\n<\/p>\n
LINDSAY ZOLADZ<\/strong> Welcome to the Smoke Hour, everybody. Wesley, I\u2019m with you on the divergent listening experiences of \u201cRenaissance\u201d and \u201cCowboy Carter.\u201d Approximately one billion plays later, \u201cRenaissance\u201d does not have a \u201cskip\u201d moment for me. \u201cCowboy Carter\u201d is, as Pareles put it in his review, \u201ca bumpier ride.\u201d At least until it isn\u2019t: From \u201cYa Ya\u201d on, it shifts gears into the fluid, relentless flow she achieved on \u201cRenaissance\u201d \u2014 or to use a Beatles reference, that the Fab Four achieve on Side 2 of \u201cAbbey Road.\u201d There\u2019s a lot here. I\u2019m not sure all of it works, but some of it is sublime, and regardless it seems poised to extend Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s improbable second imperial phase until the promised Act III. Giddy up and bow down.<\/p>\n SISARIO<\/strong> A weak spot in the cinema-auteur theory is that there\u2019s really only one character in Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s story, and that\u2019s her. It\u2019s more like an ultra-dramatic monologue.<\/p>\n ZOLADZ<\/strong> I want to zoom in on \u201cJolene,\u201d which to me sums up so much about this album\u2019s unruly ambition, its inevitable limitations and its irreverent, endlessly remixed approach to American musical history. Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s \u201cJolene\u201d<\/a> isn\u2019t a cover so much as an impassioned piece of fan fiction, rewriting Dolly Parton\u2019s ballad of anguished jealousy into a cocksure taunt: \u201cJolene, I\u2019m warning you, don\u2019t come for my man.\u201d<\/p>\n This inversion of power makes the song less vulnerable and emotionally effective than Parton\u2019s original, but it also gestures toward a dynamic that Parton glosses over in her introduction to Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s take<\/a>, when she compares her auburn-haired \u201cJolene\u201d to the notorious Becky with the good hair<\/a> Beyonc\u00e9 called out on \u201cLemonade\u201d: \u201cJust a hair of a different color,\u201d Parton says, \u201cbut it hurts just the same.\u201d Does it, though? Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s lyric has a racial implication that Parton\u2019s does not.<\/p>\n A far more interesting and successful song is \u201cDaughter.\u201d Here is the pathos that is missing from her \u201cJolene\u201d \u2014 so deeply felt that Beyonc\u00e9 has to borrow from opera to demonstrate the scope of her sorrow and craving for vengeance. \u201cDaughter\u201d is a bloody, modern-day murder ballad in the revisionist spirit of SZA\u2019s \u201cKill Bill,\u201d but it\u2019s also the flip side of \u201cDaddy Lessons,\u201d<\/a> the countrified tune off \u201cLemonade\u201d that in some sense kicked off the \u201cCowboy Carter\u201d experiment. \u201cDaddy Lessons\u201d was both affectionate toward and critical of that flawed fictionalized Daddy, but here Beyonc\u00e9 laments their similarities: \u201cIf you cross me, I am just like my father, I am colder than Titanic water.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n