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BBC News
19 hours ago
- Automotive
- BBC News
Trucking's uneasy relationship with new tech
When Jared first started out in trucking more than two decades ago, he didn't anticipate he'd be on tour with a country music star, hauling guitars, amps, and other pieces of on-stage equipment."It just happened, right place, right time," the Canadian driver, who prefers not to use his surname, explains from behind the wheel of his towering lorry."I've done 5,000 miles in a month and a half, but there's a lot of breaks this year."But during time off between driving to shows in New Jersey, New York, Toronto and Nashville, Jared will be scanning multiple screens in his cabin – a laptop, tablet and two smart phones – to secure more work. All made possible by new a world away from his early career, when he was transporting fruit and wine, he explains."Back in the day, you had to sit by a payphone if you're on the road and start calling people you've worked with and then you'd have a pager."Today, you just turn on your devices and scan through possible work. It's all digital and you get paid instantly. It's much better for business."The change has been driven by "Uberised" platforms, digitally matching truckers with companies which need to move freight. The phrase was coined due to the similarity to the ride hailing Jared agrees it has made things easier, the truck driver says it has led to wages falling."During Covid, the average was $3 (£2.24) per mile, today on some loads from Toronto to Los Angeles that is $1.10 per mile."Not to mention, he says, the rising cost of fuel. In Canada, eight major platforms including Uber Freight, have emerged to digitise the market for the taxi app, they are capitalising on a fragmented market dominated by smaller players, with 2023 data suggesting that more than eight in 10 trucking and freight firms in Canada employ fewer than five Monette, from Teamsters Canada, told the BBC that the Canadian Trade Union representing over 130,000 members including truckers, has "deep concerns around the efforts to 'Uberise' the trucking sector"."Wages in Canada have remained largely stagnant for the past 25 years, and the rise of gig-style work stands to make things even worse," he argues, adding that "larger, often unionised carriers who operate responsibly by investing in safety, training, and decent working conditions are most at risk"."Truckers don't need another app. We need stronger protections and bigger paycheques."When asked, Uber Freight did not directly address the issue of wages and a spokesperson said: "Flexibility, transparency, and choice are built directly into our platform."Carriers can search for loads based on their preferences, such as lane, equipment type, commodity, and schedule, and either book instantly at a listed price or submit a bid for a rate that better aligns with their the trucking industry a lane refers to a regularly travelled route."Our platform also uses real-time market data and AI-powered recommendations to help carriers make the most of their time on the road," the spokesperson said. Vancouver-based Freightera is among the biggest players when it comes to digital trucking services in Eric Beckwitt meets me at a point overlooking the city's sprawling port, where towering orange cranes move brightly coloured containers against a backdrop of snow-topped he started the company in 2014, there were no trucking apps for Canadian service he has developed allows drivers and customers to search 20 billion regular routes for hauling freight which, he says, can be done in "five or 10 seconds".He points out that, unlike other platforms, Freightera does not set prices. "At Freightera, carriers set their own price. We ask them what they need to be healthy and profitable on each lane, and they set the price."Mr Beckwitt says the service has been good for trucking. Before services like his came along, finding work, or even the best route, was like "finding a needle in a haystack", the Freightera boss explains."Carriers really appreciate Freightera's reliable demand for service, which has grown every year consistently, right through Covid, the inflation afterwards and the current freight recession, one of the largest running freight downtowns," he says. The company is now developing AI to speed up complicated bookings: "Digging through the noisy, messy documents, fine print and inconsistent rules - things like missing paperwork, unexpected charges, or a routing issue that could throw off delivery."Mr Beckwitt also dreams of a completely automated freight industry, "40 years from now", where AI would control global freight."Automatically assigning cargo to networks with the lowest capacity and allowing complete transparency, tracking and even trading while they're in travel". Digital trucking services are employed all over the heavily relies on road freight, so has embraced the new tech."Over 75% of inland freight is moved by road and in many cases it's the only mode of transportation available," says Jean-Claude Homawoo, co-founder of Africa's biggest digitised freight platform, launching in 2016, LORI has grown its network to 20,000 trucks. It doesn't own any vehicles but manages them digitally, trying to ensure that trucks don't stand idle or return home that time, he says, "there are certain routes like Mombasa to Kampala in Uganda, where we have loaded so many trucks that the price of a full truckload has fallen". If truckers are finding work that requires less driving around without cargo, then they should be using less that could be helpful in cutting the industry's contribution to carbon dioxide (CO2) accounts for more than half of CO2 emissions within trade-related transport, according to a 2022 McKinsey Beckwitt is convinced that tech like his, is the answer."It's just so much more energy-efficient and so much more cost-efficient," he adds. One form of AI might be helping drivers find work, but another could, one day, put them out of April, a commercial driverless truck took to an American highway for the first time ever, operated by US-based tech firm China, fleets of driverless lorries are currently operating on test routes around the country."The technology is there," explains Freightera's Mr Beckwitt. "It's just whether we trust it to be let loose on the roads. And there's obviously bureaucratic hurdles in the way and red tape."For trucker Jared though, self-driving freight is still a distant prospect."Transportation has been around for hundreds of years. It's not going to end with people worrying about self-driving trucks, that's not going to happen any time soon."
