Texas Country Singer Paul Cauthen on Writing Songs for Beyoncé

“She started playing my stuff and the family started loving what I do. And then their producers came, found out I was in Silverlake in California, and showed up in a black Suburban,” Cauthen says. “Three producers come out and listen to what I’m doing: ‘We love that one, we love that one…’ I was doing this for my record in a way, and now we’re going to move in for doing it for a big pop star.”

Cauthen and his collaborator Beau Bedford changed gears. “Beau and I pivoted and started churning out songs,” Cauthen says. “It kind of put me in a whole different writing space, writing for a big pop star. I put a pop-centric edge on my own honest writing and what I think is true. It really pivoted for me in a cool way.”

In the end, none of Cauthen’s songs ended up on Cowboy Carter, but some saw the light of day on his own 2024 album Black on Black. “I think we wrote some songs that the said artist should cut… but there’s a lot of people in line and I love to see that the people that were little bitty songwriters before that had a platform and it helped them,” he says. Watch his full interview below.

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