The Spinoff writers (and friends) gather their thoughts and feelings about the new Beyonce album. 

Everyone from Azealia Banks to Vice President Kamala Harris had already weighed in on Beyonce’s new album Cowboy Carter when two blokes by the names of Christopher Luxon and Mike Hosking joined the Beyhive on Newstalk ZB yesterday morning. “Have you heard Beyonce’s new album?” Hosking asked Luxon. “I quite like it,” the prime minister replied, “I think she’s done something quite provocative and quite good.” 

Hosking then revealed himself to be a “massive country fan”, picking his favorite track on the album as ‘II Most Wanted’, which features Miley Cyrus. Given that Aotearoa had the luxury of being the first in the world to immerse ourselves in Cowboy Carter, and then soaking in it over a long Easter weekend, we thought we would join experts such as Luxon and Hosking and share our reckons on Beyonce’s eighth studio album. 

Madeleine Chapman (Editor)

What an opener. ‘Ameriican Requiem’ is just a perfect little Beyonce package, all bound tight (though not exactly the most country beginning to a country album) and exactly what I as a somewhat fairweather Beyonce fan was hoping for – a gentle banger that builds to full force and is inimitably Beyonce. So much so that the shift to song two – a soft cover of The Beatles’ ‘Blackbird’ – was a little jarring on first listen. After a few more listens of the full album it starts to make sense and is easily the best of the album’s covers. 

‘Jolene’, a rewriting of Dolly Parton’s classic, just didn’t hit. 1) Jolene’s hook was its vulnerability and flipping it to come from a place of confident anger just reminded me of when men cover women’s songs and feel the need to change the pronouns in the lyrics. 2) I would’ve loved to hear Beyonce, a billionaire seemingly above reproach, inexplicably singing from a place of insecurity like everyone else. Instead, she inexplicably sang about “raising” her much-older husband and in the next breath suggested that others would be attracted to him. Sir! Please.

As always, my favourites are changing with each listen but right now the listening-on-loop flow from ‘Amen’ to ‘Ameriican Requiem’ to ‘Blackbiird’ is very good.

Eli Rivera (Head of commercial)

It was a Good Friday indeed: Bey Day was upon us. Waking up to approximately 50 text messages from two different groups chatting about the release of Cowboy Carter set the tone for my day. The texts varied widely, ranging between hectic excitement to complaints about the album not being country enough and lacking in bangers. With my curiosity piqued, I decided to dive in. We truly were so lucky to be among the first in the world to receive this musical gift!

In one of my text groups, live recordings and reactions were shared via FaceTime with our friends in the United States who sadly had to wait another day before they could indulge in Queen Carter. I was immediately taken by the ‘Blackbiird’ cover, and found myself bopping to everything from ‘Texas Hold Em’ to ‘Jolene.’ The tracks ‘Spaghettii’ and ‘Most Wanted’ stood out for their raw edge and stunning beauty. From the guest appearances, to the visuals, it’s simply breathtaking. Beyoncé’s latest masterpiece not only raises black country voices but does so with such incredible artistry and intelligence.

Alex Casey (Senior writer)

Cowboy Carter gave me the strength I needed over Easter to saddle up and weed an enormous patch of garden I’ve been putting off for weeks, but rest assured it was not without extended periods of time sitting on the ground staring at the sky while listening to this staggering, sprawling, monumental and unbelievably intertextual album. Where to even begin? The soaring gospel of ‘Ameriican Requiem’ stripping right back to ‘Blackbiird’? The softness of Beyonce-as-mother in ‘Protector’ contrasted with the full operatic scariness of Beyonce-as-murderer in ‘Daughter’? Me suddenly developing a frankly illegal crush on Post Malone via ‘Levii’s Jeans’? The “oooooo–weeeeee–oooooo” of ‘Bodyguard’?!?!?

Every day brings a new set of favourites, but at the moment I can’t stop returning to the crazed duo of ascendant, light as a feather ‘II Hands II Heaven’, which then grape vines straight into Dolly Parton exclaiming “Time to strike a match and light up this juke joint!” for the violin loops and big beat of ‘Tyrant’. Because of course when Beyonce takes the biggest swing of her career since Austin Powers in Goldmember, she has all the legends of the game standing at the plate with her. She needs nobody, of course, but having Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson and Miley Cyrus onboard is surely cause for some reflection within those who said she wasn’t country enough. “If that ain’t country,” she says in the opening track, “tell me what is”.

