Review
Culture
Music
Race
6 min read

Beyoncé’s breaking barriers

Cowboy Carter sees the star crack her whip in the temple of the music industry.

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

Side by side, two rodeo riders on horses trot toward the camera. One is Beyonce, the other a cowboy
Beyoncé at the Houston Rodeo.
Beyoncé.com

I sometimes wake up in a cold sweat with flashbacks of one terrible swimming lesson at school. I had accidentally forgotten to forget my kit, so was forced to face not only the freezing water, but the spouting of ignorant prejudice from my teacher.  

“Kandiah, you’re useless,” he said, as I heaved myself out of the pool at the end of the lesson. “Although I guess it’s not your fault you can’t float like the white children. Your bones are heavier. Look at the Olympics – you never see black and Asian swimmers, do you?” 

I opened and closed my mouth a few times, like the fish out of water I suppose I was, but inside I was seething.  

Being told I couldn’t do something made me all the more determined to do it. Back in I jumped.  

Last week, in another splash aimed at proving people wrong, Beyoncé’s magnificent album “Cowboy Carter” became the first album by a black woman to top the country charts. 

On her Instagram feed she said: “the criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me.” 

It was a brave move. Back in 2016, she had received heated and hate-filled reactions when she performed her song Daddy Issues at the 50th Country Music Association Awards with the country music group Chicks, formerly known as the Dixie Chicks. Many country music fans were outraged, calling it an act of cultural appropriation. One response on social media put it starkly: “SHE DOES NOT BELONG!!”.  

But as a Texan who had been brought up around country music, Beyoncé disagreed. She would spend the next five years planning her response. Cowboy Carter proves her country credentials beyond all doubt. It’s not only about the music. It also does three important things that show the world what can be done when faced with barriers of prejudice and ignorance. 

She honours the past

The album is clearly an act of tribute to trailblazing country artists before her. Beyoncé included notable guest appearances and feature tracks and took the unusual step of sending flowers to all who had inspired her.  

Beyoncé sent flowers to Mickey Guyton, the first black female artist to be nominated for a Grammy Award in the Country category. She also sent flowers to K. Michelle and featured Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer and Reyna Roberts on the Cowboy Carter track Blackbird, a song that Paul McCartney wrote as a response to the case of the Little Rock Nine, a group of African-American schoolchildren initially barred from attending a previously racially segregated school in Arkansas. It took the direct intervention of then President Dwight Eisenhower in 1957 to make it possible for these children to attend their school. She also included guest appearances from country music royalty Dolly Parton and Linda Martell, who both introduce songs on the album. Dolly’s introduction to Beyoncé’s reworking of Jolene is particularly poignant: “Hey Queen B it’s Dolly P”.  

The song Jolene sticks faithfully to the guitar riff from the original, but the words and the tone of this song are completely different. Dolly’s original Jolene was begging another woman not to take her man from her. But Beyoncé will have none of that. She is full of threat and menace:

“I’m warnin’ you, don’t come for my man… don’t take the chance because you think you can.”  

As Beyoncé pays her dues to the greats that have gone before, she also offers a very different picture. She can recognise the past, and yet not be imprisoned by it. She can appreciate those who have laid the foundations for a new era, unbound by cruel stereotypes.  

She challenges the present 

We don’t have to look far to see the way that western society is splintering. It is becoming harder to find common ground, harder to move from one tribe to another.  Beyoncé’s album is political in that it is deliberately breaking down a wall and smashing a division. She refuses to accept that there are no-go areas for people of colour. The album feels like Beyoncé’s famous baseball bat from Lemonade, but this time it isn’t smashing cars, but preconceptions and prejudices instead. 

There’s anger in this record. The first song is “American Requiem” and includes the line:  

“They used to say I spoke ‘too country’./ And the reaction came,/ said I wasn’t country ’nough / If that ain’t country / I don’t know what is?” 

Full of confidence and rage she asks over a bed of country music guitar chords:  

“Can you hear me? / Can you stand me?”  

Beyoncé does not disguise the ironies. The fresh anger and challenge weaves into classic forms and tropes of country music. The artist that some wanted to exclude from the genre tops the charts. The pop icon becomes an iconoclast.  The smashing of divisions makes way for the building of something new.   

She opens a door for the future

It is within living memory of many that black people were prohibited from sitting at the front of a public bus or drinking from the same water fountain as white people. Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter is not just a smash hit it is a smash down of the boundaries of genre that had excluded her and others. With this boundary smashed the opportunity is opened for others too.  

