Cowboy Carter: This Ain't Country

He did rivalries a massive hit, everyone's talking about the sex, but it's just as much about the exquisite pain of having a crush, and I think yearning can provide this sort of, like, massacistic joy to, and, like, we all need more joy in our lives right now. This week, unexplain it to me from Vox, love hurts, and it hurts so good. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. Piance has just 12 hours ago, released her album Cowboy Carter for a into the world of country music, and I have something very bold to say about this album. Okay, hit me. This is not a country album. Check out Sweet Honeybuckin. Spaghetti. All the same to me, plain jeans, spaghetti, no sauce, no sauce, no, this in country. And what about Tyrant? Every time I ride it, every time I ride it, make it look so good, try to justify it. This in country. No, it's not country. This is way more than a country album. This is an album which is using the sound palette of Southern America and all of its history, but not exclusively making top 40 country, right? It's so much more. We have the sounds of primarily black music, blues, rock and roll, gospel, soul, definitely country, as well as influences from the British invasion, rock counterculture, and contemporary genres like house, Jersey house, and trap. And yeah, okay, sure. It is country. I mean, we've talked already about the first two release singles, Texas Hold'em, Sixteen Carriages. I've got banjo, chain gang music, and there are songs on Cowboy Carter which use the cliches of country music, your domestic life narratives like in her song Protector. It has the trope of made in America, brands, name dropped into a song, okay. For example Levi's Jeans, which features Post Malone. Of course, if you're going to make a country album, you need to have murder ballads like her song Daughter. And we hear the timbers of country music, hear sort of the Spanish guitar of maybe sort of original Cowboy. Quick question. Yeah. Are Levi's Jeans made in America? Ooh. I'm wearing a pair right now. Check the tag. All right. Check the tag. Oh, turn around. This is why it's good to record in person once in a while. Let's see. What are your boxers? Get in there. Jobs, don't be afraid. It doesn't say. What do you mean it doesn't say? I can't read it. I got Levi's on too. We're not sponsored by that. Turn around. Turn around. Just say, well San Francisco, California, where's your tag? There's no tag. They're trying to. There's something. There's a conspiracy. Okay. Okay. So we have some of the hallmarks of country music, sure. But this album, as I said, is way more than country. And Beyonce makes it very clear. She states, at the beginning, this thesis in her song, American Requiem. This is an American Requiem. What is a Requiem, Nate Sloan? I'm so glad you asked. A Requiem is a piece composed in memoriam of a person. And often it follows a kind of mass structure. I don't think that's quite the case here. But it is something that is a tribute, a memorial. It's usually sad. It's a great musical tradition going back to Wolfgang Amadeus, Mozart. Yeah. Road is own mass, famously, as he was dying. Yeah. This is not a mass. I think this is more a remembrance. She says from the very top that there are big ideas buried here. And she is going to unearth all of these American musical ideas of the past and of the present and mash them all up together. Then big ideas are buried here. No, someone might say, I'm totally wrong here. No, no, no. She is saying that she's making a country album. Just listen to the second verse of American Requiem. You're singing in a twang saying, if this ain't country, I don't know what it is. And so I obviously am making a provocative statement. I don't think she's saying this is top 40 country, radio, the sound of country as it is today. I think she's saying that country is way more expansive than it is thought to be. Right. You could invert that statement from the beginning of the episode, this ain't country. Country ain't this. Country is more than you think, and this album is going to investigate that. Okay. I also love how she's sort of like anticipating the criticism a little bit. Oh, yeah, all of it. Am I too country? Am I not country enough? Yeah, yeah. I'll always be somewhere in between. All right, let's look at how she does it. Let's do it. All right. So first of all, she is knighted by the living legends of country music