The Guardian
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Urban cowboys, harmonica wizards and queer trailblazers: 100 years of the Grand Ole Opry, country music's greatest institution
It's the only American radio show that's been on the air for 100 years, an institution that launched the country music industry as we know it and a stage production that made country fans flock to Nashville in the first place – and keeps them coming for a singular experience today. 'I somehow understood the weight of what I was stepping into,' says Marty Stuart of the Grand Ole Opry, specifically the first night he played in 1972 as a mandolin-playing prodigy sitting in with bluegrass star Lester Flatt's band. Stuart went on to become a country star, and Opry member, himself, and has now embraced the role of elder on the show: on 26 September, he along with Luke Combs, Darius Rucker, Ashley McBryde and Carly Pearce will take part in the Opry's first-ever overseas broadcast at the Royal Albert Hall, as part of a year-long 100th birthday celebration. 'A hundred years of anything, especially in show business, it's just unheard of,' he marvels. It has been a centrepiece in Stuart's life for most of his 66 years: as a kid in small town Mississippi in the 1960s, he listened to Opry radio broadcasts from Nashville. By the early 90s, he was scoring hits as 'a rhinestone-wearin' country rock'n'roller', and the Opry's longtime legends – particularly fiddling balladeer Roy Acuff and comic personality Minnie Pearl – were nearing the end of their lives. Stuart sought their approval: 'They had spent their lives building that institution, and I wanted to know that I was on the good side of the line with both of those folks.' Both did give him their blessing, but Pearl made him sweat first. She looked right past the armful of white roses he brought her, critiqued his attire – 'Look at those tight pants!' – and admonished him to maintain the Opry's good image. He kept the pants, but took her wishes to heart, and the basics of a night at the Opry's downhome variety show have remained much the same. 'It is not, on paper, the makings of a successful show,' laughs Dan Rogers, the Opry's executive producer. Recorded and broadcast live in front of an audience, announcers project a mixture of folksy intimacy and professionalism as they welcome everyone, read sponsor ad messages and introduce world-class performers who do a few songs each, prioritising old chestnuts that they know fans want to hear. Any given night, the lineup may include mainstream country stars of the present and the distant past, bluegrass bands, gospel vocal groups, singer-songwriters, hotshot instrumentalists, down-home comedians, square dancers and more. Lineups often span several generations and are often described as one big family: back in March, the Opry's most veteran member, 87-year-old Bill Anderson, appeared the same night that Stuart and his band the Fabulous Superlatives backed his bassist's rockabilly obsessed, 10-year-old son. The Opry has absorbed a century's worth of technological, musical and cultural evolution at a very measured pace. Its leadership has apologised for employing blackface duos in its early days; its traditional barn backdrop is now comprised of video walls and its stage has welcomed artists bringing hip-hop, gen-Z folk and TikTok virality to the genre. 'You have to evolve,' says Rogers. 'It's a must for survival and for creating really interesting shows – but you do it in a way that's really respectful of this institution.' Today, membership of the Opry, awarded to a small cadre of musicians – just 76 living artists – has become one of the industry's greatest honours. The Opry was originally almost incidental programming on a radio station, WSM, launched in 1925 by National Life and Accident, a Nashville insurance company looking to promote its business. Station managers filled the airwaves with a hodgepodge of locally available acts, professional or not, and people soon began showing up to watch the broadcast. 'It was a matter of: let's see who we can get to come in here,' says historian Brenda Colladay, a longtime curator of the Opry's collections who has helped to research a thorough 100th anniversary book. There was no such genre as country music when the show launched, just regionally specific versions of old-time music, dance tunes and folk songs. Over time, the sheer variety of performers featured in Opry lineups helped forge a cohesive identity out of those disparate styles, fundamentally shaping how we understand country. Alongside light classical fare were acts such as Uncle Dave Macon, a banjo-playing vaudevillian, and DeFord Bailey, a young Black harmonica wizard whose family string band had long played area dances. The Opry was essentially a barn dance on the radio, an already popular concept – they poached their master of ceremonies George D Hay from a rival show in Chicago. But the Opry initially faced local opposition from upper-class residents who fancied Nashville 'the Athens of the South', complete with a replica of the Parthenon, then under construction. 