For example, there was a recent stand-out performance at the Grammy awards watched by millions around the world – the duet between the country star Luke Combs and Tracy Chapman. Luke, a young white man, is part of a new generation of country singers with a huge following. The legendary black artist Tracy Chapman recently turned 60. The joyful performance was particularly touching as the two of them looked genuinely delighted to be singing together. The video went viral and lead to a huge uplift in Chapman’s sales. The song Fast Car rocketed to the top of the charts some 36 years after it was first released.  
 
Cowboy Carter is Beyoncé using her voice and talent to push back against prejudice and push forward to a new era. She is cracking her whip in the temple of the music industry. She is driving out those who have commandeered the space that rightly belongs to those from any and all backgrounds.  She is righteously angry at the injustice. She is declaring that country music be reclaimed as a meeting place for all nations to enjoy.  

When Jesus unleashed the whip against the tables of the moneychangers in the temple who were excluding the non-Jews the space rightly belonged to, he fiercely declared: “My father’s house is to be a house of prayer for all the nations.” He was not only breaking the barriers of the past but ushering in a new future, a future where everyone could gather together before God on equal footing. Jesus would eventually die on a cross to ensure this free access to God was available to everyone - wherever they were from, whatever they had done and whatever they looked like.  

I welcome this album by Beyoncé in that spirit of challenging prejudices, breaking down barriers, and clearing the decks for a new future equally available to all.  

If only I could have whipped myself into shape, I believe I could have been the Cowboy Carter of the swimming world forty years ago.  

 

Beyoncé in her own words

“Ain’t got time to waste, I got art to make/ I got love to create on this holy night/ They won’t dim my light, all these years I fight.”  

16 Carriages 

“Say a prayer for what has been / We'll be the ones that purify our father's sins / American Requiem / Them old ideas (yeah) / Are buried here (yeah) / Amen (amen) 

 Amen 

Article
Attention
Change
Community
Loneliness
1 min read

Take some risks, invest in your friends

At the other side of risk is a precious thing: the overcoming of distance.

Tom is a physician and completing a theology doctorate. 

Three friends in the street laugh together.
Jed Villejo on Unsplash.

In the year 2000, political scientist Robert D. Putnam published Bowling Alone. Putnam analysed the decline of “social capital” in America, observing that relational networks, community involvement, and civic engagement were all waning. Why “bowling”? Well, for Putnam, the decline of involvement in bowling leagues was representative of his findings. It served as a microcosm of a bigger picture—the broad downtrend in social engagement. 

What of “social capital” in 2025? Everything, it appears, is different. The arrival of the online ecosphere has reframed how “social” is best understood. We are more “connected” than ever. Indeed, the proportion of society attached to a virtual social network, I suspect, outstrips the proportion of society involved in bowling (or other) leagues at their peak. And even in the short history of the world wide web, the nature of social engagement has developed at breakneck speed. A once revolutionary platform for connecting with past pals from school (remember “Friends Reunited”?) now seems prehistoric. We can “connect” in ways that no bowling league could ever have manufactured. Today, the array of relational possibilities is endless. Awaiting your acquaintance are inert artificial friends, with whom—we’re assured—“You can form an actual emotional connection.” Yes, the Replika app offers virtual companions “for anyone who wants a friend with no judgment, drama, or social anxiety involved.” 

What counts as “social” has expanded beyond measure since the year 2000. No doubt Putnam’s book would look different were it released today. But has the tide of social engagement really turned? 

The bond of friendship is precious. And, like many precious things, it is hard-won.  

Does today’s social mindset encourage us to pursue relationships marked by depth, confidence, nearness? The digital realm makes it extremely difficult not to treat connection as a commodity, more a product in the marketplace of life than a good to be pursued for its own worth. It generates a fantasy of risk-free relationships. “If a friendship isn’t working out, leave it; there’s always another one available”—one without “drama”, as the wisdom of Replika would have it. The measure of a good relationship here is not the strength of the bond itself. Such ties are a means to another end. Perhaps how well the relationship serves individual interests or meets personal preferences. And if we swallow this kind of “you do you” pill whole, we shouldn’t be surprised if our basic assumption is that people do not belong together but apart. 

