FEATURE:
Beyoncé at Forty
Formation: Ranking Her Solo Albums
___________
THERE are going to be a few features going out…
PHOTO CREDIT: Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images
that mark the upcoming fortieth birthday of a modern music legend. Beyoncé’s birthday is on 4th September. Ahead of that, I am doing a series of features that explores her work. As I often do with birthday features, I am starting off with a general overview. In future features, I will focus on various elements of her career – her business acumen, fashion, iconic videos and why she is so respected -, but I want to go a bit broad and rank her incredible solo albums. I will also include a feature about her time with Destiny’s Child (and something about her project with JAY-Z, The Carters). Before moving on, here is some Beyoncé biography:
“Born and raised in Houston, Texas, Beyoncé performed in various singing and dancing competitions as a child. She rose to fame in the late 1990s as the lead singer of Destiny's Child, one of the best-selling girl groups of all time. Their hiatus saw the release of her first solo album, Dangerously in Love (2003), which featured the US Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles "Crazy in Love" and "Baby Boy".
Following the 2006 disbandment of Destiny's Child, she released her second solo album, B'Day, which contained hit singles "Irreplaceable" and "Beautiful Liar". Beyoncé also starred in multiple films such as The Pink Panther (2006), Dreamgirls (2006), Obsessed (2009), and The Lion King (2019). Her marriage to Jay-Z and her portrayal of Etta James in Cadillac Records (2008) influenced her third album, I Am... Sasha Fierce (2008), which earned a record-setting six Grammy Awards in 2010. It spawned the successful singles "If I Were a Boy", "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)", and "Halo".
After splitting from her manager and father Mathew Knowles in 2010, Beyoncé released her musically diverse fourth album 4 in 2011. She later achieved universal acclaim for her sonically experimental visual albums, Beyoncé (2013) and Lemonade (2016), the latter of which was the world's best-selling album of 2016 and the most acclaimed album of her career, exploring themes of infidelity and womanism. In 2018, she released Everything Is Love, a collaborative album with her husband, Jay-Z, as the Carters. As a featured artist, Beyoncé topped the Billboard Hot 100 with the remixes of "Perfect" by Ed Sheeran in 2017 and "Savage" by Megan Thee Stallion in 2020. The same year, she released the musical film and visual album Black Is King to widespread acclaim.
Beyoncé is one of the world's best-selling recording artists, having sold 118 million records worldwide. She is the first artist to debut at number one on the Billboard 200 with their first six solo studio albums. Her success during the 2000s was recognized with the RIAA's Top Certified Artist of the Decade as well as Billboard's Top Female Artist of the Decade. Beyoncé's accolades include 28 Grammy Awards, 26 MTV Video Music Awards (including the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award in 2014), 24 NAACP Image Awards, 31 BET Awards, and 17 Soul Train Music Awards; all of which are more than any other singer. In 2014, Billboard named her the highest-earning black musician of all time, while in 2020, she was included on Time's list of 100 women who defined the last century”.
To celebrate an icon and look ahead to her fortieth birthday, below is my ordering of Beyoncé’s six studio albums. All of them are great, yet there are those that stand out from the pack. To salute the great Beyoncé, these are the albums that outline…
WHY she is so acclaimed and accomplished.
