Sorry, Swifties — Taylor Swift is not on Beyoncé’s new album, Cowboy Carter.Following the release of Queen Bey’s eighth studio album on Friday, fans began speculating Swift provided uncredited background vocals on the track “Bodyguard,” but PEOPLE can confirm that’s not true.
Complete credits for “Bodyguard,” which appears on the album as its eighth track, are not yet available on Beyoncé’s website at the time of publishing.
Taylor Swift Opens Up About Her Friendship with Beyoncé: ‘She’s the Most Precious Gem of a Person’
Swift, 34, and the “Texas Hold ‘Em” musician, 42, have shown each other quite a bit of public support as of late. After both holding massive stadium tours in the United States last summer, the artists attended the premieres for each other’s film versions of the respective concerts: Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour and Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé.
“She’s the most precious gem of a person — warm and open and funny,” said Swift of Beyoncé in a December interview with Time. “And she’s such a great disrupter of music-industry norms.”
“She taught every artist how to flip the table and challenge archaic business practices,” added the “Karma” singer at the time.
Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter Is Here! Every Artist Featured on the New AlbumBeyoncé, ‘Cowboy Carter’ Album Cover. BEYONCE INSTAGRAMIn a press release issued shortly after the Cowboy Carter release, Beyoncé revealed “vocalists, musicians, and orators” on the album include Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Linda Martell, Stevie Wonder, Chuck Berry, Miley Cyrus, Post Malone, Jon Batiste, Rhiannon Giddens, Nile Rodgers, Robert Randolph, Gary Clark, Jr., Willie Jones, Brittney Spencer, Shaboozey, Reyna Roberts, Tanner Adell and Tiera Kennedy.
Additional collaborators throughout the project include The-Dream, Pharrell Williams, NO I.D., Raphael Saadiq, Ryan Tedder, Ryan Beatty, Swizz Beatz, Khirye Tyler, Derek Dixie, Ink, Nova Wav, Mamii, Cam, Tyler Johnson, Dave Hamelin, and Shawn “JAY-Z” Carter.
The 27-track record finds Beyoncé experimenting with elements and themes of country music, though she specified prior to its release, “This ain’t a country album. This is a ‘Beyoncé’ album.”
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“The joy of creating music is that there are no rules,” said the Destiny’s Child alum in a statement. “The more I see the world evolving the more I felt a deeper connection to purity.”
“With artificial intelligence and digital filters and programming, I wanted to go back to real instruments, and I used very old ones,” she continued. “I didn’t want some layers of instruments like strings, especially guitars, and organs perfectly in tune. I kept some songs raw and leaned into folk.”
Beyoncé added, “All the sounds were so organic and human, everyday things like the wind, snaps and even the sound of birds and chickens, the sounds of nature.”