Mike Puru (Southern Cross Country Radio)

Cowboy Carter is a triumph. As an avid country music fan, I love the fact Beyonce has managed to blend so many genres into one album – it keeps you guessing. ‘Texas Hold Em’, with its classic country twang, perhaps gave people the impression the whole album was going to be country, but country music isn’t strictly straw hats and banjos anymore. Post Malone next to a Beatles song, next to a reinterpreted Jolene, all under a Beyonce umbrella – that’s country enough for me. Cowboy Carter expands the perimeters of country music and I love it, my favourite track is ‘Levii’s Jeans’ and the one I skip is’ Sweet Honey Buckiin’. Anyway, loosen up NZ, the banjos ain’t taking over yet – perhaps country is, though.

Jin Fellet (Hex Work producer)

I was sure that we would be getting Cowboy Carter when it was released in the American timezone so it came as a surprise when we basically got the first listen. My partner and I were getting ready to get on the road for Easter weekend and he suggested that we listen to the album together. I had to quickly decline – this experience was strictly for me, myself, and my noise-cancelling headphones, and interruptions or commentary in between were not welcomed for the first listen. 

The moment I pressed play, I immediately felt chills when she sang “AMERICAAAAANNNN REEEEQUIEEEMMMM”. God, the harmonies. And then the transition to ‘Blackbird’? This woman had me in tears, but the next moment I was dancing, and then I was back to crying again when the album finished. Based on the first listen, the (long list of) standouts were: ‘My Rose’, ‘Bodyguard’, ‘Daughter’, ‘Ya Ya’, ‘Desert Eagle’, ‘II Hands II Heaven’ and ‘Tyrant’. The transition from ‘Desert Eagle’ through to ‘Sweet Honey Buckiin’ is a true masterpiece.

Not only is this album a musical journey; it’s a history lesson of Black music and her family heritage (B-E-Y-I-N-C-E), seamlessly interwoven with her unique take on country music. Every beat, reference, interpolation, and collaborator has been intentionally chosen, reminiscent of her approach in ACT I. It has come to the point where I don’t want or need to explain why Beyonce is so amazing at what she does. If you don’t get it, you never will. 

Stewart Sowman-Lund (News reporter)

Oh my God, this album is so much. Is it too much? Maybe a little, but the highs outweigh the lows. I’ll admit to being a more recent convert to Beyonce. I’ve always liked the pop bangers, but have had little time for the deep cuts. With 2022’s Renaissance, that changed. An album that should only be digested in full, each song seamlessly flowing into the next, crafting a world far bigger than the music itself. Cowboy Carter is a sublime follow-up, though it feels less cohesive and succinct than its predecessor. 

On hearing the opening tune ‘Ameriican Requiem’ – possibly the highlight for me – I thought that was going to be the “sound” of the whole album, but then suddenly there’s a Beatles cover, later a furious rap-heavy anthem, and a bizarre “cover” of Jolene that entirely changes the tone and meaning of that song. So yes, I think some trimming around the edges may have helped Cowboy Carter. But beyond Ameriican Requiem, clear standouts include the Miley Cyrus duet ‘II Most Wanted’ and the pop-heavy ‘Ya Ya’ that interpolates, astonishingly, both ‘Good Vibrations’ by the Beach Boys and Nancy Sinatra’s ‘These Boots are Made for Walkin’. 

I’ll admit to being a bit worried when Beyonce teased a full blown country album. But she was right – this isn’t a country album, it’s a Beyonce album. It’s as grandiose and, at times, excessive as you’d expect.

Alice Webb-Liddall (Partnerships editor)

The coincidental timing of Cowboy Carter’s release and my Easter pilgrimage to the West Coast provided the blessing of a bunch of time to take down the full album, uninterrupted except for a short pie break in Sheffield. About four bars into track four, ‘Protector’ I turned to my husband and said “this one is quite good”. Three minutes of listening later, I turned to him again, tears in my eyes, to see him also crying. 

I’m a Beyonce tragic, and have more recently dragged my husband into the heaving fandom too, by giving him a play-by-play of the entire Renaissance film after I watched it with a friend in an otherwise empty cinema. While this album isn’t necessarily the hoedown I thought it would be, and doesn’t contain the same through line and polish of Renaissance, it is a middle finger to the country music ‘purists’ that continue to try lock out artists like her. 

But like the lyric in closing track ‘Amen’: Them old ideas are buried here. There are a number of big bops and a number of tear jerkers, and a few that fall into both categories. Cowboy Carter is definitely going to get a few spins in my house.

