Beyoncé Breaks Record

Beyoncé is continuing to make headlines with her historic country music inspired album, Cowboy Carter, this time for smashing sales records

The 42-year-old singer released the album on March 29 as Act II of a three-part project, the first of which was her tribute Black LGBTQ+ ballroom culture with the album Renaissance. She has yet to reveal Act III.

Cowboy Carter achieved the biggest opening week of 2024 in the U.S., helped by the fact it debuted with 407,000 equivalent album units, according to Luminate, a data analysis company.

That number was a combined total of 232,000 units from streaming, 168,000 traditional album sales, and 7,000 track equivalent albums (10 downloads from the same album is equivalent to 1 album unit sale). It makes the album the best sales week for a country album since Taylor Swift's Speak Now moved 716,000 copies in July, 2023.

It was also Beyoncé's biggest streaming week ever, according to Billboard.

In the 10 days since its release, Cowboy Carter has broken records in many places, including in its first few hours on the market. Audio streaming service Spotify revealed the album was streamed 76.5 million times on its first day of release, making it the most listened-to new album this year and most-streamed album in a single day in 2024 so far.

It also achieved this feat on Amazon Music. It went on to net more than 213 million streams in about five days on Spotify.

Beyoncé revealed she decided to make an album inspired by country music after not feeling welcomed in the community.

"This album has been over five years in the making. It was born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed...and it was very clear that I wasn't," she wrote on Instagram when announcing the album.

She was likely referring to her performance with the Chicks at the Country Music Association Awards in 2016 and her song Daddy Lessons from the album Lemonade. Beyoncé and the Chicks performed that song at the CMAs but her move into country music and invitation to sing at the event were widely criticized.

Some big names appear on Cowboy Carter including Dolly Parton, Miley Cyrus, Post Malone and Willie Nelson.

Beyoncé covered The Beatles' song Blackbird and Parton's Jolene on the album.

Former Beatle Paul McCartney praised her cover of the 1968 song in a post on Instagram, saying: "I am so happy with Beyoncé's version of my song Blackbird. I think she does a magnificent version of it and it reinforces the civil rights message that inspired me to write the song in the first place."

"I spoke to her on FaceTime and she thanked me for writing it and letting her do it. I told her the pleasure was all mine and I thought she had done a killer version of the song...

"Anything my song and Beyoncé's fabulous version can do to ease racial tension would be a great thing and makes me very proud," McCartney added.

Parton also welcomed Beyoncé's cover of Jolene and her foray into country music.

"I'm a big fan of Beyoncé and very excited that she's done a country album," Parton wrote on Instagram.