on this album. Yeah. That was one of the first things I was like, okay, so a little bit of context. Yeah. I have to come clean. I just completely exploited you. Yes, you woke up at some ungodly hour and listened to this album and gathered your thoughts. Yeah. And I just slept blissfully and then rolled in here to your home studio and was like, all right, Charlie, tell me about this record. Yeah. But I did do the hard work of briefly glancing over the track list. And I did notice some of these icons that you're talking about. Willie Nelson is on this album, The Voice of Outlaw Country. You turned into K&T R.I. Radio Texas, home of the Rio de Janeiro. Linda Martel is on this album. One of the first female black country breakout stars. genres are a funny little concept, aren't they? Dolly Parton is on this album, the boundary pusher of country music that everybody agrees to love. Hey, Ms. Honeybee, it's Dollybee. So those are some pretty good country bonafides. Yeah. And all of them are introducing Beyonce's songs in a sort of radio-like format. So that's a flex. Yeah. Yeah. Man, I wish we could have Willie Nelson announce every podcast. Really every time I just show up somewhere, he could be like, and here's Nate Sloan walking into the room, K&T radio. So hard to think of many more living legends than that than you could put on this album. Right, right. Okay. So she's got the living legends on this album. She also quotes her deceased musical ancestors, specifically the black forebears of American music. Like blues, icon, son, house, Godmother of rock and roll, sister, Rosetta Tharp, guitar, great Chuck Berry, and one of Elvis's greatest inspirations Roy Hamilton. So we've got living legends. We've got deceased legends within these snippets of recordings from them, anyone else showing up here? Yeah, she specifically has brought in many of the current rising stars of black American country music, artists like Tanner Adele, Britney Spencer, Tierra Kennedy, Reina Roberts, and Shabuzie. And that's, I guess, in addition to some of the people we talked about on Texas Hold 'em in '16 carriages like Rean and Giddens, Justice West. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Robert Randolph, yeah. These are just the featured singers, if that's okay. As of this recording, the full credits are not available. So I'm very eager to go and study who the musicians are, who are the players in the band. I don't know who most of them are right now, so there's many more. There's also a collaboration with Miley Cyrus, who famously was in the world of country music, moved into the world of pop music. There's a collab with Post Malone, which you talked about briefly. There's also Willie Jones, who is known for really blending the world of trap and hip-hop with country music. And I guess, Rumi Carter, yeah, one of her children is featured in "A Voice Note" on the album. Mom, can I hear you? The blah, blah, blah, please. You know how I feel about this. I'm not a fan. Doesn't count as an actual feature. Not a fan? Like, no, no, no, no, no. I'll give it to you. I don't want to make you seem like too much of a commodity. You're not a fan of someone getting credit for being a collaborator when they are part of a voice note. You don't mind the voice note thing, do you? I'm not, honestly, sure, anymore. Oh, I think I am a cremage. Just leave the kids. Get the kids out of there. Get the kids out of the studio. It's a beautiful song. Okay. Fair enough. No kids and grandmothers in the studio. Sorry, go ahead. Okay. This is way more, though, than just who she brings in, who she is citing directly through those little samples, who is introducing her songs. The way that she is making a statement about this expansive view of country is all in the music. Right? Yeah. Let's visit the handful of the songs that bend American genres into her vision of Cowboy Carter. I want to start with, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nate, this song has everything. It samples from so many eras of American music from the beginning. We have a very obvious sample of Nancy Sinatra's boots were made for walking from 1966. Nancy, of course, was the daughter of Frank Sinatra, and the original song was inspired by Frank Sinatra's line in a film for for Texas, in which her father says, "Tell me then boots they built for walking." Huh. Never knew that. Nate Sinatra flips the script. It says these boots are made for walking. Makes