_______________
6. I Am... Sasha Fierce
Release Date: 12th November, 2008
Labels: Columbia/Music World
Producers: Bama Boyz/Bangladesh/D-Town/Darkchild/Ian Dench/Blac Elvis/Toby Gad/Sean Garrett/Amanda Ghost/Andrew Hey/Jim Jonsin/Beyoncé Knowles/Harold Lilly/Dave McCracken/Rico Love/Ramon ‘REO’ Owen/Stargate/Tricky Stewart/Ryan Tedder/The-Dream/Wayne Wilkins
Five-Song Mix: If I Were as Boy/Halo/Satellites/Diva/Video Phone
Choice Cut: Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=41680&ev=mb
Review:
“The strength of I Am…Sasha Fierce, then, is its individual songs—not good enough to make for an album that’s greater than the sum of its parts, but a testament to Beyoncé as one of today’s most reliable singles artists. A savvy lead single in that it doesn’t attempt to clobber you over the head and drag you off to a cave like most Beyoncé hits, “If I Were a Boy” is one part “Irreplaceable,” one part “Big Girls Don’t Cry” (it was co-written and produced by that song’s Toby Gad), and one part Ciara’s “Like a Boy.” It’s definitely a grower but, like “Irreplaceable,” the kind that will no doubt circle back around to revulsion after hearing it on the radio for the nth time this holiday season. The album’s ballads are some of the strongest Beyoncé has recorded, and “Disappear” and “Satellites” are both surprisingly understated, but most of them are also shockingly conventional, no doubt influenced by the success of Leona Lewis (“Halo” was co-penned by “Bleeding Love” scribe Ryan Tedder).
I Am…Sasha Fierce is an admirable vie for artistic credibility (and for a last-ditch revival of the long-player format) but one that is muddled by the fact that the album is being offered in two configurations, a 16-track “deluxe” edition and an abbreviated “standard” edition, which reaches its vocal (if not emotional) climax within the first minute of its opening track and ends abruptly with a song about cellphone porn. The deluxe version makes for a more complete-sounding album (albeit with more filler), but there’s absolutely no reason why all of the songs couldn’t have been sequenced as one disc. And that’s the most dubious aspect of the double-album structure here: Beyoncé’s alter ego isn’t really any different from the artist we’ve come to know via songs like “Bootylicious,” “Crazy In Love” and “Irreplaceable”; the real disparity is her inability to reconcile the adult-contemporary schmaltz of I Am with the more modern, edgy sounds of Sasha Fierce.
Things we learn about Sasha: she’s a diva, she likes making kinky videos on her phone, and she’s in love with her stereo. The bouncy, school-yard chant-y and materialistically contradictory “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” sounds like a B’Day leftover, but the deluxe version of the album allows Sasha to show her softer side: Like Beyoncé, she doesn’t want to be a broken-hearted girl (“Scared of Lonely,” impeccably produced by Rodney Jerkins), and more importantly, she’s got a penchant for Motown (“Ego”), a sound the rather vanilla first half of the album could have benefited from. The high point of both the standard and deluxe editions, however, is the frenetic “Radio”; with lyrics like “You’re the only one that Papa allowed in my room with the door closed/We’d be alone/And Mama never freaked out when she heard it go boom/’Cause she knew we were in the zone,” it’s the most convincing love song on the entire album” – SLANT
5. 4
Release Date: 24th June, 2011
Labels: Parkwood/Columbia
Producers: Beyoncé Knowles/Antonio Dixon/Babyface/Brent Kutzle/Jeff Bhasker/Diplo/Kuk Harrell/Kanye West/Kaskade/Luke Steele/Los Da Mystro/Ryan Tedder/Shea Taylor/Skyz Muzik/Switch/Symbolyc One/The-Dream/Tricky Stewart
Five-Song Mix: I Care/Best Thing I Never Had/Party (ft. André 3000)/Countdown/Run the World (Girls)
Choice Cut: Love on Top
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=347012&ev=mb
Review:
“Nearly 15 years into a career with all the indicators of a future lifetime-achievement award, Beyoncé is so sure of her place in pop’s ruling class that she waits until the final track of her new studio album to present “Run the World (Girls).” “My persuasion can build a nation,” she declares, relegating to postscript status a message most artists would position front and center. Then again, maybe Beyoncé relegated “Run the World” to last because it’s the worst song here, a lumpy redo of Major Lazer’s “Pon De Floor” that somehow manages to make the singer sound less powerful than she has in years. Beyoncé can do hectic just fine — see the appealingly overstuffed “Independent Women Part II,” from Destiny’s Child’s Survivor. But “Run the World” doesn’t marshal its electro-dancehall intensity in the service of anything. It’s all sound and no fury.
