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ACT Writing

As you study for the ACT, it's easy enough to calculate your ACT composite target score. But where does your essay score fit into all this? What's a good ACT Writing score? Read on to find out how to figure it out!

Feature image credit: Had a Good Boogie Lately? by Jocelyn Kinghorn , used under CC BY-SA 2.0 /Cropped from original.

How Do You Figure Out What's a Good ACT Writing Score?

A good essay score depends on what your goals are. These goals should be concrete and determined by the colleges you're applying to . Find out more about why this is the only factor that truly matters in our article on what a good, bad, and excellent ACT score is .

So how do you figure out your target ACT Writing Score?

Step 0: Is ACT Writing Required?

Especially now that the SAT essay is no longer mandatory, many schools have been reevaluating their stance on whether or not to require the ACT essay (since schools generally like to have a consistent standard across the two tests).

Some colleges are ACT Writing-optional, while others don't consider it at all. Use our complete list of which schools require ACT Writing to figure out where the schools you're applying to stand on the issue.

Step 1: Use Our Worksheet

We've created a handy worksheet to help you figure out your target ACT score . For now we'll be adapting the worksheet to figure out what a good ACT Writing score is for you, although I definitely recommend also filling out a second sheet to figure out your target ACT composite score .

Step 2: Fill In Your Schools

On the worksheet, fill in the names of the schools you want to get into in the leftmost column. Include dream or "reach" schools, but don't include "safety schools" (schools you think you have at least a 90% chance of getting into).

Step 3: Get ACT Writing Score Data

You can try to get the data from each school's admissions website, but this is time-consuming and not always successful, as admission sites aren't laid out in a particularly standardized way.

The best source of data for ACT Writing scores is a school's Common Data Set , if the school chooses to publish it. The Common Data Set, or CDS, is a set of survey items that schools can choose to fill out and put online to give students information about the school in a standardized way. The CDS's section about First-Time, First-Year (Freshman) Admission may include information about students' 25th and 75th percentile scores on ACT Writing.

It's not mandatory for schools to fill out the CDS, and even if they do, they don't have to fill out the information about ACT Writing, so you won't always find that information, but the CDS is the most up-to-date and reliable source for ACT Writing score information.

A third option is to take to Google and search out other sources for this data; however, you should differentiate between this kind of unofficial information and official data released by the schools.

Step 4: Average Both Columns

Total up the 25th and 75th percentile scores, then find the average of each column. We recommended that you use the 75th percentile score as your target ACT Writing score since getting that score will give you a very strong chance of getting into the schools you've listed. If you're applying to humanities programs, you may even want to consider a higher target score for ACT Writing, as it may be used for placement in certain courses.

A quick refresher on what percentile scores mean: 25th percentile means that 25 percent of the students attending have a score at or below that number (below average). The 75th percentile means that 75 percent of students have a score at or below that number (above average).

For example, let's say that the 25th/75th percentile ACT Writing score range for Northwestern University is 7/10. If you score above the 75th percentile score (a 10), your Writing score will help your chances of admission; if you score below the 25th percentile (a 7-8), your Writing score might harm your chances of admission.

What If There's No ACT Writing Score Data?

Unfortunately, very few colleges actually release their ACT Writing score ranges . Rarely is the information easily accessible on the school websites (since admission sites have no standardized formats)—instead, you have to search for a school's most recent Common Data Set or rely on data provided by third parties.

If there is no data for ACT Writing scores at all, you can take a look at the school's composite ACT score ranges to get a rough idea of where your ACT Writing score should be.

Because it requires exceptional skill to get 6 in all domains (or a 12/12) on the ACT Writing, even the most competitive schools will accept a 9/12 on the essay (which puts you in the 96th percentile for ACT Writing ) , even if the school's ACT composite range is 32-35.

We've created a chart below that compares percentiles for ACT composite scores and ACT Writing scores. You can use this chart to help you figure out roughly where your Writing score should fall, based on your composite score.

source: two different ACT.org pages

As an example, Northwestern 's 25/75 range for ACT composite scores is 33-35, so you should aim for an overall ACT Writing score of between 10 and 11 out of 12 .

In general, as long as your Writing score percentile is in the general ballpark (within 20-30 percentile points) of your composite score percentile, you'll be fine.

