The Western revival is underway. After a decade of bro-country sounds and style, where 808s and baseball caps outnumbered steel guitars and Stetsons, country is looking west for a refresh. Record labels are signing artists like Ian Munsick, Catie Offerman, and Tyler Halverson, who grew up around horses and cattle. Festivals are being held on actual ranches. And stars are stepping out, hats to boots, in fresh-off-the-runway Western wear. Even songwriters who play cowboys on TV, like Yellowstone’s Luke Grimes, are dropping country albums.
The pop world is saddling up, too. Post Malone and Lana Del Rey are making country turns, and Bruno Mars is dressing cowboy on Instagram. But it’s Beyoncé who is at the fore of the movement, emphasizing the core culture by titling her country album Act II: Cowboy Carter. “I did a deeper dive into the history of country music,” she said. “It feels good to see how music can unite so many people around the world, while also amplifying the voices of some of the people who have dedicated so much of their lives educating on our musical history.”
Yes, a cowboy renaissance is upon us.
According to accessible-fashion brand Boohoo, TikTok videos tagged #cowboy recently hit over a billion streams in a month, while Google searches for “cowboy hat” and “bolo tie” spiked more than 200 percent and 566 percent, respectively, on the day Beyoncé dropped “Texas Hold ’Em” and “16 Carriages.”
Halverson, a South Dakota native who makes what he calls “Western Amerijuana” music, says adopting cowboy style is essential to country. “The boots and hat go a long way,” he says. “Before we even start singing, you already know a little bit about this person.”
Beyoncé used cowboy fashion at the Grammys to telegraph her country pivot, rocking a leather Damier skirt suit from Pharrell William’s Western Louis Vuitton collection, a bolo tie, and a crisp white Stetson.
“We noticed it,” Stetson’s marketing boss Tyler Thoreson says. Immediately, the brand reached out to Beyoncé’s stylist and began making custom headwear for the singer. When she asked for a crimson hat, artisans broke the brand’s neutral-color rule.
“We don’t normally sell a red hat, but for Beyoncé, we made it happen,” Thoreson says.
But Beyoncé, who grew up in the rodeo mecca of Houston, is doing more than sparking a fashion trend with her Cowboy Carter looks. Her platinum-blond hair, spurs, turquoise, and fringe are helping to course-correct the erasure of Black and brown people in country culture.
Randy Savvy, the leader of the Compton Cowboys, a California community group that introduces inner-city youth to horse culture, says the Western aesthetic is not foreign to Black history, despite how it’s been depicted in entertainment.
“What Americans view as cowboys, they think about John Wayne films or the Marlboro Man, but that is only one fraction of what the culture really is,” Savvy says. Beyoncé seemingly used the red Marlboro font for one of her Cowboy Carter shirts.
“We as Black people, every time we’ve entered a space, we’ve turned it up a notch,” says Savvy. “In country music, you got Beyoncé now putting that stamp on stuff.”
Halverson, for one, welcomes it. “It’s expanding horizons,” he says, “and getting country music in front of audiences that it normally wouldn’t be in front of.”
This story is part of Country’s New Cowboy Era, a look at trends in country music that’s running in Rolling Stone’s May print issue.
Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny in a split image
Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny Dealt With Trump Quietly. It’s a Smart Move
Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny are both major superstars — and they’ve shared some parallels in their careers and discographies for several years. Now, they’re even using the same playbook to deal with taunts and baiting from Donald Trump and the White House’s social media teams.
Since Trump took office during his second term, he and his administration have been using social media as part of their communication strategy. The propaganda-like, rage-bait-style clips often lean into internet culture and use popular music to make light of Trump’s most egregious actions, like his immigration policy and war-hungry foreign policy.
Olivia Rodrigo, Katy Perry, Ariana Grande, and Noah Kahan are just some of the artists who have had their music used in these videos without their permission — and vehemently spoken out against these actions and against the president. In the past couple of weeks, the Trump administration seems to have wanted to provoke a response from two of the world’s biggest superstars: Bad Bunny and Swift.