a pop feminist song about taking power in a male-centric world. One of these days, they're going to walk right over you. Yeah. So, here's what Beyonce does to it. I am just remembering that the song was featured in the film Austin Powers. Beyonce was also in the sequel to Austin Powers, so he's interesting, despite who shagged me. Or was she in gold member? Gold member. That's the third one. It's me, Foxy, Foxy Coyote Patrick. We have to get our Austin Powers chronology, right? I mean, people expect a lot from us, I mean, people expect a lot from that film. I mean, it wasn't good. But what's so cool is that Beyonce's boots aren't just made for walking all over a man. They're made for walking all over American music, where she blends this song into a sort of, like, Motown type vibe in the style of Stevie Wonder's "Uptight." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's almost like a tension between this kind of upbeat triumphant mutiny. It's like a triumphant style. Yeah. It's like a triumphant music, and then some of the darkness of these lyrics, like, whole lot of red in that white and blue, like, that is a kind of revolutionary statement about the legacy of racial violence in the United States. But it's like poppins, finger snapping music at the same time, so you're like, "Yeah, this is not pulling any punches." This is just the beginning. I mean, then, when we get into the refrain of this song. ♪ Hey, she's making up a vibration ♪ ♪ Here's looking for Swiss musicians ♪ Beach boys! Slayered. [laughs] ♪ I'm picking up a version ♪ ♪ She's giving me the expectations ♪ She has mashed up good vibrations with Nancy Sinatra's boots are made for walk-in. Kind of a weird combo, but it actually works. Maybe because they each have these descending chromatic lines, like the Nancy Sinatra based song is, like, and then the good vibrations is like, so it's like, they're kind of in the same musical world a little bit, but it's still very, you're like, "Wait, why did that come from?" Both of them have a lot of tension in them, the chromaticism, the discomfort in the music, and the way that she's citing good vibrations has this sort of dark tinge because she's talking about housing, policy, and equity. She's talking about not being able to make it in this country, not having enough money, and we're talking about good vibrations, sort of attention of the maybe the expectations of American exceptionalism, and by and what you're selling, Joe. I'm not selling anything. Because I'll be honest, and she just goes on to quote, quote, quote, "There's a quick citation of "Love is Strange" by Mickey and Sylvia. She references Christina Aguilara's "Jeanine a Bottle" and Migos' "Walk It Like I Talk It." She screams like Tina Turner. She tells the band to hit the drums in the style of like James Brown. Yeah, I love that. I'm such a sucker for musicians requesting instruments, and then they suddenly hear. It's like, "Can not get enough of that." What else do we have here? Tom's, please. That would be another thing. I would like to have Willie Nelson introduce every time I walk in the room, and anytime I say, "Tom's please, I immediately get a dribble, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom." Willie Nelson plus Tom. Well, I'd like to introduce Nate, so Tom's please, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. You know, sorry. What are you talking about? I like this evoking the past of the sort of like radio announcer kind of style, because she also has a moment where she references this important circuit that she says that she's playing on. "We want to welcome you to the Beyoncé cowboy car to act too, in a rodeo chillin' circuit." This is an old timey reference. Yeah, the chillin' circuit. This was like the unofficial tourway for black musicians through most of the 20th century. A loose network of juke joints and saloons and sometimes even brothels strung out across the whole United States, but especially concentrated in the southern part, named after the crackling fried pork that would be served at many of these establishments. And where so many famous acts from Ray Charles to James Brown really got their start before blowing up, today doesn't really exist in the same way, but you can still find maybe traces of it in certain places like Mississippi and Alabama, and some of these have sort of been turned into like living museums, which is pretty cool, but yeah, not a reference you