Summary: How to Decide What a Good ACT Writing Score Is

• First, look up whether the schools you wish to apply to require ACT Writing scores .
• Check the school's admissions site or Common Data Set (if published) to see if there is data for ACT Writing, OR
• Estimate the Writing score range based on the school's ACT composite score range
• Then, sum up the ACT Writing score ranges for the 25th and 75th percentiles, average the 25th and 75th percentile scores, and choose a target ACT Writing score (75th percentile average score is recommended as a target).

What's Next?

Now that you've stuck your toe in the waters of ACT Writing scoring, are you ready for more? Of course you are. Get into the depths of ACT Writing with this full analysis of the ACT essay grading rubric .

Is a longer essay always better? Find out how essay length affects your ACT Writing score here .

Completely confused about how the ACT Writing test is scored? You're not alone. Dispel your confusion with our complete guide to ACT essay scoring .

Curious about where your ACT Writing score stands in comparison to everyone else? Find out what an average ACT Writing score is in this article .

Want to improve your ACT score by 4 points?

Check out our best-in-class online ACT prep classes . We guarantee your money back if you don't improve your ACT score by 4 points or more.

Our classes are entirely online, and they're taught by ACT experts . If you liked this article, you'll love our classes. Along with expert-led classes, you'll get personalized homework with thousands of practice problems organized by individual skills so you learn most effectively. We'll also give you a step-by-step, custom program to follow so you'll never be confused about what to study next.

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Laura graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College with a BA in Music and Psychology, and earned a Master's degree in Composition from the Longy School of Music of Bard College. She scored 99 percentile scores on the SAT and GRE and loves advising students on how to excel in high school.

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Preparing for the ACT Test with Writing

About the act writing test.

The ACT writing test is a 40-minute essay test that measures your writing skills. The test consists of one writing prompt that will describe a complex issue and present three different perspectives on that issue.  It is a paper-and-pencil test. You will write your essay in pencil (no mechanical pencils or ink pens) on the lined pages of an answer folder that will be provided to you. The only exception is for approved students with diagnosed disabilities who cannot hand write the essay. (See Accommodations .) 

The ACT writing test complements the English and reading tests. The combined information from these tests tells postsecondary institutions about students’ understanding of the conventions of standard written English and their ability to produce a direct sample of writing. The writing test cannot be taken without first taking all four multiple-choice tests in the same session. 

You are asked to read the prompt and write an essay in which you develop your own perspective on the issue. Your essay should analyze the relationship between your perspective and one or more other perspectives. You may adopt a perspective from the prompt, partially or fully, or you may generate your own. Your score will not be affected by the point of view you take on the issue.

Some colleges require the ACT writing test. You should decide whether or not you should take it based on the requirements of the colleges you are applying to or considering.

Why the ACT Writing Test Is Optional 

Because postsecondary institutions have varying needs, we offer the ACT writing test as an option. 

• Postsecondary institutions are making their own decisions about whether to require the results from the ACT writing test for admissions and/or course placement purposes. 
• Students will decide whether to take the writing test based on the requirements of the institutions they are considering. 

Practice Your Writing Skills 

Read. Write. Repeat. 

There are many ways to prepare for the ACT writing test that don't even include writing at all. Reading newspapers and magazines, listening to news analyses on television or radio, and participating in discussions and debates about issues and problems all help you build a foundation for your writing skills. These activities help you become more familiar with current issues, with different perspectives on those issues, and with strategies that skilled writers and speakers use to present their points of view. 

Of course, one of the best ways to prepare for the ACT writing test is to practice writing. But you don’t have to sit at a desk and fill a notebook with essays. Practice writing for different purposes, with different audiences in mind. The writing you do in your English classes will help you. Practice writing stories, poems, plays, editorials, reports, letters to the editor, a personal journal, or other kinds of writing that you do on your own—including, yes, essays. 

The ACT writing test asks you to explain your perspective on an issue in a convincing way, so writing opportunities such as editorials or letters to the editor of a newspaper are especially helpful. Practicing various types of writing will help make you a versatile writer able to adjust to different writing assignments. 

Finally, don’t forget you only have 40 minutes on test day. Get some practice writing within a time limit. This will not only give you an advantage on the test, but also will help you build skills that are important in college-level learning and in the world of work. 