Claire Mabey (Books editor)

On the first blast of Bey’s cover of ‘Jolene’ my partner (a musician) said, “she’s obviously listened to the Darcy Clay cover because that echo bit at the start is familiar”. Enter: the Easter where we played all the Jolene covers, ever (that we could find). As a hardcore fan of Dolly’s version I didn’t love this one mainly because of the lyric changes which totally shift the meaning of the song (if you want to do a deep dive, this podcast is real good); but I did love the horsey trot sound for the beat. I was immediately in love, however, with the ‘Blackbird’ cover which is sublime with the backing vocals and lifts the whole sweet vibe into another dimension. But my fave, on repeat, can’t stop listening is ‘Texas Hold ‘Em’ with the legendary Rhiannon Giddens on banjo. What an absolute banger for the age.

Courtney Mayhew (friend of The Spinoff)

Since August 2022, it had got to the point that, when I was about to put music on, my partner would say “OK babe, but maybe not Renaissance front to back again?” I was lucky enough to see the Renaissance tour in Paris last year and have often “joked” that I was a changed person after that experience. It is everything that I love. An album that was made to make you dance, that took its cues from queer culture and paired it with the hallmarks of Queen Bee at her best: exceptional lyricism, inspired collaborations, and boundary pushing.

Cowboy Carter has all those hallmarks. In a world of TikTok sounds, Beyonce continues to present full works of art. She could easily give us a continuous flow of pop ear worms that would catapult to top of the charts. Instead, she innovates. Cowboy Carter, like Renaissance, plays homage to the past and reimagines it for the present.

Just like Renaissance, I know that my favourite tracks will ebb and flow based on what I’m feeling and needing in the moment. Pregame warm up for a night out? Here’s looking at you ‘Riiverdance.’ Feeling dramatically vengeful? Sup ‘Daughter.’ Want to pretend Miley Cyrus and Beyonce are in a not so platonic relationship? Hello ‘II Most Wanted.’ But for now, it is front to back, front to back, front to back…

Kerryanne Nelson (former GM of The Spinoff)

I once had a moment with Beyonce. I was at the Mrs Carter tour at the O2 in London in 2013 and she handed me her mic to sing the chorus to ‘Irreplaceable’. I screamed “To the left, to the left” into the mic like a tone deaf four year-old and felt high for about four days. Put your Creme Eggs in the bin, this album was the ultimate Easter egg for us all (especially my fellow Aries’ out there). As expected, there are many highlights. In no particular order, here are some of mine:

• The first strum on ‘Ameriican Requiem’, reminding you who this artist is and what she’s here to do. 
• ‘Bodyguard’ changes pace and decides it’s time for us all to dance. 
• “I raised that man, I raised his kids” on ‘Jolene’. Yes, you did. No notes. 
• The Italian opera verse on ‘Daughter’.
• ‘II Most Wanted’ reminds us why we love Miley. I am predicting that this song will be played at a lot of weddings. 
• Her voice when she sings “I ain’t in no gang but I got shooters and I bang bang” on ‘Spaghettii’ (co-produced by The Dream), giving us big Renaissance energy.
• ‘Levii’s Jeans’ is the sexiest song of 2024. The Levi’s brand and marketing department are taking the rest of the year off imo.
• The piano and string loop on ‘Riiverdance’, co-written by Raye. Bounce on that shit, dance dance.
• Willie Jones’ smoky voice in ‘Just For Fun’. When the beat comes in at the two and a half minute mark, you feel like everything is going to be ok in the world. 
• The seamless transition into ‘II Hands II Heaven’. We all need to go to Marfa and hold our whiskeys up high. 
• ‘Tyrant’, produced by d.a. got that dope and feat Dolly, is my current fave. The bass and string overlay, are insane. Giddy up.

There’s just so much here. It’s so rich and will take months to appreciate the detail of it all. Track down a really good stereo and listen to it loudly without any interruptions, or grab your earphones and walk up a mountain during golden hour, pretending you’re in Texas. It needs your full attention. What is a genre anyway? Album of the year.

A trip to the world’s most famous culture-tech festival leaves Duncan Greive reflecting on what Auckland could learn from the liberal city in the heart of Texas.

Auckland and Austin are similar enough, and not similar at all. The population isn’t miles apart (the metropolitan area of Auckland is about 1.7m; Austin is 2.4m). Each has had a migration boom and consequent house price surge. There is something of Joel MacManus’ new city / old town in the way the influx of tech workers has disturbed the “keep Austin weird” culture. Auckland’s equivalent is more prosaic: the need to build up (and probably out too) to meet the needs of its new citizens, versus a desire to retain its low-rise and leafy character.

Of course, the differences are vast. Austin is historically the liberal-artsy outlier in the vast Republican oil plains of Texas, shaded by far bigger cities in Dallas and Houston. It both feeds on and resists the broader culture of its surrounds. Austin is vibrant and wealthy, and despite a recent influx of tech bros (Elon Musk and Joe Rogan now call it home), the city still has whole streets of dive bars and barbecue spots which have decades of rich history. 

