It's official: Beyoncé's eighth studio album "Cowboy Carter" has now dropped. It's the second album in her planned trilogy after 2022's "Renaissance."
For funsies, I'm gonna do a first listen review over the next several hours. 27 songs, 79:03 run time.
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Like many, I have been waiting for this album for so damn long. I grew up on country music. I love Beyoncé. The fact that she's making Texas such a huge theme for this album delights my little Texan heart to no end.
Okay, let's do this! I'll be checking-in on each track.
1. "Ameriican Requiem"
She opens up with the second longest track on the album. Beautiful texture. Gorgeous instrumentation. This is definitely a powerful opening salvo. It builds up to the last third with a response to people who claim she's not country:
Look it there, look it in my hand
The grandbaby of a moonshine man
Gadsden, Alabama
Got folks in Galveston, rooted in Louisiana
They used to say I spoke "too country"
And the rejection came, said I wasn't "country 'nough"
Said I wouldn't saddle up, but
If that ain't country, tell me, what is?
Plant my bare feet on solid ground for years
They don't, don't know how hard I had to fight for this
When I sing my song
Absolutely solid opening track. Gauntlet thrown down. I'm so excited for the rest of this.
Alright, friends, I shall be live-tweeting tonight's proceedings. President Biden's 2024 State of the Union, now hyped up to ludicrous levels of importance, the fate of democracy and free world hanging in the balance.
Delightful. Follow along.
Article II, Section 3, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution mandates that the president shall, from time to time, essentially report on the State of the Union and make recommendations, but it wasn't until Woodrow Wilson that this started to become the very public event we see today.
Wilson gave an in-person speech--rather than sending a report--for the first time in 1913, which was somewhat controversial! Warren Harding gave it by radio for the first time in 1922. Truman was first on television in 1947. Clinton in 1997 was the first accessible live online.
I mean, if y'all really wanna talk about violently antisemitic beliefs in Congress, go ask the Speaker of the House what he believes will happen to Israel and all Jewish people during Christ's Second Coming.
That's a delightful conversation. Go ahead and ask him.
Ask Mike Johnson if he's read "Left Behind" and what he thinks about those books. Ask him why he believes there are Jewish people who will be sacrificed in the End Times. Feels pretty goddamn antisemitic, I gotta say.
Oh, gosh, we're not supposed to talk about that part, are we?
Yes, let's just go to the National Prayer Breakfast and shut up and totally ignore that the House is led by an evangelical who fetishizes Israel solely as a vehicle for bringing about the destruction of the world.
I just don't give a damn that Joe Biden is 80. It doesn't bother me. This will go down as one of the most critical presidencies in American history, and it's specifically due to his decades of his experience. I hate to think where we'd be without him. I don't care about his age.
I mean, listen, folks... there's this weird obsession many Americans now have with pining for a John F. Kennedy kinda president -- youth and vitality in the White House and all that.
It's a bit silly to me. Know why? Because Kennedy was in notoriously poor health.
Kennedy was getting shot up with steroids constantly. That man had myriad health issues and three doctors constantly administering to him. The public didn't really know that. They got the glossy presentation. They didn't know he was being basically held together with scotch tape.
Hey friends, today is my birthday. I officially turned 37 very early this morning. There’s not a day goes by that I’m not grateful for how far I’ve come in life, and every year, on my birthday, I can’t help but reflect on the kid in Central Texas who dreamed big things.
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When I was 13, there was nothing I wanted more than to participate in one of those programs where young people travel to D.C., meet Members of Congress, learn about politics, and receive support to start their journey into public service.
It’s been so long that I’ve forgotten the name of the program we learned about in my school, but I’ll never forget the feeling I had when I realized I’d never be able to participate.
In the past 72 hours, it’s been incredibly disturbing to watch the attempted justification or rationalization for the terrorist group Hamas brutally murdering more than 900 people in Israel and taking 150 hostage in a coordinated attack that targeted civilians.
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At best, it’s not that they so much condone the murder of civilians, such apologists claim, but that it’s understandable that Hamas resorted to violence out of desperation for the plight of the Palestinian people.
Their clownish argument, essentially, is that the Palestinian people have been backed into a corner, and there was no other choice: slaughtering and raping and kidnapping innocent people is a necessary evil in service to Palestinian liberation.