Build Your Writing Skills 

Everyday ways to improve your writing 

You can strengthen your writing skills just about anywhere, anytime. Read below for some ideas to make writing, responding, and organizing your thoughts part of your daily routine:   

• Read and write frequently.  Read as much as you can from a variety of sources, including plays, essays, fiction, poetry, news stories, business writing, and magazine features. 
• Become familiar with current issues in society and develop your own opinions.  Think of arguments you would use to convince someone of your perspective. Taking speech and debate classes can help you think through issues and communicate them to others. 
• Practice writing in different formats and in as many real situations as possible.  Write letters to the editor, or letters to a company requesting information. 
• Try some writing in extracurricular activities.  School newspapers, yearbooks, and creative writing clubs offer opportunities to express ideas in writing. 
• Share your writing with others and get feedback.  Feedback helps you anticipate how readers might interpret your writing and what types of questions they might have. This can help you anticipate what a reader might want to know. 
• Learn to see writing as a process —brainstorming, planning, writing, and then editing. This applies to all writing activities. 
• Listen to the advice your English teacher gives you about your writing. 
• Strive for well-developed and well-organized writing  that uses precise, clear, and concise language. 
• Remember that everyone can improve their writing skills.  Confidence and skill will grow with the more writing you do. Practice and work lead to achievement. 

Tips for Taking the ACT Writing Test

Pace yourself.

The ACT writing test contains one question to be completed in 40 minutes. When asked to write a timed essay, most writers find it useful to do some planning before they write the essay and to do a final check of the essay when it is finished. It is unlikely that you will have time to draft, revise, and recopy your essay.

Before writing, carefully read and consider all prompt material. Be sure you understand the issue, its perspectives, and your essay task. The prewriting questions included with the prompt will help you analyze the perspectives and develop your own. Use these questions to think critically about the prompt and generate effective ideas in response. Ask yourself how your ideas and analysis can best be supported and organized in a written argument. Use the prewriting space in your test booklet to structure or outline your response.

Establish the focus of your essay by making clear your argument and its main ideas. Explain and illustrate your ideas with sound reasoning and meaningful examples. Discuss the significance of your ideas: what are the implications of what you have to say, and why is your argument important to consider? As you write, ask yourself if your logic is clear, you have supported your claims, and you have chosen precise words to communicate your ideas.

Review Your Essay

Take a few minutes before time is called to read over your essay. Correct any mistakes. If you find any words that are hard to read, recopy them. Make corrections and revisions neatly between the lines. Do not write in the margins. Your readers know you had only 40 minutes to compose and write your essay. Within that time limit, try to make your essay as polished as you can.

There are many ways to prepare for the ACT writing test. These include reading newspapers and magazines, listening to news analyses on television and radio, and participating in discussions and debates.

One of the best ways to prepare for the ACT writing test is to practice writing with different purposes for different audiences. The writing you do in your classes will help you. So will writing essays, stories, editorials, a personal journal, or other writing you do on your own.

It is also a good idea to practice writing within a time limit. Taking the practice ACT writing test will give you a sense of how much additional practice you may need. You might want to take the practice ACT writing test even if you do not plan to take the ACT with writing, because this will help build skills that are important in college-level learning and in the world of work.

Find more info about how the writing test is scored .

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Guest Essay

Trump’s Third Act? American Gangster.

By Samuel Earle

Mr. Earle is the author of “Tory Nation: How One Party Took Over.”

In recent months, Donald Trump has been trying out a new routine. At rallies and town halls across the country, he compares himself to Al Capone. “He was seriously tough, right?” Mr. Trump told a rally in Iowa in October , in an early rendition of the act. But “he was only indicted one time; I’ve been indicted four times.” (Capone was, in fact, indicted at least six times.) The implication is not just that Mr. Trump is being unfairly persecuted but also that he is four times as tough as Capone. “If you looked at him in the wrong way,” Mr. Trump explained, “he blew your brains out."

Mr. Trump’s eagerness to invoke Capone reflects an important shift in the image he wants to project to the world. In 2016, Mr. Trump played the reality TV star and businessman who would shake up politics, shock and entertain. In 2020, Mr. Trump was the strongman, desperately trying to hold on to power by whatever means possible. In 2024, Mr. Trump is in his third act: the American gangster, heir to Al Capone — besieged by the authorities, charged with countless egregious felonies but surviving and thriving nonetheless, with an air of macho invincibility.

The evidence of Mr. Trump’s mobster pivot is everywhere. He rants endlessly about his legal cases in his stump speeches. On Truth Social, he boasts about having a bigger team of lawyers “than any human being in the history of our Country, including even the late great gangster, Alphonse Capone!” His team has used his mug shot — taken after he was indicted on a charge of racketeering in August — on T-shirts, mugs, Christmas wrapping, bumper stickers, beer coolers and even NFTs. They’ve sold off parts of the blue suit he was wearing in that now-infamous photo for more than $4,000 a piece (it came with a dinner with Mr. Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort).

