Every few years, within the sphere of pop, country music goes in and out of style as a sonic and aesthetic influence for mainstream stars. Most notably, Beyoncé‘s Cowboy Carter won Album of the Year at the Grammys in 2025; however, that wasn’t the first time the superstar paid homage to her country roots. “My daddy Alabama / My ma Louisiana,” Beyoncé says on 2016’s “Formation”.
As a co-writer on several Cowboy Carter tracks, singer-songwriter Ryan Beatty also took home an Album of the Year trophy that year. At the beginning of his career, record labels touted Beatty as a Justin Bieber-adjacent pop prodigy, but, after releasing a few singles, Beatty withdrew from the public eye. In 2018, he released Boy in Jeans, a synthpop reinvention. 2023 saw another shift for the singer: his third album, the acoustic, restrained Calico, launched him to a new level of critical and commercial success.
Beatty’s fourth album Sweet Fortune employs country flourishes to build on the acoustic sound of its predecessor. In the cover photo, Beatty stands next to the skeleton of a bull, and in the music video for “Secret Language”, he runs across continental America, bypassing the Midwestern plains and the Las Vegas Strip. The journey’s conclusion on the East Coast represents the long-distance relationship that Beatty wrote much of this record about.
In a 2026 interview with Vogue, Beatty said, “Approaching music from a place of joy and… being in love was a new thing for me.” Indeed, the album’s title track is a meditation on acquiescing to fate in a positive way. “Let it all reveal what I always feel / sweet fortune,” he says. Elsewhere, “Delancey” is a shuffling, jazz-influenced profession of desire, and the triumphant “Secret Language” proves that the difficulty of expressing intimate feelings can become the most profound confession of all.
While Sweet Fortune focuses on love, Ryan Beatty still finds emotional trials to write about. “Fleur De Lis” describes the sacrifices necessary to maintain a relationship: “Pain in pleasure, water in soil / bloom together and wither alone,” he says. The song’s outro features horns and electric guitar, a worthy grand finale for a stripped-back album.
While writing, Beatty collaborated with Claire Cotrill, known professionally as Clairo: pop’s resident master of low-fi, acoustic ruminations. Clairo adds texture to the musical landscape Beatty developed on Calico, contributing backing vocals to several tracks on Sweet Fortune. In a 2026 interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Beatty describes a moment when, while writing, he and Cotrill found similarities to the country legend Glen Campbell in their own work.
Because it draws from various genres, pop risks being derivative, but Beatty and Clairo prove that mining the past for inspiration is not a failure of the imagination but the exact opposite: a reinvention of familiar touchstones that allows those influences to contribute to a new cultural conversation.
Sweet Fortune’s opening track, “Phantom”, a swelling piano ballad, foreshadows the themes that define the album: love, sacrifice, and the difficulties of choosing a settled life. “Everything’s a sacrifice whether you’re cryin’ like a winner/ or clapping in the stands,” Beatty says. The song’s foreboding chords remind listeners that the struggles of the past can become the pillars for better things in the future.
Country music may go in and out of style, but on Sweet Fortune, Ryan Beatty employs foundations of songwriting that transcend genre: mixing personal confessions with a corresponding soundscape that becomes a language of its own.