hear in a lot of contemporary music, the chillin' circuit. And she's saying it with the sound of a slap-back delay, which was very popular in the 1950s as a way of creating a bigger sense of space, so all of these amazing citations, including citations of place. Got Texas, yeah, yeah, it's from Texas, correct. Gary Indiana, home of the Jackson family, and New York City, New York City. What's it? You're from New York City? I know of New York City. Yeah, we're from New York City. Who she married to? That guy, what's his face? Jay-Z. Oh yeah, yeah. Sean Carter, Brooklyn. Yeah. Okay. Right, checks out. Yeah, I feel like their family owns a significant portion of New York City. I think that's a project, I don't know if that's actually true. At least culturally they do. Yeah. And in this way, I think that this album, as much as it has country in Americana, has a lot in common with hip-hop. The idea of naming your roots, saying where you're from, quoting your influences, sampling them. This doesn't sound like a hip-hop record, but it's definitely in the culture. Man, it's just like with this album, Cowboy Carter, and Renaissance, the previous one, it's like she's going like full historian, but this is just like spectacles on, like taking out the books, underlining the things, she's like in her professorial era or something. It's really wild. Elbow Patches, reading glasses, it's like, it's like taking you to school with each one of these albums. I mean, God, we can talk about the song for hours. There's so much. It's a thick, thick reference in history. I love it. It's like this commentary on the history of American music as it's also adding to that lineage through its own sonic experimentation and innovation. I mean, is this a gift for Switched on Pop? Is she in her Switched on Pop era? I feel it. Yeah, definitely. I feel like a gift to us. Even the show alive. Thanks, Pete. Yeah. All right. Let's take a quick break. When we come back, there's so much more music that I want to look at, and specifically how she crosses genre and cites the entire world of American music. Two years ago, Apple showed off a version of Siri that used AI to be more helpful, more intelligent, and just generally more awesome. And two years later, it hasn't shipped a bit, and Siri is still terrible. And this week on the Vergecast, we're talking about how a new deal with Google could mean a totally new way of thinking about AI for Apple and that we might actually get good Siri. That plus the latest on what's going on with Grok and what's going on inside the Metaverse, how you can be more productive in 2026 and the surprisingly sci-fi future of Lego, all that on the Vergecasts, wherever you get podcasts. We just traveled all over American music, indeed. And she demonstrates so many different kinds of genre of mashups on this album. Let's take a listen to a few of them, like on a song, "Spaghetti." It begins with Linda Martel restating the thesis of this album. "Genres are a funny little concept, aren't they? Yes, they are." In theory, they have a simple definition that's easy to understand, but in practice, well, some may feel confined. And Shabuzie adds his voice too. And from here, I am expecting a spaghetti western. Spaghetti western, referring to a style of filmmaking, pioneered by directors like Sergio Leone, often starring Clint Eastwood, and they would film them in Italy for I think budgetary reasons. And then they would overdub all the voices later, and they were like kind of sparse and type of violent and kind of this dark spin on the classic John Wayne western, and many of them featured soundtracks by the legendary composer, Ennio Maricone, and that, I didn't know that sound, that high kind of lonesome whistle, that's like, takes you right there, so that's cool. And those are the kind of sounds that are soundtracking the beginning of a song, "Spaghetti," stylized with two eyes at the end. This is act two. Is that? I don't know how we're supposed to pronounce this spaghetti works. There's some other more difficult ones. And now realizing that referencing spaghetti westerns is also a kind of way of saying like Americana, as much as it comes from real roots in culture, also is a fabrication and a commercial good that is imported and exported all over the world, Italian made films citing American music. What is country? And she's going to push the boundaries of what that is on this song, because we don't - Got