Beyoncé opened her Cowboy Carter world tour Monday night with the first of five shows at Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium: a characteristically complicated pop spectacle that framed Black creativity as a wellspring — perhaps the wellspring — of American culture.
Kicking off a year and change after the release of Beyoncé’s country-inspired “Cowboy Carter” LP — which finally earned the singer a Grammy award for album of the year this past February after four previous losses — the new road show features virtually all of the music from “Cowboy Carter” yet also looks back over Beyoncé’s sizable catalog, in particular 2022’s clubby “Renaissance,” which spawned a blockbuster world tour of its own.
Monday’s show, which lasted 2 hours and 45 minutes, began as “Cowboy Carter” does, with renditions of Beyoncé’s churchy “Ameriican Requiem” and the Beatles’ “Blackbird”; then she sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” as a giant video screen behind her flashed a message: “Never ask permission for something that already belongs to you.” Beyoncé, dressed in fringed white cow-wrangler garb, did a bit of her song “Freedom” before segueing into “Ya Ya,” during which her 13-year-old daughter Blue Ivy was among her large crew of dancers. “Ya Ya” ended with the singer sitting in a throne as a giant robot arm poured her a drink.
After a costume change, the show’s second act began with “America Has a Problem,” which Beyoncé sang at a news podium festooned with microphones, then zoomed through “Spaghettii,” “Formation,” “My House” and “Diva.” Act III opened with relatively low-key versions of “Alliigator Tears” and “Just for Fun” before a tender reading of “Protector,” for which another of Beyoncé’s children — 7-year-old Rumi — appeared onstage and gave her mom a hug.
For “Desert Eagle,” Beyoncé wore a bedazzled bodysuit that she kept on for “Riiverdance,” “II Hands II Heaven” and “Sweet Honey Buckiin’” — a dance-heavy portion of the show that again prominently featured Blue Ivy. After a New Orleans-accented rendition of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene,” the singer strapped onto an enormous neon horseshoe and sang “Daddy Lessons” as the horseshoe flew around the stadium. A funky “Bodyguard” and a snippet of “II Most Wanted” then gave way to an ecstatic “Cuff It,” which Beyoncé performed on a small secondary stage near the rear of the venue. She rode the horseshoe back to the main stage and did “Tyrant” astride a golden mechanical bull accompanied by two bull heads on swiveling robot arms.
At about the two-hour mark, Beyoncé said, “Welcome back to the Renaissance, y’all,” which led into versions of “I’m That Girl,” “Cozy” and “Alien Superstar,” as well as a western-tinged take on the ballroom battle that Beyoncé’s dancers undertook every night on the Renaissance tour.
The singer started the show’s home stretch performing “Texas Hold ’Em” on a prop big rig dressed in denim short-shorts and furry thigh-high boots; she stayed in that outfit for a chopped-and-screwed “Crazy in Love,” which she followed with “Heated” and her cover of the late Frankie Beverly’s “Before I Let Go.” The concert ended with “16 Carriages,” a bluesy ballad about her life in show business that she sang from inside a flying convertible, and “Cowboy Carter’s” closer, “Amen,” for which she wore a fluffy stars-and-stripes gown. As the lights went up, a masked replica of the Statue of Liberty’s head was at the center of the stage.