'It made some people ashamed that [Nashville was] associated with hillbilly music,' Colladay says, including Tennessee governor Prentice Cooper who declined an invitation to attend an Opry celebration: 'He felt like it was really hurting Nashville's reputation.' Cooper was vastly outnumbered by the listeners who heard themselves in the show. As it went nationwide, it developed a massive, devoted following among rural and small-town listeners, as well as southerners who had migrated to industrialised cities. It got so popular that National Life and Accident executives got annoyed with rowdy fans clamouring to watch the live broadcasts at the company offices, and the Opry eventually moved to Nashville's Ryman Auditorium in 1943. By then, it was no longer free to get in, and WSM had established an in-house booking agency that sent performers on the road. Staff and stars saw opportunities to capitalise on the show's dominance in other ways, starting a recording studio, music publishing houses and enough other businesses to entice New York-based record labels to set up local operations. The presence of the Opry ensured that Nashville became home to the emerging, professionalised country music industry. It was where the thrillingly hard-driving new style of bluegrass was fleshed out, and where honky-tonk singers and folk-friendly troubadours alike found a home, but the show was sometimes too cautious to embrace trends. Take Elvis Presley: when he wasn't invited back after his first Opry appearance, he moved on to a rival show in Louisiana. Stuart says the Opry might occasionally overcorrect, and points to its early-80s focus on the slick 'urban cowboy' movement: 'From time to time, I would tune in to the Opry, and when they introduced somebody, I kind of knew what song they were about to sing and what joke they were going to tell. It was a little weary.' Splashy additions like the Opryland theme park and regularly televised broadcasts on the Nashville Network brought in new listeners, as did the 2010s TV drama Nashville, set in the city's country songwriting scene. But because the Opry was home to many generations of performers at once, there were times when some of the dedicated members felt they were denied opportunities to appear – Stonewall Jackson brought an age discrimination lawsuit, which was settled with undisclosed terms. And of more than 230 acts granted membership over the years only two Black country stars, the late Charley Pride and Darius Rucker, have been inducted since Bailey – and Bailey was fired during a copyright-related dispute in 1941, an injustice the Opry recently apologised for. But Rogers reports that for the last few years a double digit percentage of Opry's performers have been artists of colour, making it much more diverse than contemporary country radio; according to leading researcher Dr Jada Watson, radio devoted less than 3% of its spins to artists of colour in 2024, despite Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter coming out that year. Rogers' team began tracking performer demographics internally a few years back, 'because it is right for this community and right for this show'. Equal Access, a DEI programme that helps businesspeople and music-makers of underrepresented identities navigate the country music industry, has forged a friendly relationship with the Opry. Programme manager Chantrel Reynolds says she and her colleagues made sure it was a safe space for discussing the Opry's complex history with race before they began arranging visits with Opry leadership, and she finds that acknowledgment refreshingly 'different from a lot of spaces' in country music. The Opry, she says, is 'actively trying to programme these things, not just in Black History Month, but all year round'. With the help of Equal Access, contemporary country artist Angie K got her first chance to play the Opry last year. 'I was the first person from El Salvador to play that stage,' she says. 'I needed to be not just good – I have to be great, so great that they think, 'We need to do this again with another Latin artist.'' She had scoured Opry history for predecessors who are queer and Hispanic like she is. 'I'm very aware that there's not many. What I love about the Opry is there's still room to grow – they're making a very intentional effort to change.' On the show, she sang originals addressing women as romantic interests, and she was 'very grateful that a lot of people came up and said, 'I'm so happy that you said those pronouns.'' For his part, Stuart marvels at how the Opry always finds its way back to varied vitality after weathering all manner of growing pains: 'The thing that the history books tell me is that every institution goes through that from time to time'. The Opry expects decorum: there's no alcohol backstage, just tea and lemonade, and in keeping with Federal Communications Commission rules, no cursing on stage. But Rogers sometimes dispenses reassurance to first-time performers who assume they should be at their most traditionalist. 'That crowd out there is really full of all kinds of people, all walks of life,' he tells them. 'Bring what you do to this stage. We wouldn't have invited you to be on this stage if we weren't up for what you bring.' Grand Ole Opry: Live in London is at Royal Albert Hall, London, Friday 26 September
