Beyoncé Delivers a "Cowboy Carter" Christmas Performance to Remember
2024 will go down as the year that Beyoncé saved Christmas.
During tonight's NFL Christmas Day game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Houston Texans on Netflix, the superstar gave the world a present of her own by performing songs off of her eighth studio album Cowboy Carter for the first time ever. The genre-bending album, which was released earlier this spring, marked the singer's formal foray into country music and unsurprisingly became one of the most talked about albums of the year. Also, since the singer has opted to not release any sort of visual components to go alongside Cowboy Carter and its predecessor Renaissance, tonight's halftime performance was even more highly anticipated than your typical televised Beyoncé appearance. While Renaissance had an accompanying world tour filled with hundreds of costume changes and nightly TikTok recaps, Beyoncé has truly encouraged fans to sit still with Cowboy Carter, until tonight of course.
The full performance was a true ode to not just Cowboy Carter as an album, but as the underlying mission statement Beyoncé had behind the project as a whole, which was to highlight the true diversity and roots of country music. A number of collaborators from the project joined Beyoncé during the show including all four "Blackbird" singers Tanner Adell, Tiera Kennedy, Reyna Roberts, and Brittney Spencer, Shaboozey, and Post Malone while a sea of dancers clad in all-white and bandana cowboy hats flooded the field. Beyoncé of course included a number of true Texan details like lowrider convertible cars, horses, and even appearances from Houston's own reigning rodeo queens to make a cameo during the show. She closed her performance with Cowboy Carter's leading hit "Texas Hold 'Em" that even included a surprise appearance from her eldest daughter Blue Ivy Carter who joined her mom on the field for the closing number.
Immediately following the performance, in true Beyoncé fashion, the singer shared a cryptic Instagram post of herself atop a horse and waving an American flag followed by the flashing date of January 14, 2025. Is it a tour? The Act III album? The long lost visuals? For now we have no idea, but it's safe to say, Queen Bey fully has our attention.
Tonight's performance won't be the last we hear of the Cowboy Carter era, however. The singer already made history with the project becoming the most nominated album at the upcoming 2025 Grammys and broke a new record as the most Grammy-nominated artist of all time with a whopping 99 lifetime nominations. Cowboy Carter's impact surpasses solely industry accolades as well; Beyoncé along with her recent collaborator Shaboozey helped bring a whopping 36 million new listeners to press play on country music for the first time this year, a feat that will surely impact how a new generation interacts with the genre for years to come.
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