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Beyoncé · S9 E3
BLACKBIIRD
The Beatles cover, the civil rights connection, and the message inside the choice
Paul McCartney writes "Blackbird" in 1968, thinking about a Black woman in America, not a bird in a garden. Fifty-six years later, a Black woman from Houston sings it back to him.
Beyonce, NFL Christmas Gameday Halftime Show (December 25, 2024). Cowboy Carter performed live in Houston, the city where she was born, with the album's full vision on stage for the first time.
BLACKBIIRD (2024)
Paul McCartney wrote "Blackbird" as a metaphor for Black women in America. For fifty-six years, white artists covered it as a gentle folk ballad, stripping the politics from the poetry. Beyonce restores the original intent by handing the song to four Black women who work inside the country genre full-time: Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer, Tiera Kennedy, and Reyna Roberts. The arrangement stays close to McCartney's acoustic simplicity, but four voices trade lines rather than singing in unison. The result sounds less like a cover and more like a correction.
“I had in mind a Black woman, rather than a bird. Those were important times in the States.”
— Paul McCartney, from "The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present," 2021
TAP TO REVEAL: What happened to the four artists featured on "BLACKBIIRD"?
Paul McCartney has said "Blackbird" was inspired by a specific civil rights event in the United States. Which one?
PROTECTOR
"PROTECTOR" strips away Cowboy Carter's genre arguments and leaves something purely emotional: a song about shielding someone you love from a world that isn't built for them. Featuring Beyonce's daughter Rumi Carter, it's the other half of "BLACKBIIRD": the one standing guard while you learn to fly.
Beyonce covered the Beatles and elevated four Black country artists in the process. Next: she calls Post Malone, and "LEVII'S JEANS" becomes the collaboration that makes Nashville's genre walls look ridiculous.
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