it. - Right. - Let's be getting Western. - Kind of thing. - No. - Your Levi's jeans made in, I'm pretty sure they made in China. Just got it through. Look, we're gonna kick 'em back to that. I gotta see your ass one more time. ♪ Country, country, petty, petty, petty ♪ ♪ All the same to me playing jeans ♪ ♪ But get to no south, no south, no south ♪ ♪ Two south, two south ♪ ♪ It's out to the chupin' like Harry ♪ ♪ One hand on my host of the pass ♪ ♪ It's a hova, throw it in ♪ (laughing) - To him, she's got flow. - She could rap, yeah. - Oh yeah, that was, uh, that was fire. - Yeah. - And kind of, so like, of the modern version of the Spaghetti Western is like Drill's hip hop, that's kind of a cool idea. - It's also considered too, you know, actually in the song before this daughter, she sings in Italian, almost like it's a lead-in to this song about to arrive. ♪ Right on the open, creating your men ♪ - Wild stuff. It's so, what do we have? Like, Spaghetti, Western, hip hop, never heard that before. Have you ever heard River Dance House music? Oh, God. (laughing) - Dang it. (upbeat music) ♪ Went through the river ♪ ♪ Went through the river with you today ♪ - I mean, when I was in Tor in Scotland with a friend Gideon, I did encounter some pretty hip remixes of traditional Celtic song, sung in Gaelic with house beats, shout out to the Scottish band Nightworks. (upbeat music) So, yeah, maybe not unprecedented, but certainly surprising to encounter on Cowboy Carter. - Right, okay, so we have a guitar playing a sort of line that would traditionally be played on a Celtic fiddle, okay. (upbeat music) Celtic music, it's one of the important ingredients the creation definitely of American old-time music, fiddle tunes and country, yeah. And then she's mashing it up with a house beat. ♪ Went through the river ♪ ♪ Went through the river with you today ♪ ♪ Went through the river with you today ♪ - Okay, so we have Spaghetti, hip hop. We have Celtic River Dance House music, and how about fiddle trap, like on her song Tyrant? (upbeat music) ♪ Give it, give it back ♪ - It's awesome. - I mean, that's cool. The very beginning of this, too, it sounds like almost like tap shoes are providing the percussive element. ♪ One, one, one by one ♪ ♪ You hang them high ♪ ♪ Your hands are steady ♪ - Oh, yeah, that's definitely tap. - That's what, like what is that about? - I don't know, someone's gonna tell us. - Okay, wow, I don't know. - Everything is here. - There's so much, the sonic layers are just so rich. - It's very rich. - This is a reaction episode. We are listening just-- - We don't have a day. - We don't have all the answers. I feel like this is something that, you know. - I mean, there's 27 tracks. There's so much over in our lawn. - Scratching the surface. - There's so many things we could go through. One thing that I don't wanna miss, though, are the covers. There's a handful of covers, and I wanna highlight a few of them. The first is actually what I hear as an interpolation of a Buffalo Springfield song on American Requiem, the opening track. ♪ There's a lot of talking going on ♪ ♪ While I sing my song ♪ ♪ There's something happening here ♪ ♪ But what it is ain't exactly clear ♪ ♪ I think it's time we stop ♪ ♪ Children, wife's not sound ♪ ♪ Everybody look what's going on ♪ - I hear that. What's neat is she's taking this song for what it's worth from Buffalo Springfield, which was a 1960s protest song, and she is using the melody, but changing to production to actually sound like kind of psychedelic rock. You have a sitar guitar, some really rosy strings, and what it sounds like for Fiso organs, the sounds of psychedelia. - There's some backwards tape in there as well, perhaps. - Yep. And so referencing the counterculture era and the time of civil rights, right at the top of this album. Okay, so that's the first one. The next song on the album is Blackbird by the Beatles. I don't know if he's playing this or if it's a sample. I think it's a sample because you can hear the click track. ♪ Blackbirds singing in the dead of night ♪ ♪ Take these broken wings and learn to fly ♪ - What's that doing there? - And why is there a click track? Why is there a metronome in there? - Because the original has the metronome. - Does it really? - Yes. ♪ Blackbirds singing in the dead of night ♪ - Your mind is blown. - What? - How did I never hear that before? I'm having like a Mandela effect moment right now. Are you sure