\n<\/p>\n
The last time Beyonc\u00e9 performed \u201cDaddy Lessons,\u201d the stomping, biting number from her 2016 album, \u201cLemonade,\u201d was at that year\u2019s C.M.A. Awards, in a blistering rendition alongside the Dixie Chicks (now the Chicks).<\/p>\n
Not everyone in country music<\/a> embraced Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s experimentation. \u201cI did not feel welcomed,\u201d she wrote in album notes leading up to the release<\/a> last year of \u201cCowboy Carter,\u201d<\/a> her eighth solo album, an exploration of the many tendrils of American roots music and their connections to Black music of all stripes and generations.<\/p>\n So it was meaningful, and pointed, that at the opening night of the Cowboy Carter Tour at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., on Monday, Beyonc\u00e9 played \u201cDaddy Lessons\u201d for the first time since that rejection. It came right after she sang her renovated version of Dolly Parton\u2019s \u201cJolene\u201d \u2014 approved by the country royal herself \u2014 while soaring over the rapturous crowd in a flying horseshoe.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Full-circle moments don\u2019t just happen \u2014 they are the products of intention and diligence and allergy to loose threads. Throughout this roisterous and clever show, there were suggestions that loop-closing has been very much on Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s mind, along with culmination.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cCowboy Carter\u201d is proof of that writ large: It is album as historical remedy. And it was in part inspired by her chilly Nashville reception \u2014 if you can\u2019t join them, beat them.<\/p>\n And beat them she did, all the way up through earning album of the year<\/a> at the Grammys in February, ending a controversial career-long drought in the awards\u2019 top category (even though she is the most decorated Grammy winner of all time).<\/p>\n That said, calling this the Cowboy Carter Tour was a mild headfake \u2014 even though Beyonc\u00e9 performed most of the album\u2019s songs, it was as a purposeful reframing of this latest album as a kind of DNA-level source material that has been lurking beneath her music all along.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n At almost three hours long, her seventh solo headlining concert tour was a characteristic Beyonc\u00e9 epic. It came alive during the second act, beginning with the sparkly \u201cRenaissance\u201d flirtation \u201cAmerica Has a Problem,\u201d which she delivered from behind a Lucite lectern, followed by \u201cSpaghettii,\u201d one of the most ferocious and fun songs on \u201cCowboy Carter.\u201d That led to \u201cFormation,\u201d by now a crucial entry in her canon, and before long, \u201cDiva,\u201d which made clear the connections between her politics and her physicality: Freedom reigns in both.<\/p>\n By the time Beyonc\u00e9 arrived at the fifth section, which began with \u201cJolene\u201d and \u201cDaddy Lessons,\u201d she appeared to be, improbably, gaining strength. On \u201cBodyguard,\u201d her voice was ostentatious. Her ease of motion on \u201cTyrant\u201d and \u201cThique\u201d was luminous.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n She was well past the two-hour mark when she landed on the slick \u201cTexas Hold \u2019Em,\u201d by far the most successful single on \u201cCowboy Carter.\u201d (Though that album had a gangbusters release week<\/a>, it did not spawn many broad-impact singles, certainly not by comparison to earlier Beyonc\u00e9 albums. ) This was the platonic ideal of a Beyonc\u00e9 country song that might have feasibly been embraced by the country mainstream, but Beyonc\u00e9 \u2014 performing from the hood of a semi truck \u2014 upended it here, blending it into the rollicking \u201cCrazy in Love.\u201d<\/p>\n That was one of several new-old partnerships in her set: \u201cII Most Wanted\u201d and \u201cBlow\u201d; \u201cThique\u201d and \u201cBills, Bills, Bills\u201d; \u201cSpaghettii\u201d and \u201cFlawless.\u201d The music on \u201cCowboy Carter\u201d she was underscoring wasn\u2019t just American roots music, but also Beyonc\u00e9 roots music, dating all the way back to Destiny\u2019s Child.<\/p>\n There were visual and sonic echoes of earlier tours and live shows, too: a red lip couch previously used on The Beyonc\u00e9 Experience; her version of \u201cBefore I Let Go,\u201d<\/a> the Maze featuring Frankie Beverly classic she revisited on \u201cHomecoming\u201d; and wholesale set pieces from the Renaissance World Tour, down to the stars of vogueing working the stage. (Kudos especially to Honey Balenciaga.) She\u2019d sprinkle in bits of hip-hop songs \u2014 David Banner\u2019s \u201cLike a Pimp,\u201d Goodie Mob\u2019s \u201cCell Therapy,\u201d BigXthaPlug\u2019s \u201cThe Largest\u201d \u2014 making even more plain the threads she\u2019s stitching between genres and generations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Even though the musicology lessons dominated her performance, Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s true subject was the mutability of American iconography, and how to put it to work in her favor. That began with wardrobe \u2014 she played various stripes of cowgirl throughout the night, from regal to down-home.<\/p>\n The crowd dressed for the occasion, of course: fringed leather chaps, silver cowboy boots, denim dusters, neckerchiefs, sashes that read \u201cCowboy Carter\u201d or, in some cases, ones that replaced Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s surname with the wearer\u2019s. Outside the stadium, vendors were selling cowboy hats and folding fans: \u201cGot that good snap,\u201d one promised, spreading it out to read \u201cBey-Haw.\u201d<\/p>\n At the merchandise stands, you could buy, for $75, a T-shirt depicting Beyonc\u00e9 sitting side saddle and pointing a shotgun, next to the phrase \u201cNever ask permission for something that already belongs to you.\u201d<\/p>\n That phrase flashed onstage when she was singing \u201cThe Star-Spangled Banner\u201d early in the night. She wore an American flag dress for the night\u2019s finale, \u201cAmen,\u201d and just before that, she was hoisted around the stadium in a red car, with a flag at her side. Reverence was just one of her postures, but not one she wore for long. At the end of the show, a huge bust of the Statue of Liberty appeared onstage with a bandanna covering its mouth, as if protecting itself. One video sketch found a giant Beyonc\u00e9 stomping past the White House \u2014 wonder who\u2019s hanging out in there? \u2014 then drawing a wink from the Lincoln Memorial.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Beyonc\u00e9 has long been friskier than she gets credit for, but now, she appears looser than ever: At various points in the interstitial videos, she was smoking a cigarette, a cigar, a joint. She played along with the memes and mash-ups that trickle up to her from the Beyonc\u00e9-stan internet.<\/p>\n Like she was on her Renaissance World Tour<\/a> \u2014 a stadium show she mounted just two years ago \u2014 she was joined onstage for several songs by her daughter Blue Ivy, who serves as a backup dancer for her mother as well as a narrative foil and fan magnet. (Rumi, Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s other daughter, appeared onstage during \u201cProtector.\u201d Her mother, Tina<\/a>, was in the audience as well.)<\/p>\n That was part of a family through line during this show that extended in both directions, past and future. Toward the end of the night, the huge screens onstage filled with childhood photos, old rehearsal videos, the clip where Beyonc\u00e9 revealed her baby bump on MTV, singing at Barack Obama\u2019s inauguration, and so on.<\/p>\n This, too, felt like the closing of a loop. A valedictory address. For more than two decades, Beyonc\u00e9 has worked to redefine the boundaries of what a pop star can achieve, and how. She set bars, then leaped over them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But what do you when you run out of goals, win all the accolades, become one of one? Accept that your future may well be a remix of your past \u2014 and that\u2019s a whole new gift.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s Cowboy Carter Tour continues Thursday at SoFi Stadium, and includes runs in eight additional cities in the United States and Europe through July 26.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n