Commentators have long pointed out that Mr. Trump behaves like a mob boss: The way he demands loyalty from his followers, lashes out at rivals, bullies authorities and flaunts his impunity are all reminiscent of the wiseguys Americans know so well from movies and television. As a real-estate mogul in New York, he seems to have relished working with mobsters and learned their vernacular before bringing their methods into the White House: telling James Comey, “I expect loyalty”; imploring Volodymyr Zelensky, “Do us a favor”; and pressuring Georgia’s secretary of state, “Fellas, I need 11,000 votes.” But before, he downplayed the mobster act in public. Now he actively courts the comparison.

Mr. Trump’s audacious embrace of a criminal persona flies in the face of conventional wisdom. When Richard Nixon told the American public, “I am not a crook,” the underlying assumption was that voters would not want a crook in the White House. Mr. Trump is testing this assumption. It’s a canny piece of marketing. A violent mobster and a self-mythologizing millionaire, Capone sanitized his crimes by cultivating an aura of celebrity and bravery, grounded in distrust of the state and a narrative of unfair persecution. The public lapped it up. “Everybody sympathizes with him,” Vanity Fair noted of Capone in 1931, as the authorities closed in on him. “Al has made murder a popular amusement.” In similar fashion, Mr. Trump tries to turn his indictments into amusement, inviting his supporters to play along. “They’re not after me, they’re after you — I’m just standing in the way!” he says, a line that greets visitors to his website, as well.

Mr. Trump clearly hopes that his Al Capone act will offer at least some cover from the four indictments he faces. And there is a twisted logic to what he is doing: By adopting the guise of the gangster, he is able to recast his lawbreaking as vigilante justice — a subversive attempt to preserve order and peace — and transform himself into a folk hero. Partly thanks to this framing, it seems unlikely that a criminal conviction will topple his candidacy: not only because Mr. Trump has already taken so many other scandals in his stride but also because, as Capone shows, the convicted criminal can be as much an American icon as the cowboy and the frontiersman. In this campaign, Mr. Trump’s mug shot is his message — and the repeated references to Al Capone are there for anyone who needs it spelled out.

In an essay from 1948, “The Gangster as Tragic Hero,” the critic Robert Warshow sought to explain the unique appeal of gangster fables in American life. He saw the gangster as a quintessentially American figure, the dark shadow of the country’s sunnier self-conception. “The gangster speaks for us,” Warshow wrote, “expressing that part of the American psyche which rejects the qualities and the demands of modern life.”

It is easy to see why gangster fables appeal to so many Republican voters today. They are stories of immigrant assimilation and success, laced with anti-immigrant sentiment and rivalry. Their heroes are creatures of the big city — those nests of Republican neuroses — who tame its excesses through force but never forget God or their family along the way. In many ways, minus the murder, they are ideal conservative citizens: enterprising, loyal, distrustful of government; prone to occasional ethical lapses, but who’s perfect?

Mr. Trump knows that in America, crooks can be the good guys. When the state is seen as corrupt, the crook becomes a kind of Everyman, bravely beating the system at its own game. This is the cynical logic that the gangster and the right-wing populist share: Everyone’s as bad as anyone else, so anything goes. “A crook is a crook,” Capone once said. “But a guy who pretends he is enforcing the law and steals on his authority is a swell snake. The worst type of these punks is the big politician, who gives about half his time to covering up so that no one will know he’s a thief.”

It’s a worldview powerful enough to convince voters that even the prized institutions of liberal democracy — a free press, open elections, the rule of law — are fronts in the biggest racket of them all. This conceit has a rich pedigree in reactionary politics. “Would-be totalitarian rulers usually start their careers by boasting of their past crimes and carefully outlining their future ones,” Hannah Arendt warned.

The gangster’s brutality also taps into what Warshow and others of his generation saw as the sadism in the American mind: the pleasure the public takes in seeing the gangster’s “unlimited possibility of aggression” inflicted upon others. The gangster is nothing without this license for violence, without the simple fact that, as Warshow put it, “he hurts people.” He intimidates his rivals and crushes his enemies. His cruelty is the point. The public can then enjoy “the double satisfaction of participating vicariously in the gangster’s sadism and then seeing it turned against the gangster himself.” “He is what we want to be and what we are afraid we may become,” Warshow wrote. Reverence and repulsion are all wrapped up.