that's always been there? - That's always been there. - And just put it on Spotify yesterday. - Yep, there's always been a metronome. - Okay. - I've heard this like someone said it's all tapping his foot, but that's definitely a metronome. - It's crazy. - You might be thinking, well, why did Beyoncé cover Blackbird? Turns out Paul McCartney has explained his inspiration for the song as being in response to the racial turmoil in the United States in the 1960s when he wrote Blackbird. And he had imagined a Black girl singing the song in response to racial injustice and looking to the hope of the civil rights movement. So who better to update the song than Beyoncé on this project about American Requiem? - Yeah. ♪ You were only waiting for this moment to arrive ♪ - I think it's also important to know that the Beatles were a British invasion band who were borrowing so heavily from American music. So again, she's actually going abroad and looking at American music as a cultural export and realizing that country music are the roots of the Beatles. They played guitars that mirrored Chedacans like a great country player, right? Like they were covering early rock 'n' roll that was influencing country music. They wrote some country songs from that very good ones. - Yeah. - Hey, don't talk about what goes on that way. (laughing) - No, I'm thinking of what's on help. - Help, no, act naturally is on help. ♪ I know all I gotta do is act naturally ♪ - And that is a cover, and I will also not stand for act naturally slander. - Isn't that Ringo? - That's what Ringo, that's a Ringo classic. - That's not his best vocal. - Oh my gosh, really? I've agreed with everything you were saying, right? I've told that. - I'm a knocked-up whistle guard. - It's a good turn. (laughing) - All right, I think the most compelling cover here, though, is, of course, Joly. The famous Dolly Parton song, yeah. ♪ Joly, joly, joly, joly, joly ♪ ♪ I'm wanting you, don't come for my man ♪ - Do you notice what she's done here? - Is there a metronome? - She's changed the lyrics. ♪ Joly, joly, joly, joly, joly ♪ ♪ I'm begging of you, please, don't take my man ♪ - Oh yeah. - Instead of Joly, I'm begging you, please don't take my man. Joly, I'm warning you. - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. - Don't take my man. And the verse takes it even further. - It's removing all of the pleading aspects. - There's no remorse here. - There's more of a threat. - Yeah. And I think the ultimate flex of this cover is that not only is she changing the lyrics, she introduces whole new musical material. ♪ Me, my man, cross those valleys ♪ ♪ I've been holding everything between ♪ ♪ You'd be rolling like tumbling wheat ♪ ♪ I sleep good, happy ♪ ♪ 'Cause you've painted up our plan to see ♪ - It's a both thing to mess with the classic like that, but it feels like, I don't know. - It works. And I suppose she has Dolly's a full indoor premature on this, like literally kind of giving her license beforehand. So she did her due diligence, I feel like. - Yeah. - And the vocal is, the vocal's throughout. The vocal is singing a lot on this album. Even more than Renaissance. It's like, you really hear what she can do. - Well, 'cause a lot of the production is stripped back, more music, and so on. So yeah, I highlight the voice a little more. A lot of rich harmonies throughout. - And we're hearing new kinds of textures. - Obviously she has done a song like Daddy Lessons, which is a country like song on lemonade. - Right. - The amount of twing that we're hearing, the amount of just sort of new vocal style. It's the amount of blues and the gliding between notes in her vocal. It's great to just see the range of her abilities. ♪ I'm gonna stand by him, you'll stand by me ♪ ♪ I'm gonna stand by us, you'll stand by me ♪ ♪ I'm gonna stand by him, you'll stand by me ♪ ♪ You'll stand by me, you'll stand by me ♪ - This tour is gonna be fire. - Okay, that's the thing about this album, man. It's not that it's all academically put my elbow pads on, and this is a serious record in which it's debating whether or not country music is this or that. It's like it is frickin' fun. - Yeah. - There's so much joy on this album. And she, in fact, she says just as much on the song, just for fun with Willie Jones, a for-runner in blending trap and country music. ♪ Going down south, just before I held the man I know ♪ ♪ It's everywhere I go, I hide my face ♪ ♪ From the cowboys