On July 30, the official White House TikTok used “La Mudanza” for a particularly tone-deaf video about immigration that celebrated the number of deportations under Trump. A week later, a video with text that said, “mood because it’s August and Donald Trump is your president” set to Swift’s “August” was uploaded by Team Trump, the president’s official campaign account. The caption was an overt provocation: “I’m sure Taylor Swift is going to be super excited we used her song,” it read. Days later, another clip from the same account featured an edited version of Swift’s Red album cover with text that said, “Did you know that Taylor Swift wrote a whole album about the color of the Republican Party?”
Neither musician has released a public statement denouncing the use of their music in Trump’s videos. Instead, two of the world’s biggest superstars quietly removed their songs from videos posted by official accounts linked to the Trump administration. (It’s unclear if there is a TikTok feature that allows selective sound muting on videos or if the respective teams reached out to the social media accounts directly.) The tracks are still available for other TikTok accounts to use in their videos, making their silence a pointed — and smart — approach. Both Bad Bunny and Swift seem to recognize the president and his administration’s tactics for what they are: antagonizing moves that keep the Trump conversation centered on his social media presence, rather than his actual policies and the harm they commit. Why would they add their star power to the conversation and stoke the flames when that’s exactly what the White House appears to want?
Some people argue that celebrities should wield their platform to denounce Trump at any chance if they are truly not politically aligned with his MAGA politics. But because they hold so much influence, these superstars need to be strategic about how they use it.
Benito, in particular, has been incredibly outspoken about his politics. He stood on two of the world’s biggest stages and used them to voice pro-immigration messages, denounce Trump’s policies, and highlight Puerto Rico as it struggles with the effects of U.S. imperialism. “Before I say, ‘Thank God,’ I’m going to say, ‘ICE out,’” the Puerto Rican superstar said at the 2026 Grammys. “We’re not savage. We’re not animals. We’re not aliens. We are humans and we are Americans.” Last summer, Bad Bunny’s music video for “Nuevayol” used a voice that sounds a lot like the president’s to deliver a pro-immigrant message. “I made a mistake. I want to apologize to the immigrants in America. I mean the United States. I know America is the whole continent,” the voice bellows out of a Seventies radio toward the end of the video. “I want to say that this country is nothing without the immigrants.”
Fans were convinced that Benito would speak out against the official White House TikTok account when it used one of his most political songs. But commenting on the video would only blow up the discussion for a wider audience. When Rodrigo, Perry, Grande, and Kahan made public comments, spokespeople for the White House used the opportunity to spread hateful rhetoric. “We’ll say this one last time: what’s actually barbaric, inhumane, and heinous are the criminal illegal aliens who have injured and murdered innocent American citizens,” Abigail Jackson said in a statement to Rolling Stone after Grande spoke out. It’s the antithesis of what Benito said during his Grammys speech this year: “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”
Swift, on the other hand, has dealt with Trump and the right-wing’s instigations for years, each one crazier than the last. The TikTok videos from the last week aren’t even the first time that the administration has used the singer’s music for social media videos. Last fall, both the official White House TikTok account and Team Trump used songs from Swift’s then-newly released The Life of a Showgirl in separate videos. One plucked the lyrics “pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes” from “The Fate of Ophelia” to celebrate Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and the first and second ladies. The others boasted about Trump by using “Father Figure” and honored Melania Trump’s Patriot of the Year award with “Opalite.” As of Aug. 10, the audio is not available under all of these specific videos.
The pop superstar has not spoken publicly about these instances. But she has made her disdain for Trump clear. Over the years, Swift has criticized Trump’s autocratic leadership. On X, she wrote “we will vote you out” and endorsed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the 2020 and 2024 elections, respectively. In 2019, Swift told Rolling Stone, “There’s literally nothing worse than white supremacy. It’s repulsive. There should be no place for it.”
Even though she’s shared her liberal viewpoints on issues like abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, and racial inequality, Swift has still faced ridiculous claims of being MAGA-aligned and folding in right-wing dog whistles to her music — and that’s without ever naming Trump. If Swift were to make a statement about her music being used by the Trump administration, the attention-seeking president would absolutely revel in it. Getting Swift and Bad Bunny to weigh in is exactly the type of headline grabber he would love to draw attention from his remarkably unpopular presidency.