:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73243402/IMG_3325.0.jpg)
There’s a lot to parse through and digest on Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter. The 27-track album is a rich, sprawling tribute to various eras and genres of Southern music, from outlaw country to Louisiana’s zydeco to 1960s rock ‘n’ roll — all of which have contributed to our collective understanding of country music.
She carries out this hefty task with the help of some lesser-known country artists and some bona fide legends. One of those heavy hitters is none other than Dolly Parton, who makes several appearances, including in a playful audio message on Cowboy Carter’s ninth track.
“You know that hussy with the good hair you sing about?” Parton asks Beyoncé, referencing her famous “Becky with the good hair” lyric on her 2016 song “Sorry.” “Reminded me of someone I knew back when, except she has flamin’ locks of auburn hair. Bless her heart. Just a hair of a different color, but it hurts just the same.”
The next track is Beyoncé’s highly anticipated rendition of Parton’s 1973 smash hit “Jolene.” Beyoncé is one of many artists across generational and cultural lines to put their own twist on Parton’s heralded ditty. Her remake turns what was originally Parton’s plea to a red-haired bank clerk to stay away from her husband into a more aggressive (and funny) threat. “You don’t want this smoke, so shoot your shot with someone else,” she sings before reminding Jolene that she’s “still a banjee country bitch from Louisiana.” She also calls Jolene a “bird.”
Beyoncé is no stranger to singing about infidelity, both as a former member of Destiny’s Child and as a solo artist. But her confessional 2016 album Lemonade was the first time she had not-so-subtly referenced cheating in her marriage with Jay-Z — at least in a way listeners could clock. On the album’s more memorable tracks like “Don’t Hurt Yourself” and “Sorry,” the singer embraces a kind of cathartic and arguably feminist rage before controversially offering her partner forgiveness.
In that regard, it’s maybe not surprising that she reimagines “Jolene” as a feistier song, while remaining predictably confident in her own womanhood. Beyoncé’s “Jolene” remake also feels in line with a history of outspoken, scorned women in country music, addressing their men’s misdeeds in a fierce, violent, and often vengeful manner: from Loretta Lynn’s “Fist City” to Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats” to Taylor Swift’s collaboration with Haim “No Body, No Crime.” (It’s the premise of many Miranda Lambert songs too.) Sometimes, the victim is the guy. Sometimes, it’s his “pretty little souped-up four-wheel drive.”
To get to the bottom of this trend, I spoke to country music scholar Jocelyn Neal, a professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, about the role of infidelity in country music and what it says about the misunderstood and complex role of gender within the genre.
Songs about infidelity aren’t unique to country music. But it feels like it has some significance in this genre because there’s a stereotypical image of Southern people as “traditional” and valuing monogamy.
I don’t think it solely has to do with one particular demographic. The storytelling and songwriting tradition in country music has always embraced descriptions of real life for working-class people. The other part of it is that it has embraced describing those stories about people’s lives across different age categories — it doesn’t just focus on young people. So we have this long tradition in country music of songs that talk about relationships in very direct terms.
Were these songs ever considered controversial?
They have been. For instance, when Kitty Wells recorded “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,” which itself was a callback or rebuttal song, it was considered too explicit in its description of cheating to be acceptable, and there was some controversy about whether or not it could be performed. That was 1952.
One of the time periods when this dialogue became more common, unsurprisingly, is the late 1960s and into the 1970s. If we look at larger shifts in the social environment in this country, that was a time period when second-wave feminism was really at the forefront. Laws were changing that affected how women could function economically. Laws about divorce changed during that time period. And there was a really large discussion about gender roles and constraints on women, specifically as it was affecting the working-class population.
When I think about country songs about cheating, I automatically envision empowered, angry women setting things on fire and slashing tires — is that a common trope?
What you’re referring to with those images is a later time period. And they were performed by artists — Carrie Underwood, Gretchen Wilson, and certainly Miranda Lambert — that were really speaking to a bit of a younger life profile. Those song lyrics are always somewhat reflective of the discourse at the time and what audience that music was being directed towards, which was slightly younger.
There are also men singing these kinds of songs. And some of that goes all the way back to the earliest traditions that are drawing from old murder ballads from previous centuries. I’m talking about recordings from the 1920s and ’30s.
That level of retaliation goes against the well-behaved, “Southern belle” image. But is that archetype really representative of most women in country?
The kind of happy, domestically satisfied, good-girl image is something that deserves a lot more careful analysis because it’s only been put forward a couple of times in country music history. There’s a middle-class, feminine ideal that gets cultivated in the American public imagination of the 1950s, the June Cleaver kind of image. And working-class women have never really had that same match of identity.
There’s Loretta Lynn songs like “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man)” or “Fist City,” which are much more outspoken than the image we’re just talking about. That image gets advertised sometimes, but I don’t think it has ever fully captured the complexities of gender representation within country music.
Beyonce’s “Jolene” certainly matches the energy of those Loretta Lynn songs.
It’s literally a “don’t you dare.” I don’t think anybody is going to be really surprised that after 50 years of time passing from second-wave feminism to Beyoncé’s era, that she’s going to make that change. I was delighted to hear it.
How unique was the perspective of the original “Jolene” then, when it first came out?
One of the things that people have written about with “Jolene” is the level of detail that Parton is using to describe the other woman — her hair color, her eyes, her lips. There’s a man involved, and she wants the guy, and the guy wants the other woman, but the entire focus of the lyrics are on this very obsessive kind of womanly connection.
But these female-to-female conversations exist in many time periods in country music. Tammy Wynette doesn’t get brought into these conversations because historians haven’t really granted her credit as one of these independent, feisty, forward-thinking women in her lyrics. But even she has songs that are woman-to-woman conversations — “If I were you, here’s what I would do,” and “Have you really thought this through?” etc.
Well, Beyoncé ends “Jolene” singing that she’s going to “stand by her man.” Do we think she’s giving Tammy a shout-out there?
You can’t deny that’s definitely a textual reference there. Where Tammy Wynette’s song “Stand By Your Man” was basically telling other women to stand by their men, Beyonce, at least, makes it two-sided: I’m standing by him, but he’s also going to stand by me.