and clothes in a rodeo circus ♪ ♪ I came here for a reason, but I don't know the promises ♪ ♪ Wow, under the surface ♪ She's going down south, just for fun. Yeah, she's playing with genre. She doesn't totally know the purpose. She's having fun with it. Maybe this song is a bit serious, but you hear the joy all over this record. ♪ Look at that horse, look at that horse ♪ ♪ Look at that horse ♪ ♪ Pretty as hell, I'm not too rare, done in a horse ♪ ♪ Yeah, a horse ♪ ♪ Look, look ♪ ♪ Whoa ♪ ♪ Do what it can ♪ ♪ And you'll see why I ain't where ♪ ♪ I ain't stunned by them ♪ ♪ And it's shit on the tune ♪ Okay, I lied. It's not just all fun. Yeah. She's making a statement here. A-O-T-Y, up on the ear. Up on the ear. Up on the ear. I ain't when. It's a time. Absolutely, right? I would say that this is one of the most creative, up on the ear. Like, like, the ear is young, girls. I mean, we can retire our show. Just like, oh, really? It's like, she's, this is a gift. Yeah. This is a gift of American music. There's so much to explore. I'll make one case for why, I think this is her as I'll love the ear. Not only is she mashing up all of these sounds and showing us this great history lesson, but she's making totally new things in the process. Which is the process of making music, right? It's like borrowing from your forebearers and making something new. One thing that she's done a lot, actually, both on part one and part two of this trilogy is to completely play with formal expectations, structures of songs. There are so many songs on here that have part one, part two, part three. They don't follow our sort of nice, verse-chorus kind of structure. American Requiem has multiple parts. ♪ American Requiem ♪ ♪ There's a lot of talk going on ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ Two hands to heaven has multiple parts. ♪ But all in my hand the whiskey up high ♪ ♪ Two hands to heaven what horses when wild are ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ ♪ I've been waiting my whole life ♪ Sweet honeybuckin has three distinct sections. ♪ I miss all my secrets ♪ ♪ So I'm waiting to realize ♪ ♪ Look at my mama's the straight things that I know of the fan ♪ ♪ With that sheet that I know's on a tree ♪ ♪ Said that boo gotty out for the spin ♪ ♪ Ain't no time to fill a win on my scale ♪ ♪ Go, go, go ♪ - So she's making a record which I think you can go out and dance to, I think you can think to, I think you can make love to. And you can't look at my lead by jeans right now. - Speak off, you'd read my mind, look at that, that's over here. - And yet she's doing it by creating whole new structures of music, now playing to the nice sort of verse chorus expectations that we have. And so there are so many reasons why people are hopefully gonna vote for this from the year, but I'm not holding any cards here. I'll love this thing. All right, wrap it up. A-O-T-Y. Tom, please. I think we should take her word at it. This ain't country. This ain't country. - It is so much more than country. It is self-consciously sampling the roots of American music. It's just as much hip-hop as it is country. It is just as much soul as it is country. This makes a case for house music as country. This makes a case for all of American music as part of the country tradition. It's an American record and maybe the future of country music. - Switched on pop is produced by Rihanna Cruz, edited by Art Chung, engineered by Brandon McFarland. Iris Gottlieb does our illustrations at Big Bar, just community management, our executive producers Nashaq Kerwa, we're a production of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and New York Magazine's Vulture. You can subscribe to New York Magazine at nymag.com/pot. We are switched on pop at all of the social channels and on our website, switch on pop.com. We have a newsletter, you can subscribe to that and our feed down below or on our website. We talk a lot more about the insights of music that are happening behind the scenes of the show. I can't imagine the things that we haven't totally missed on this record, right? We're gonna study this for a year. So consider this a first impression. Maybe we'll come back with a 27-part series. I don't know. - Also, I'm sorry, Rumi, forgive me. I love you. I don't know what I'm talking about. - Oh yeah, thank you. All right, you're making meds. This has been fun. - Until then. - Until then, thanks. - Thanks for listening. (upbeat music)