COWBOY CARTER
BEYONCÉ
Verdict: The icon successfully strays from her comfort zone.
What’s the story?
Cowboy Carter is the eighth studio album by American superstar Beyoncé. A concept album, Cowboy Carter is the second of a planned trilogy of albums, following Renaissance (2022). Beyoncé conceived Cowboy Carter as a journey through a reinvention of Americana, spotlighting the overlooked contributions of Black pioneers to American musical and cultural history. Although many have labelled it a country album, Cowboy Carter blends diverse musical genres including pop, hip hop, trap, psychedelic funk, blues, soul, rock, rock and roll, opera, Irish jig and folk music.
Worth a listen?
From the start of Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé makes it clear this ain’t your typical country album. Opening epic Ameriican Requiem is part gospel, part-Queen, part-Buffalo Springfield as the artist lays out both her intentions and lineage. Like everything Beyoncé has done, specifically in the last decade of her career, Cowboy Carter is a college dissertation of an album: richly researched and meticulously constructed. And while she has something to prove to a whole musical community, it’s more of a love letter to her Southern roots. Five years in the making, Cowboy Carter goes long but moves easy, with some of Beyoncé’s best vocal work on record.
LAS MUJERES YA NO LLORAN
SHAKIRA
In the seven years between studio albums, Shakira essentially became a singles artist, maintaining her ubiquity through globe-conquering collaborations. On 2024’s Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran (‘Women No Longer Cry’), the international pop icon collects the bulk of those previously one-off hits and unites them with a batch of fresh tracks. Las Mujeres chronicles almost a decade of the singer’s life, which included a much-publicised split which, and stands as one of the strongest, most thematically cohesive statements of her career.
EVERYTHING I THOUGHT IT WAS
JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE
In the immediate decade following his boy band peak with *NSYNC, Justin Timberlake was on top of the pop. The 2010s was a period of diminishing returns, so it’s good to see that his big 2024 comeback, Everything I Thought It Was, mostly avoids that downward trend, offering a decent attempt at recapturing his former glory, but lacking enough excitement to be truly memorable. That’s not to say it’s a complete miss: for every disappointing moment, there’s a whiff of the emotion and charisma that propelled his solo ascendance. Plus, his voice is still in fine form.
HEAVEN :X: HELL
SUM 41
Capping nearly three decades on the scene, Sum 41 bid farewell the only way they really could: merging their punk and metal extremes on the sprawling double album Heaven :x: Hell. All those years of stylistic evolution collide on this 20-song collection, which is split evenly into the pop-punk Heaven side and the metal-leaning Hell side (naturally). Finding the sweet spot among Billy Talent, Green Day and blink-182, this is standard, anthemic pop-punk goodness, designed for fist-pumping and light moshing, all centred on Deryck Whibley’s acrobatic vocals. As far as swan songs go, Heaven :x: Hell is a heartfelt goodbye to fans, an overly generous gift that aims to please the full spectrum of diehards and thank them for all their years of dedication.