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
What to know about Morgan Wallen's Madison concerts at Camp Randall Stadium
Morgan Wallen is days away from creating more Wisconsin history. In 2023, the country music star became the first artist to headline a Wisconsin stadium for two consecutive nights when he kicked off the North American leg of his "One Night at a Time" tour at American Family Field. Now, he's going to be the first musical artist to headline a concert at Madison's Camp Randall Stadium in the 21st century, with the stadium's last concert coming in 1997. Here's what to know about Wallen's Madison concerts: When are the Morgan Wallen concerts at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison? Wallen is playing back-to-back nights, June 28 and 29. This means his first concert is going head-to-head with another major Wisconsin music event, the second Saturday of Summerfest, headlined by Megan Thee Stallion with special guest Flo Milli at the American Family Insurance Amphitheater at 7:30 p.m. Camp Randall's gates open at 4:30 p.m. and the concert begins at 6 p.m. both nights. How to get tickets for the Morgan Wallen concerts at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison A limited number of tickets remain for both nights and can be purchased through the University of Wisconsin-Madison official website. You can also buy resale tickets on third-party outlets like Ticketmaster, Vivid Seats and StubHub. Official UW parking passes for both nights are sold out. How much are tickets for the Morgan Wallen concerts at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison? If buying directly through Wisconsin, the cheapest tickets available are $154.75, plus a $34 fee per ticket. The cheapest third-party tickets, as of June 25, are on StubHub for $202, including fees and before taxes. Vivid Seats' cheapest ticket is $213 and Ticketmaster's is $232, both including fees but not taxes. Who is the opener for the Morgan Wallen concerts at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison? Opening for Wallen are Miranda Lambert and Ella Langley. Lambert, a three-time Grammy winner, is very well-known by country music fans. She's the first woman to win the Country Music Association Awards' Album of the Year twice (2010 and 2014). Her duet with Carrie Underwood, "Somethin' Bad," is her highest-charted song at No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100. Her highest solo song is "Mama's Broken Heart," which peaked at 20th. Langley is a more up-and-coming artist. She released her first studio album, "Hangover," in 2024, which debuted at No. 77 on the Billboard 200 and 11th on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart. Her most popular song is the album's lead, 'You Look Like You Love Me,' which debuted at No. 53 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and peaked at 30th. Who is Morgan Wallen? Wallen is one of the most popular artists in country music. In 2024, he had two of the top 10 albums on the year-end Billboard 200 chart — 'One Thing at a Time' and 'Dangerous: The Double Album' — and the fourth-biggest song on the year-end Billboard Hot 100 chart, 'I Had Some Help' with Post Malone. Both of those achievements helped make him entertainer of the year at the Country Music Association Awards. But his path to stardom didn't come without controversy. In 2021, Wallen was caught on camera saying a racial slur, an incident for which he later apologized. Then, in 2024, he pleaded guilty to two counts of reckless endangerment for throwing a chair off a sixth-floor roof of a bar in downtown Nashville and nearly hitting two police officers, resulting in his arrest. Is Morgan Wallen playing anywhere else in Wisconsin this summer? No, Wallen's only trip to Wisconsin is when he comes to Camp Randall. Are there any other concerts at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison this summer? Yes! Wallen may be the first to actually perform at The Camp since 1997, but he was the second performer to announce he was coming to the Wisconsin Badgers football stadium. Coldplay, which hasn't performed in Wisconsin since 2009, will be in Madison for the first time July 19 as a part of its "Music of the Spheres World Tour." In similar fashion to the rest of the tour, tickets quickly sold out. This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Morgan Wallen in Madison this weekend: dates, times, tickets, openers Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Ageless Country Icon, 79, Glows in Surprise Appearance at Musical Premiere: ‘Our Girl Is Shining'
