It’s not a country album. Beyoncé already said it wasn’t a country album a few days ago, but artists say a lot of things when they’re promoting records. In this case, it happens to be true. Cowboy Carter, the much-vaunted Beyoncé country album that materialized in the collective imagination when she released the first two singles last month, does not exist. Instead, we get an album that uses country music as a framing mechanism and maybe also a springboard. The album that we got is probably more interesting and definitely more fun than the one I worried we were getting.