Capone’s rise, demise and exalted afterlife don’t hold happy clues for Mr. Trump’s opponents. Dethroning a mob boss is never easy. “He was the 1920s version of the Teflon man; nothing stuck to him,” Deirdre Bair wrote in a 2016 biography of Capone. After he was arrested in 1931 for tax fraud, his mob continued to prosper for another half-century, and Capone himself, who was released after six and a half years in prison for health reasons and died from a stroke and pneumonia in 1947 at age 48, achieved a type of immortality. Mr. Trump will see in his story many reasons to be cheerful. “I often say Al Capone, he was one of the greatest of all time, if you like criminals,” Mr. Trump said in December. It was an interesting framing: “if you like criminals”? Mr. Trump has a hunch, and it’s more than just projection, that many Americans do.

Samuel Earle is the author of “Tory Nation: How One Party Took Over.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , X and Threads .

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Music Review: Beyoncé's epic ‘Act ll: Cowboy Carter’ defies categorization, redefines American style

This cover image released by Parkwood/Columbia/Sony shows “Act ll: Cowboy Carter” by Beyonce. (Parkwood/Columbia/Sony via AP)

FILE - Beyoncé performs at the Wolstein Center, Nov. 4, 2016, in Cleveland, Ohio. Beyoncé is full of surprises — and on Tuesday, March 12, 2024, dropped yet another one. Her forthcoming album has a name: Act II: Cowboy Carter. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — “Nothin’ really ends / For things to stay the same they have to change again,” Beyoncé sings on “Act ll: Cowboy Carter,” the opening lines of the opening track, “Ameriican Requiem.”

“Them big ideas, yeah, are buried here / Amen.”

In some ways, it is a mission statement for the epic 78-minute, 27-track release — or at the very least, functions like a film’s title card to introduce yet another blockbuster album.

In the days leading up to “Cowboy Carter,” the superstar said this “ain’t a Country album” but “a ‘Beyoncé’ album” — positioning herself in opposition to country music’s rigid power structures and emphasizing her ability to work with the style with her latest genre-defying opus.

A capital-C country album it is not — and of course it isn’t. Beyoncé is an eclecticist, known for her elastic vocal performances: in a moment, choosing to belt close to godliness and, in another, moving with marked ease into a fractured run, inheriting histories through the vowels she stresses, the handclaps she introduces and the genres she utilizes. (That’s evident in the instruments as well, which range from washboard, pedal steel, banjo, mandolin, Vibraslap, bass ukulele and mandolin, to name a few.)

If the album, five years in the making, was inspired by the racist backlash she faced after performing at the 2016 CMAs with The Chicks, as many fans have theorized, she’s eclipsed it and then some. Tell Beyoncé she isn’t welcomed in your space; she’ll carve out a bigger one.

Beyoncé’s latest album, “Act ll: Cowboy Carter,” is here.

• Leading up to the release, the superstar singer became the first Black woman to top Billboard’s country music chart .
• After its release, she’ll make an appearance at the 2024 iHeartRadio Music Awards to receive its innovator award .
• Beyoncé’s “Act ll: Cowboy Carter” is the follow-up to 2022’s acclaimed “Act I: Renaissance.” Her concert picture, “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé,” ruled the box office .
• The film, which chronicled the massive tour in support of her seventh studio album, perfectly captured her dazzling performances for the big screen, AP’s Jonathan Landrum Jr. wrote .

“Ameriican Requiem” bleeds into a reimagination of a Beatles ’ classic, “Blackbiird.” It was originally written by Paul McCartney about desegregation in American schools with particular emphasis on the Little Rock Nine, the first group of Black students to desegregate an Arkansas high school in 1957. In Beyoncé’s rendition, harmonies are stacked. She’s joined by Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer, Reyna Roberts and Tiera Kennedy — some of the most exciting voices in contemporary country — who are also Black women.

They aren’t the only next generation highlighted on “Cowboy Carter”: Willie Jones’ rich Louisiana tone turns “Just for Fun,” into trail-riding gospel country. Shaboozey’s country-rap marks a pivot in the album’s trajectory on “Spaghettii,” setting the listener up for the singular listening experience of the Patsy Cline-channeling “Sweet Honey Buckiin’,” with its Jersey club beats.