Ageless Country Icon, 79, Glows in Surprise Appearance at Musical Premiere: 'Our Girl Is Shining' originally appeared on Parade. Dolly Parton shows no signs of slowing down at age 79. The country music legend surprised fans Friday night by stopping by the premiere of Dolly: A True Original Musical in Nashville, TN. Katie Rose Clarke, Carrie St. Louis, and Quinn Titcomb star in the musical, portraying the '9 to 5' icon at three different stages of her who recently suffered the loss of her husband Carl Dean on March 3, glowed as she nearly floated on stage — much to the delight of the surprised crowd. Wearing a form-fitting gold bell-bottom pantsuit, Dolly took the stage at the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts to introduce the show. With her signature sly wit in tow, Parton greeted the audience's thunderous applause by quipping, 'Oh my goodness, I did not know we were that popular.' Parton spoke for a few minutes, offering a charming warning to the preview-performance audience, 'We've got a lot of work to do. So we may stop and start. But you don't get your money back — we may even make you pay extra.' Her devoted fans quickly lit up the comments section online, with one writing, 'She came in glowing like the star she IS,' and another adding, 'Our girl is SHINING.'Dolly: A True Original Musical is scheduled to run through August 31, 2025. 🎬SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox🎬 Ageless Country Icon, 79, Glows in Surprise Appearance at Musical Premiere: 'Our Girl Is Shining' first appeared on Parade on Jul 19, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jul 19, 2025, where it first appeared.
CNN
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- CNN
With her ‘Cowboy Carter' tour, Beyoncé is all red, white and blue. Not everyone is a fan
In the midst of a record-breaking tour in support of her landmark country album 'Cowboy Carter,' Beyoncé is on top of the world. Largely credited as Beyoncé's reclamation of her country roots, last year's 'Cowboy Carter' questions the lines of genre and highlights the ongoing contributions of Black country artists. When she announced the album's release, she said it was 'born out of an experience' where she had felt unwelcome — a likely reference to racist comments generated by her 2016 appearance at the Country Music Awards, where some country fans claimed she had no place at the event. The album and the ensuing tour, which concludes this month, is a middle finger to those detractors. The visual landscape Beyoncé creates, both within the album and on the tour, directly points to the various roles African Americans have played throughout US history. If the establishment will try to deny them a seat at the table, Beyoncé has made it her mission to bring a chair anyway — just see the thousands of Black fans donning their cowboy boots and matching wide-brimmed hats at each tour stop. It can be powerful for an artist of Beyoncé's caliber to highlight such narratives, but the fan response is more nuanced. While some appreciate the visuals that highlight Blackness within country music and American history, others wish for more explicit statements on contemporary political matters, whether that's the US support of the war in Gaza or the aggressive ICE deportations in the US. Her messaging, they suggest, falls short. 'It's very true that Beyoncé has faced really unfair critique from a lot of different sectors. She hasn't been recognized in the way that she should for her artistry,' said Stacy Lee Kong, culture critic and founder of newsletter Friday Things. 'And at the same time, we also see a superficiality to her politics.' Even before the Cowboy Carter and the Rodeo Chitlin' Circuit Tour kicked off in April, the album's art and lyrics specifically emphasized the role Black people have played in country music. Beyoncé's shows underline those messages further, while referencing additional Black history and traditional patriotic imagery. She performs 'The Star-Spangled Banner,' set to Jimi Hendrix's distorted Woodstock rendition; a video screen flashes the message, 'Never ask permission for something that already belongs to you.' She embraces red, white and blue — just see her blue leotard embellished with silver stars and the accompanying floor-length American flag fur coat from her Fourth of July show in Washington, DC. While many fans feel empowered by Beyoncé's interpretation of Americana, others feel the symbolism is lacking. Even among some of her self-proclaimed fans, the ideas presented can be sticky: 'I think people's issues lie where she is silent on current injustices and issues that are happening under that flag now whilst simultaneously constantly draping herself in it,' noted one fan on X. Especially for an artist whose work is often so deeply researched and layered with meaning, Lee Kong said, the fact that Beyoncé doesn't actually say anything specifically about American politics feels fraught. Celebrating being an American, and celebrating Black people's role in America, without actually verbalizing the harm that the United States can cause feels simplistic in today's political landscape, Lee Kong said. Despite her larger artistic message, many fans simply want more from Beyoncé. 