Beyoncé’s Fourth of July concert was an ode to an unfinished America

Few – if any – contemporary pop stars seem capable of bringing an idea to completion with the style and scrupulousness of Beyoncé. So you better pay attention whenever she does something halfway. Like on the Fourth of July, performing right outside our nation’s capital, when she used her miracle voice to sing an abbreviated version of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” cutting the anthem a few lines short, allowing all kinds of metaphors to gallantly stream into the muggy twilight. Metaphors suggesting what? That this nation is not fully what it claims to be. That our democracy-building remains unfinished. That we are still very much in the middle of this whole thing.

It was a provocative, artful, resoundingly intentional halfwayness – the inverse of what plagued “Cowboy Carter,” the 2024 album that failed to make clear whether Beyoncé was leaning toward country music to reclaim lost chapters of America’s musical history or to overcome her perennial Grammy snubs. Either way, she got justice on Grammy night in February, and throughout her spectacular concert at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Maryland, on Friday, she appeared to be projecting a contented levity into the ominous murk of the American moment – something you could see most clearly during “Texas Hold ’Em” when she hopscotched across the stage in stiletto-heeled cowboy boots like a kid wearing sneakers.

Or did you blink and miss that one? As ever, a Beyoncé concert can teach your retinas to hear, and if you squint hard enough, you can hear the future. Like during the twinkle-thump of “Riiverdance,” which found Beyoncé talking dizzying game, flanked by dancing cowgirls in gunmetal sequins who’d seemingly just boot-scooted off the Mothership. Or during the futuristic slow grind of “Tyrant,” when she mounted a mechanical bull made of molten gold. Or during the various songs Beyoncé spent riding a neon horseshoe on suspension cables through the thickening summer night sky. Grafting copious sci-fi dazzle onto her Western wear in ways that her album did not, she ultimately clarified the greater “Cowboy Carter” proposition: No matter how fantastic the future we imagine for ourselves, we’ll still have to square it with our past.

Musically, time was more of a flat circle. Sometimes it moved quickly, like during “Ya Ya” when Beyoncé effortlessly jumped from James Brown vamping into an unexpected yodeling fit, resolving in Sunday morning gospel rapture, bridging eras and traditions in the space of a few precious seconds. Somehow, she sounded even better taking her time, slowing “Crazy in Love” down to the tempo of D.C. go-go music, transforming her indelible infatuation testimonial into something devastatingly lucid. Before exploding into “Formation,” she elongated the intro into a metaphysical tease, the track’s introductory boing-boings conjuring the image of a Super Ball chucked down the stairwell of the tower of song.

This exquisite time-torquing was all happening in the right-now, of course – and in a far more fraught right-now than usual. During this concert, President Donald Trump was partying on the White House lawn a few miles away, celebrating a tax bill expected to strip health care from millions of Americans while routing unprecedented billions to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Plenty of Beyoncé’s lyrics – “I won’t let my freedom rot in hell,” for one – sound different when plainclothes ICE agents are picking our neighbors up off the street. And while her music only addressed the magnitude of the day through subtext, the subtext was screaming.

Except for when it wasn’t. The final song on “Cowboy Carter” is titled “Amen,” and it’s been the show-closer on tour, too. But here, it felt bespoke. “I see you’re hurting badly,” Beyoncé sang, her voice steady and unpressed, as if wafting through a door left open. When she eventually reached the song’s final “amen,” there was no closure to be felt. Some fans looked up, hoping that a few conclusive fireworks might boom overhead. Left staring into black skies, they streamed toward the exits as if animated by the night’s unspoken premise: America is not over yet.