Country veterans , too, appear: Willie Nelson is a rough-around-the-edges radio DJ on the fictional station KNTRY — the resulting effect is an alternative America where terrestrial country radio does not overwhelmingly prefer playing white performers ; snippets of Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s “Down by the River Side,” Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene” and Roy Hamilton’s 1957 “Don’t Let Go” bled into Nelson’s smoky voice.

The ’50s cuts are an inspired choice; Beyoncé has chosen to reference the decade in which format-based radio emerged and, as a result, country music’s racial lines were all but codified. The effects are still felt. One frequently referenced study, conducted by University of Ottawa professor Jada Watson, examined over 11,000 songs played on country radio from 2002 to 2020 and found that artists of color made up only 3% of all airplay, two-thirds of which were men. In even her interludes, Beyoncé has taken her listeners to school.

“Jolene” is a reimagined take on the 1973 Dolly Parton original; it’s preceded by “Dolly P,” a spoken-word interlude from Parton. “Remember that hussy with the good hair you sang about?” she says, referencing “Becky with the good hair” from “Sorry” off 2016’s “Lemonade.” “Reminded me of someone I knew back when, except she has flaming locks of auburn hair. Bless her heart! Just a hair of a different color, but it hurts just the same.”

Beyoncé’s version, of course, is very Beyoncé — there’s no shrinking and begging for this woman to step off; it’s a warning.

Perhaps Beyoncé’s clearest predecessor on this album is Linda Martell , the first Black woman to play the Grand Ole Opry. Martell’s 1970 landmark record “Color Me Country” should be considered country canon; she offered Black women rare visibility in a genre stereotypically associated with whiteness.

She also appears twice on “Cowboy Carter,” first providing clarity on the complicated origins of country in “Spaghettii.”

“Genres are a funny little concept, aren’t they?” she says, laughing. “In theory, they have a simple definition that’s easy to understand. But in practice, well, some may feel confined.”

Shared histories and families are abundant on Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter”: “Protector” begins with Beyoncé’s daughter Rumi Carter asking for “the lullaby, please,” leading into a tear-jerker of an acoustic ballad centering motherhood.

If listeners position “Act ll: Cowboy Carter” next to “Act l: Renaissance,” they might view the record as a continued dialogue in the Beyoncé mythos: “Lemonade” established Beyoncé’s dedication to Black empowerment. “Renaissance” reclaimed House music for its Black progenitors in a sprawling release that placed techno, Chicago and Detroit house, New Orleans bounce, Afrobeats, queer dance culture and beyond on the same dance floor — and highlighted the frequent invisibility of Black performance in music history books. “Cowboy Carter” does something similar with country music — and, in true Beyoncé fashion, extends well beyond it, as vessel, captain and crew on this journey.

“Bodyguard” borders on soft rock; “Ya Ya” interpolates Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Were Made for Walkin’” and The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations”; “Riiverdance” and “II Hands II Heaven” bring back the electronica of “Renaissance.” “ll Most Wanted” features the raspy-rich Miley Cyrus, and interpolates Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.” “Levii’s Jeans” modernizes the timeless combination of R&B and country ballads, amplified by a surprising collaborator in a crooning Post Malone — lest we forget he also hails from Texas.

“Oh Louisiana” is helium-injected blues and funk; the classic guitars on “Daughter” lead into Beyoncé singing the famous Italian aria “Caro Mio Ben” in the original language. If you’ve been waiting for her opera moment, here it is.

When she’s back to English in the refrain, she declares, “If you cross me, I’m just like my father / I am colder than Titanic water,” reminiscent of outlaw country’s murder ballads and a successor to Bey’s first ever country song, “Daddy Lessons” from “Lemonade.”

Effortlessly — and momentously — “Cowboy Carter” weaves canonized classics into the same breath as Beyoncé's country music evolutions and Black music history preservations. If the Beatles and the Beach Boys are unimpeachable, so is Martell, so is Beyoncé, and Adell, and so on.

The magic here, of course, is Beyoncé’s mastery of art and message. And at the center of everything is her larger-than-life performance — serious and jubilant, like when she plays her nails as percussion, an ode to Parton doing the same on “9 to 5.” (That’s on “Riiverdance,” a club song that also references country’s Celtic folk origins.)

On “Cowboy Carter,” historical course-correcting and evolution go down with honey. Lessons are learned on the dance floor, on the radio, at the imagined honky-tonk, in headphones.

It’s a massive album that will require close examination for full enjoyment — but Beyoncé fans have long learned to be great students.