Beyoncé - Cowboy Carter

Sorry Macca but Ebony and Ivory is about a piano

Regardless of Jolene lyrics being switched for the worse, I think both the Blackbird and Jolene covers are super boring choices to cover and the execution doesn’t do anything interesting either. Blackbird is pretty much a karaoke version… with a fucking great singer, yes.

I think Blackbird's lovely. It is weird as the second track though, it needs to be tucked in the middle somewhere.

I don't care about the lyrics in Jolene but the singing feels boring and rigid - there's no swing in it. I'm not that familiar with 2010s and 20s Beyonce but does she usually sound so over-formal?

Sonically I prefer "Blackbird" to "Jolene" -- it's an all-time beautiful song; personally I love that she used the original master recording and sang it straight. It sounds lovely.

But agree it doesn't "fit" sonically as the second track, and that's because I interpret its position on the record as an egregiously obvious and literal statement of intent, not one that was decided because it made sense in the sequencing as a listening experience. Here's a song called "Blackbird" where the lyrics literally say "Blackbird singing in the dead of night" and we'll feature a bunch of under-appreciated black female country singers! The whole album plays to me as a jumbled mess that's connected by a few very literal skits and ideas.

so a concept album basically

« Ya Ya » is such a joyful storm. It’s like a distant cousin of « Get Me Bodied »