'You can't sell an idea and be wishy-washy about it,' she said. 'This is a really difficult line to walk, no matter what, and it has become more difficult as audiences have become more sophisticated and more aware of the complicated politics that are informing our lives.' The complexity of this line is perhaps best exhibited by Beyoncé's Buffalo Soldiers T-shirt, worn during her Juneteenth performance in Paris. The white shirt featured an image of the Buffalo Soldiers, Black soldiers who served in the US Army following the Civil War and were instrumental in the country's westward expansion, conducting campaigns against the Native Americans living in the West (who are credited with coining the 'Buffalo' in their name). On the back of her shirt was a block of text, which read in part: 'their antagonists were the enemies of peace, order and settlement: warring Indians, bandits, cattle thieves, murderous gunmen, bootleggers, trespassers, and Mexican revolutionaries.' The message sparked intense debate. While some praised the highlighting of the Black soldiers, others critiqued the simultaneous disparaging of Native and Mexican Americans, arguing that the shirt insinuates that these groups exist in contrast to the United States. Beyoncé has not spoken publicly about the controversy. Beyoncé is not new to this type of critique — and she hasn't been completely silent about political topics over the years. During her performance at the Super Bowl in 2016, Beyoncé and her dancers appeared in all-black costumes with fists raised, a clear nod to the Black Panthers. She went on to speak in favor of the Black Lives Matter movement in a 2020 commencement speech. In 2023, as her 'Renaissance' tour film played in Israel amid the war in Gaza, with videos surfacing of pro-IDF Israelis singing the single, 'Break My Soul,' critics argued that the artist who could incorporate explicit political messaging into her 2016 performance should also speak up about the war. 'She's a person who has curated a space, has made herself a political figure, whether she likes it or not,' said B.A. Parker, co-host of NPR's 'Code Switch,' at the time. Does an artist owe fans an explicit political statement? Swifties have long analyzed the political motives of Taylor Swift, who until recently has kept mum on political issues. At this year's Super Bowl, Kendrick Lamar seemingly rejected these notions altogether, proclaiming: 'The revolution's about to be televised. You picked the right time but the wrong guy.' 'She is one of the most powerful women in the entertainment industry,' said Melvin Williams, a professor at Pace University who studies race, gender and sexuality in celebrity culture. 'That she now has to be an expert of everything, stand up for all causes, while performing and showing up flawlessly — that is an impossible standard for any human being.' Beyoncé did endorse Kamala Harris's presidential bid last year, and she has also made more subtle political references during the tour. The Jimi Hendrix version of the national anthem — performed during the Vietnam War — has been widely interpreted as a form of protest, though the legendary guitarist's intent is still subject to debate. In one image from the Cowboy Carter tour book, Beyoncé is pictured sitting at a sewing machine while stitching the American flag, in tribute to Grace Wisher, a Black girl who helped sew the original Star-Spangled Banner. Her veiled, white dress — potentially a callback to the 'veil' analyzed by W.E.B. DuBois, a metaphor used to explain the color line between White and Black Americans — is splattered with blood. 'Cowboy Carter' was a risk, Williams said, both creatively and in its messaging around genre and race. As a celebrity, Beyoncé is adept at initiating social commentary, yet she rarely gives interviews. She speaks almost exclusively through her work. To some, her message is clear, and demands for more are taken as examples of the undue expectations society places on Black women. Despite pushes to do so, it's unlikely that she will ever 'explicitly grapple with, for example, America's history of empire building or the persistence of capitalism in America,' Williams said. But Beyoncé's work presents an entry point into thinking more deeply about the world around us, Lee Kong said. As a result of the album and the tour, those conversations are being had anyway — with or without her input.
