Beyoncé’s Netflix Halftime Set: A Stunning ‘Cowboy Carter’ Showcase

Shortly before the release of her sprawling, musically pedagogical album “Cowboy Carter” in March, Beyoncé issued a statement about the project: “It was born,” she wrote, “out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed … and it was very clear that I wasn’t.”

Many speculated that she was referring to her performance with the Chicks in 2016 at the Country Music Association Awards, although that is now just one of many times that the Texas-born superstar’s forays into the Nashville, Tennessee, establishment have been met with resistance from closed-minded gatekeepers. In September, “Cowboy Carter” received zero CMA Award nominations; two months later, it earned 11 Grammy nods, leading all artists.

But Beyoncé’s jubilant and expertly staged performance, during halftime of an NFL game in Houston on Christmas, sent the opposite message: In her big-tent reimagining of country music and Southern culture, everyone is welcome. The event was not only part of Netflix’s first foray into the crowded field of NFL broadcasting, but the live debut of material from “Cowboy Carter,” an album that examines the history of country music, spotlights Black performers vital to its past and present, and ponders larger questions about the confining nature of genre.

The impressive production, announced at the top as Beyoncé Bowl, seemed to employ a supporting cast that rivaled a cinematic blockbuster. For most of its 13 minutes, the field teemed with musicians, dancers and a procession of extras, every one clad in dazzling white. That abundance sent a message. Although known for her monolithic singularity as a solo artist — and for striking power poses in the spotlight — Beyoncé put a version of herself on display during this show that felt especially generous, eager to share the moment.

During an excerpt from her cover of the Beatles’ “Blackbird,” she was flanked by the quartet of young Black country artists from the album recording, Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer, Tiera Kennedy and Reyna Roberts. She ceded the frame to rising star Shaboozey to rap his verse on “Sweet Honey Buckiin’,” an appearance that helped facilitate the success of his long-reigning No. 1 hit “A Bar Song (Tipsy).” She joined a long two-step line that featured her strikingly mature 12-year-old daughter, Blue Ivy. And she let Post Malone break the dress code, in denim — perhaps for the sake of product placement — as they performed a chaste but charming version of their sultry duet “Levii’s Jeans.” Malone’s delighted-to-be-there grin telegraphed an awe that echoed what plenty of viewers were probably thinking: “Who but Beyoncé could pull off this sort of spectacle?”

At this level of her imperial fame, Beyoncé characteristically seeks out, and thrives on, the most high-profile stages. Some of the biggest are connected with the NFL, and she has relished that platform. In 2013, she brought her fiery showmanship and deep catalog of hits to put on one of the best Super Bowl halftime shows of the century; in 2016, she dropped in to perform “Formation,” a bold single she’d released a day before, and upstaged Coldplay, the headliner, in the process. In February, when she announced the forthcoming release of “Cowboy Carter,” she did it during — what else? — a Super Bowl commercial. (In 2019, Roc Nation, the entertainment company founded by Beyoncé’s husband, Jay-Z, entered a partnership with the NFL and has since brought an influx of hip-hop artists to the Super Bowl stage.)

Although it was awash in stars, stripes and American flags worn as accessories, Beyoncé’s Christmas performance did not have the confrontational edge of some of her most pointedly political work, save for some zestily sung lyrics during a rollicking performance of “Ya Ya”: “Whole lotta red in that white and blue, history can’t be erased.” But it was magnificently artful in its staging, background details and composition, from the moment Beyoncé entered on a white horse while singing her elegiac “16 Carriages” to the medley’s spirited finale, a joyful rendition of the jaunty, banjo-led No. 1 hit “Texas Hold ‘Em.”

“It’s only right that we do ‘Texas Hold ‘Em’ for the first time in Houston, Texas, on Christmas,” she told the crowd. (It also would have been even more right if the Texans could have pulled off a home-field win instead of losing, 31-2, to the Baltimore Ravens.)

The performance’s only limitation, compared with Beyoncé’s most sublime live achievements — including her 2018 Coachella performance, captured on the film and live album “Homecoming,” and alluded to during a raucous marching band segment Wednesday — was the narrow focus of its set list. This was a “Cowboy Carter” showcase through and through, although it could have easily included earlier material, like “Daddy Lessons,” that connects the album to earlier entries in Beyoncé’s discography.

But given the timing of the set, squarely in the window when Grammy voters are deciding if “Cowboy Carter” will finally give Beyoncé her coveted first album of the year trophy, the show played out like an exorbitantly budgeted, and particularly convincing, For Your Consideration ad. And after a performance as sharp and wide-ranging as this, she’s a pretty safe horse to bet on.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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