Auckland is easily this country’s largest urban area, but beyond the narrow and fading “city of sails” sloganeering it has little sense of itself beyond “we’re the biggest one”. It does have a tension with the rest of the country, but that’s born more from economic mutual resentment than anything truly cultural. Most telling is its sense of what’s historically important and in need of preservation. Auckland fights for its endless streets of villas, while having little interest in the long-term viability and integrity of its live venues and hospitality outlets.

Still, when you spend a week in a new city, especially one as vibrant as Austin, it’s hard to avoid reflecting on what works there that doesn’t in your hometown. With that as a (potentially tenuous) basis, here are 10 things which leapt out from a hectic week in Austin during South by Southwest (SWSW), the enormous music-film-tech festival that has become a huge part of its identity and economy. The first five observations are about how it felt on the ground; the second five about how that might apply back home.

1. Beautiful things happen when a whole city commits to the bit

SXSW was founded as a music festival in the ‘80s, and has grown steadily and fairly organically to the point where it dominates Austin for a couple of weeks each March. Beyond the festival itself, a huge bundle of events piggyback off it – during my visit, they included a pair of NBA games, many unsanctioned side shows, and a 50th anniversary celebration of a local thrift store – all of which contributes to an irresistible gravity drawing 300,000 people in.

This generous embrace manifests in everything from the elastic growth of sharing economy services (Airbnbs spike during the festival and Uber drivers head in from miles around) to the way anything downtown which could be a venue became a venue for the duration of the festival. And what those makeshift venues turn over in hire fees subsidises their existence for the rest of the year, making it worth putting up with the chaos for those who live there. By contrast, in Auckland, it can feel like half of the city exists to resist anything the other half wants to do for fun.

2. You can feel the way technology has beaten down culture

As attendance has swollen from hundreds to hundreds of thousands, organisers have bolted new wings onto the festival. It retains its cultural DNA of music, film and comedy. But as the financial dividends of creation have been devoured by the technology which distributes them, so tech itself has become a bigger part of the festival, and its funding. 

At the vast conference centre which is the festival’s hub, you could make terrible AI music (the startup I tried will undoubtedly be swamped by the astounding Suno) then hear Public Enemy’s Chuck D talk about his “TikTok for culture” app, Bring the Noise. Or pick up a CIA stubby holder at their recruiting stand, where they told my daughter and me that while the spy agency isn’t open to foreigners, we could still help because New Zealand is part of Five Eyes. That was right next to a US Army stall, largely there to check out the other tech and sell the military dream.

3. These scenes are largely incompatible – and one is eating the other

That incongruity is clearly wearing on the festival. Despite the invasion of tech companies, Austin is still undeniably weird. Walking home one day we saw a large weed and drug paraphernalia shop which appeared to be staffed by a small dog. The tension between the part of the festival they do for money and the part they do for love is becoming overwhelming. Two New Zealand artists were among dozens who withdrew from the festival due to pressure from an Instagram account protesting the Army’s presence. 

It seems harsh to make structurally impoverished musicians wear the moral cost of a sponsorship deal, a microcosm of the way tech has broken the economic basis of culture for its own benefit. As an observer, the tech elements seem like they could be broken apart from the cultural ones with almost no cost to what seem like largely separate audiences.

4. Scale allows for true serendipity

One afternoon we left the convention centre and chanced on a venue converted to be a little Sao Paulo for the day. A four piece band started playing on a low stage to the right. The voice stopped me in my tracks – deep, mournful, apparently scarred by unhealed emotional trauma. My view was obstructed, but it was clearly coming out of a man who’d lived for well over a half century. Then the crowd parted, and Luiza Martins, barely 30 and a country singer from the southern Brazilian city of Belo Horizante, revealed herself. It was one of the most striking, shocking moments of live music I encountered.

That happened persistently. Another highlight was walking around a corner in East Austin and stumbling into two neighbouring venues with incredible artists playing to tiny crowds all afternoon. The endless scale of it made planning a schedule redundant, and has clear lessons for New Zealand’s patchwork of festivals which can often feel in competition with one another (more on that shortly).

5. The economic impact of SXSW plays out in strange, almost magical ways

Those venues that participate in SXSW can often get tens of thousands of dollars a day in rent, which allows them to run at breakeven (or worse) for the other 50 weeks of the year. It’s a half-billion dollar annual super-dividend to the city, and must be an enormous pain to manage, but while you’re here it really does feel like everything in Austin is flipped to focus on making this one huge event thrive. Russell Coutts might come off as a petulant dolphin-hater, but he’s hardly alone in complaining that restrictive laws and can’t-do attitudes make it difficult to get anything ambitious done in this country. 