When friendship becomes a commodity, enduring friendship is nothing short of a miracle. We are all too changeable for consumer relationships to last. Our preferences change. Our life-stages change. Once upon a time, lasting non-romantic bonds were perhaps a more given feature of life. When lifelong relationships and local community overlapped far more, the troughs of friendships were less easy to avoid but had to be faced. It wasn’t so easy to dodge “drama” and move on. But if today’s online social realm shapes our expectations of relationships, the long road of friendship becomes—unsurprisingly—uninviting. Seemingly viable alternatives to our present friends are always available. Indeed, if the “you do you” mantra holds, friendship most likely will not. Or at least not of the precious kind. 

Recently, Sheridan Voysey launched the Friendship Lab. Its aim? To make friendships thrive. Voysey, an author and broadcaster, has developed this new resource alongside a team that includes academics in psychology, law, and statistics. The Lab offers both live and on-demand courses to equip individuals and friends with wisdom and skills for fostering reciprocity and deepening connection. The Friendship Lab is Voysey’s answer to a question he asked himself: "Who can you call at 2am when everything has gone wrong?" Hence, its mission: “to see every adult have at least three 2am friends.” 

The Friendship Lab is on to something important. I suspect that something is, at least in part, that friendships require perseverance

In friendship, it takes time to be understood and to understand. We are all so remarkably complex. Our pasts are so multifaceted. There is no straightforward access to another person. No algorithm can achieve it. No personality test can name it. The deep roots of a relationship are established in attention and commitment. They are reinformed through loyalty and perseverance. The resources provided by the Lab point to the fact that friendships form over time. Like a muscle strengthened through repeated use, they are shaped by practices. Developing connection is more like slowly sculpting clay than sharing in a series of transactions.

At the other side of risk is a precious thing: the overcoming of distance. That precious feeling of being at ease. Unguarded and unafraid

This leads to something important: on its own, perseverance is not enough. Something else should be named if friendships are to thrive and last. And it is less common: risk. 

The bond of friendship always involves risk. Friendship is hard-won because it is risky. To let one’s guard down is a step into the unknown, a “drama” that can never be neatly calculated, because we can never know the outcome. And it is a particular kind of risk: the risk of making oneself vulnerable. Of exposing our hopes and fears, our wounds and weaknesses. Or facing these in others. And of course, we are all so aware of what can go wrong. Sometimes putting yourself out there results not in depth but in misunderstanding or, perhaps, rejection. And to be rejected in one’s vulnerability can be humiliating, even devastating. 

But the bond of friendship is established in these daring footsteps of risk. Friendship does not take shape by side-stepping risk but by taking the road through it—a road not free from but marked by missteps and disappointments.  

Yet such steps are not an end in themselves. They lead to a place that addresses a deeper longing—the ache for connection. At the other side of risk is a precious thing: the overcoming of distance. That precious feeling of being at ease. Unguarded and unafraid. The knowledge that you’re in safe hands.  

In an age where seemingly risk-free alternative connections are available, who would dare to take these steps? Some ancient wisdom might be needed here most of all. 

Around 30AD, a man called Jesus of Nazareth walked the road to hard-won friendship like no other. One of his followers described Jesus’ life as one of commitment to his companions “to the end.” Whilst Jesus’ profound teaching and demonstration of love often gets plenty of attention, there is something precious to be mined here. 

Risk and perseverance belonged to Jesus’ life. The risk of misunderstanding and of rejection—both of which he experienced at the hands of those closest to him. He was not immune to these. In fact, what it meant for Jesus to persevere in his commitment to his followers was for him to endure their abandonment of him. They modelled the opposite of friendship. But Jesus’ risk-taking perseverance knew no limit. It led him all the way to death. It persevered through the failure of his friends to reciprocate to the end. This is why it is just so startling that, in rising from the dead, Jesus says to his followers: “no longer do I call you servants… I have called you my friends.” 

If Jesus has walked the ultimate road of befriending us human beings “to the end”, could looking to this source unlock friendship in a new way today? 

There is a woman in the church community I’m part of who was once asked: “why are you part of this church?” Her answer: “I decided to come here.” She is in her eighties and has been part of that community for decades. I envy the simple sense of risk-taking perseverance in her approach. She is not side-stepping the “drama”—the inevitable missteps that belong to life with others. I do not belong to a generation or an age that puts a premium on risk-taking perseverance “to the end” in friendships. But another look at ancient wisdom might give us just the freedom to do so. And if the road to deep connection goes via some kind of “judgement, drama, or social anxiety” then I, for one, am all in. 

Celebrate our 2nd birthday!

Since March 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,000 articles. All for free. This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.
If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?
Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.
Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief