Sonoran desert my maternal grandmother came from – the smell, the sting of moonshine made there, the taste of carne asada made there – from my family members. I’ve been told a few times that I look like I’m from Zacatecas, and I often wonder what that means and if when I go there, I will recognize myself. I look at old photos, hang on to the items given to me, listen to the music that’s been with me since childhood, and make a Mexico for myself. For me, Yeehaw aesthetics and Country as a genre have been integral to expressing more nuanced parts of my identity by calling into focus the places, customs, and tastes that make up my cultural home. It’s silly, but I think the truest version of me is the one that comes out when I’m wearing my cowboy boots and hat.
Similarly, in a broader musical landscape, when a pop artist “goes country,” it often signals an attempt to reveal a more vulnerable, stripped-down, and holistic version of the artist. Artists leverage the humility of country music, a genre that historically belongs to poor/working-class white folks, to refashion themselves as similarly simplistic and motivated by what really matters: God, family, love, and a brewski with the boys. It’s the simple life, which is to say, one that relies on a shedding of the ego and *most* of the materialistic pleasures of this sinful world. Artists can reveal the truest version of themselves by “going country” and giving up the trappings of wealth and even mainstream popularity.
Ironically, though, Cowboy Carter is so maximalist (again, 27 tracks long) in its scope that you cannot in any way describe it as humble or simple. Given the samples and amount of artists she’s collaborated with on the project, the cost of creating this album alone makes clear that money is no object. Having Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton, the coolest and most beloved icons of Country Music, not only grants her a kind of credibility in the genre but makes clear that if even legends want to work with her, she is undeniably a legend in her own rank. The album is also interested in using the cultural power of Beyoncé to cement the place and impact Black people have and have always had in country music. This country album is not running away from money, ego, or fame but leveraging all of it to affirm that she and other Black artists have every right to call country music theirs and make it home. As with most Black cultural production, this album is not about reclaiming what was taken but maintaining claims to something that was never up for the taking.
But if country music has always been Black, and Beyoncé herself has always been Country, how does this project fit into a legacy of return that “going country” represents?
Cowboy Carter was spurred by the backlash to Beyoncé’s performance of “Daddy Lessons” with The Chicks at the Country Music Awards in 2016. Footage from the event captures some audience members watching the performance with disdain, and online responses ran the gamut from explicitly racist to more coded but still racist comments about her appearance, credibility, and worthiness of Country’s biggest stage. In an Instagram post introducing the cover art for Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé wrote in the caption, “The criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me,” narrating her departure and return to the genre. Unlike other artists who turn to the genre to signal a return to a more fundamental version of themselves, Beyoncé's return to country is about signaling a change to what fundamentally defines the genre. “For things to stay the same, they have to change again,” she sings in “American Requiem,” the album's opening track. “Hello, my old friend,” she sings right after, making clear that country as a genre itself is on a journey of return, finding its true home through her careful stewardship.
Although Deeper Well is much quieter than Cowboy Carter, Musgraves is similarly interested in returning to the genre that was always hers. Musgraves’s last album, Star Crossed, was a decidedly pop album that some fans took to mean that she intended to cross over fully. The album came quickly after her divorce from fellow singer and frequent collaborator Ruston Kelly and, to me, showed many cracks in the emotional foundation she was building from. The way people feel about some artists going country was how I felt about Kacey Musgraves going pop. I was skeptical, not because I don’t think she could do well in the genre, but because this version of her felt so unlike the witty, introspective, and ultimately hopeful artist I had come to know and love.
“I was in a weird place,” she admits in the song “The Architect” toward the end of Deeper Well. The album’s overall folksy and stipped-down acoustics mirror the usual return to country sound we might be used to. But what is new is how we hear Musgraves take accountability for herself. She doesn’t blame money or fame for her problems but seeks to acknowledge how she’s used what’s available to her often to her detriment. “I used to wake and bake/ Roll out of bed, hit the gravity bong that I made,” she tells us before revealing, “Everything I did seemed better when I was high / I don’t know why.” The lines are not to be interpreted as Musgraves being anti-drug use but rather as a close analysis of her relationships to drugs. Much of the album follows Musgraves as she examines her relationships with vices and superficial pleasures that ultimately don’t serve her. It’s an exercise in honesty and an earnest effort toward growing up. In many ways, the album feels like her own serenity prayer, asking for acceptance, courage, and wisdom as she navigates and undergoes change.
Like Beyoncé in “American Requiem,” Musgraves suggests that change is integral to return. Across Deeper Well, we hear her confront her growth limits and articulate a desire and need for release to get back to the emotional places that ground and nourish her. But what I so appreciate about Musgraves's approach is her intent on bring what she’s learned out in the world back into her home. On the final track of the album “Nothing to Be Scared Of,” she tells the listener, “Come to me and drop your bags/ And I’ll help you unpack them,” which might feel like a heavy metaphor on first listen. But as I’ve continuously listened to the song, I’ve realized that unpacking means making space for the things that change where you want to rebuild your life. She’s not asking us to leave our emotional baggage at the door but find a way to live with it. That’s what makes a space a home, really. It’s the place that holds the good and the bad, where memories are made and stored, where we retreat when the world is too scary or cruel or has taught us what we need to learn.
It’s nice to have a place to kick off your boots. It’s nice coming home to country. *yeehaw*