6. The Convention Centre has a chance to change Auckland

Somewhat lost to the collective memory in the chaos of Covid is the huge fire at Auckland’s near-completed convention centre in 2019 which set the project back five years and counting. The disaster was big enough to still be part of the financial chaos at Fletcher Building earlier this year, but my visit to Austin was a reminder of the centre’s role in elevating what’s possible in Auckland. The NZ International Convention Centre is already booking events for 2026 (dairy farmers and school principals will be among the first to land), and has a chance to provide a fulcrum around which the city can bid for and generate bigger and more complex events than we can imagine today.

7. … And so will the CRL

Austin is a city of roads that works pretty well for bikes and really well for walking. Hilly, rainy Auckland is (presently) a driving city that can feel semi-hostile to bikers and walkers. The fact that the City Rail Link and convention centre will open within months of each other should provide a surge of people, energy, money and opportunity which fast-revitalises the city north of Queen Street in short order. Downtown is starting to revive already – I recently spoke to services and retail business owners, each of whom reported dramatically improved trade this year – but is still too boarded off, and too hard to navigate. Thankfully that change is now almost close enough to touch.

8. New Zealand shows up, but maybe needs a zhuzh up

On a Wednesday afternoon in Austin, at a venue called the 13th Floor (previously and brilliantly known as Beerland), a clutch of New Zealand artists played a showcase. Ashy was fun as a kind of girl group of one, SWIDT brought late night energy to the mid afternoon and Chaii’s audacious peaks were breathtaking. So: great venue, great music – but there was little which told the grazing crowd what tied these artists together. Other country or city-specific shows hauled in film or podcasts or startups or fashion – something which might have made our little toehold stand out more.

9. Auckland’s permanent state of stadia-confusion is really holding us back

It’s not exactly fair to compare a rich city with a deep musical history to a poorer one which was smushed together out of a bunch of different overgrown ‘burbs. Still, attending bigger shows at three gleaming new venues, you could see how each played a crucial role in making the city work for anything you could want to put on. 

There was the 2750 capacity Austin City Limits, where Teezo Touchdown scorched through his strange Def Leppard-meets-Rick James set. Moody Amphitheatre, a 5,000 seat outdoor stage which hosted a rare PartyNextDoor performance. And the Moody Centre, where a record crowd of almost 17,000 watched the present and future of NBA big men as the Nuggets toyed with the Spurs. At the opposite end, I saw my last show early on a Saturday morning, blasting noise rock at Hole in the Wall, a grimy but vital venue where Townes Van Zandt played 50-odd years ago.

Auckland’s patchwork of oddly-sized and placed stadia remains a famously unresolved mess, but a few days in Austin made it clear that it’s not just sports grounds that need some vision in this city.

10. Auckland has a once in a generation chance to shake the etch-a-sketch in 2025

I’m aware this has been an example of that awful journalistic endeavour in which a writer goes somewhere nice, experiences the best bits of it, then comes home and has a whinge. Guilty as charged. But I do live here in Auckland, and wouldn’t be anywhere else. What is frustrating about Auckland is not its raw materials – it’s about what we do with them, and how connected they feel.

Because we do have more than enough great places to eat, and venues like Whammy and the Basement and the Powerstation would be beloved in any city. When the comedy and writers festivals are on at the same time next month there will be an embarrassment of on-stage riches every night of the week. Still, the fact that the festivals feel in conflict, rather than supporting one another, is part of the issue (Sam Brooks has good thoughts on that in Dramatic Pause). Yet what is really grindy about the city’s combination of hard and soft infrastructure is how it’s tied together – and how ambitious any part of it feels. 

But next year that changes – or has a chance to. If things stay on schedule, the City Rail Link will start rolling, around the same time that SkyCity’s convention centre finally opens, a blank space upon which expansive ideas can be projected. In Austin, in a small fourth floor conference room, I heard someone explain the strategy which propelled Afrobeats to its current ubiquity, and I imagined what people working to make Māori music go global might have made of it. None of that is sketched yet – but having fit-for-purpose rapid transit, along with something to draw people in, should be the biggest change to the city in a generation. 

Auckland often feels like it lacks a true sense of itself, and is persistently just getting by. As we stare down a double dip recession and a new austerity, it can feel like that’s baked in as the story of the decade. But those two events hold the promise of a new era, which can make us a little more like Austin (maybe!) – if only we can grasp the opportunity.