NEWS
Beyoncé‘s ‘Cowboy Carter’ tour has become the highest-grossing country tour ever.
The 32-show run wrapped up on Saturday (July 26) in Las Vegas with a surprise Destiny’s Child Reunion.
Now, it’s been revealed that the trek grossed $407.6million (£305.5million) with 1.6 million tickets sold, according to Billboard Boxscore.
In making over $400million, the tour has reached a feat that no other country tour ever has, per Pollstar. Bey is also the first American artist to have two separate tours gross over $400 million, with her 2023 ‘Renaissance‘ trek – previously named one of the highest-grossing tours of all time – amassing $579million (£434million) across 56 shows.
The ‘Cowboy Carter’ run is also the shortest tour to ever reach the figure, with its closest competitors lagging far behind. Those include her own previous tour (56 dates), The Rolling Stones’ 2017 – 2021 No Filter Tour (58 dates), and Metallica’s ongoing M72 World Tour (60 so far).
This time around, Bey performed in only nine cities, choosing to play mini-residencies in the likes of Los Angeles, New York City, Atlanta, London and Las Vegas. It was a different approach to the ‘Renaissance’ run, which saw her play 39 cities in 17 countries.
Other surprise guests included Jay-Z, who made a special appearance in Atlanta for ‘Crazy In Love’, followed by solo performances of his own tracks ‘Public Service Announcement’ and ‘I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)’. It came after he previously joined her in France in June, marking their first time sharing a stage in seven years.
Before that, Beyoncé surprised fans once again in Paris, by bringing out Miley Cyrus to perform their collaboration ‘II Most Wanted’ together for the first time.
Beyoncé’s first London date at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium earlier this month earned her a glowing five-star review, with Nick Levine writing for NME: “As a performer, she remains pretty much flawless – who else can sing from a bucking mechanical bull without missing a note? And as a creator of stadium spectacle, she keeps getting better. No one leaving this show will be removing their cowboy hat on the ride home.”
In other news, hard drives containing unreleased music from Beyoncé were reportedly stolen out of a rental car during the tour stop in Atlanta.
According to CNN, the vehicle in question was rented by Beyoncé’s choreographer Christopher Grant, who had arrived in Atlanta early to prep for the singer’s mini-residency.
Reneé Rapp is seen as a “huge inspiration” by SZA.
The 25-year-old artist performed SZA’s Good Days in the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge, accompanied by two acoustic guitarists and a harp player. SZA, 35, was deeply moved by the rendition.
She posted a short video of the moment on Instagram Stories and wrote: “Renee is a HUGE inspiration, energy, voice spirit.”
During her chat with the BBC, Renee shared her thoughts about the track. She said: “I mean, I love SZA. I mean, she was one of my favorite artists in high school. And she's remained one of my favorite artists to this day. I think she's amazing. She's also, I mean, she's an incredible songwriter, but I think because she has so much swag. People don't realize how good of a singer she is. She's a fantastic vocalist and is really, really, really articulate. And I don't cover a lot of songs anymore. So I wanted to cover something that was, like, slightly challenging and also really vocally impressive, and frankly, hard for me to do.”
Renee is currently in the middle of promoting her second album, Bite Me, and opened up about how much more enjoyable it was to create compared to her first project.
She explained: “I mean, I feel like everything was incredibly different. I stopped listening to people that don't make music, because if you don't make music, then why the hell am I listening to you. And I also think the biggest difference, I think I just got a lot better. I think I have just become a better songwriter. I think I understand how to make pop music now in a way that I didn't really before. And I was very sure about what this album was and thematically, what it needed.
“So I felt like I was quite like, headstrong in like, what was gonna work and what wasn't. Because, nobody knows something better than yourself. I think a lot of things were different. I also just, like, had a lot of fun making it, like, I made it with like, three people, mostly, like, it was always like, four of us in the studio all the time, and we got so close, and some of us were already so close. So it was also just like a mess. It was such a mess, like we were just tweaking every day. It was so fun. And I don't think I enjoyed making the first one as much.”