Happily, Sasha Fierce takes five elsewhere on this often-gorgeous collection of ballads and mid-tempo cuts rich with echoes of late-’70s/early-’80s pop-soul. (With its creamy keys and skyscraping vocals, “Love on Top” imagines a perfect genetic splice of Whitney Houston’s debut album and Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall.) The lack of in-your-face future-funk arrangements isn’t a sign that Beyoncé has lost her appetite for domination; indeed, as a singer’s showcase, 4 will probably end up bested this year only by Adele’s 21.
But in slow-to-bloom songs that are as preoccupied by love’s pleasure (“1+1,” “Rather Die Young”) as by its pain (“I Care,” “Best Thing I Never Had”), this one-time single lady seems hungry for a satisfaction deeper than conquest. That she finds it before stooping to the hollow provocations of “Run the World” should warm the heart of anyone who still believes in putting a ring on it” – SPIN
4. Dangerously in Love
Release Date: 17th June, 2003
Labels: Columbia/Music World
Producers: Beyoncé Knowles/Rich Harrison/Scott Storch/Bryce Wilson/Focus.../Missy Elliott/Andreao ‘Fanatic’ Heard/Sherrod Barnes/D-Roy/Mr. B/Nat Adderley, Jr./Errol ‘Poppi’ McCalla, Jr./Mark Batson
Five-Song Mix: Naughty Girl/Baby Boy (ft. Sean Paul)/Me, Myself and I/Speechless/The Closer I Get to You (with Luther Vandross)
Choice Cut: Crazy in Love (ft. JAY-Z)
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=41127&ev=mb
Review:
“See, Beyoncé’s not really thinking ’bout those other honeys. Whether or not she got the credit, the slick-tongue style she per-fected on ”Say My Name” was a minirevolution in R&B. And Dangerously in Love, her solo debut, confirms her taste for innovation. ”Dangerously,” which the singer coproduced and almost entirely cowrote, is more about moving on from Destiny’s Child’s frothy aesthetic than competing with the current crop of singing sensations. Eschewing high-profile hitmakers like the Matrix and the Neptunes, Beyoncé collaborates with under-the-radar minds like Rich Harrison and Dr. Dre’s secret weapon, Scott Storch, exploring, albeit hesitantly, new directions in contemporary black music.
The results are not half bad — certainly not the first half. The disc opens with ”Crazy in Love,” coproduced by Harrison, who gave Mary J. Blige-ish upstart Amerie a hit single last year. Then Storch flirts with the increasingly familiar mingling of Eastern sounds and dancehall reggae, as Beyoncé portrays, not quite convincingly, a ”Naughty Girl.” The next cut, ”Baby Boy,” goes full-tilt Bollywood ‘n da hood, with Sean Paul ripping a pulsing tabla raga. Here, when Beyoncé coos, ”In our own little world, the music is the sun/The dance floor becomes the sea,” you kinda wish she’d launch into her old acrobatic scat tactics to challenge Sean Paul’s rude-boy chat. But this isn’t THAT Beyoncé.
This Beyoncé flexes a different kind of muscle on ”Hip Hop Star,” a distorted guitar-screeching foray into the rock-meets-funk-eats-hip-hop genre that’s more Neptunes than the Neptunes. Her racy, raspy ”undress me” refrain — a bit Kelis, a bit Marilyn Monroe — is shocking but not unwelcome. Guest Big Boi of OutKast sums it up nicely: ”Never can tell these days, everybody’s got a little Rick James in they veins.”
”Be With You” is a ballad with deliciously big drums that recalls Faith Evans’ ’95 single ”You Used to Love Me” and rips off a few other R&B classics you used to love. ”Me, Myself, and I” rides Storch’s signature gangsta guitar, mellowed for Beyoncé’s lovesick lament — a warm-up for the CD’s sweet spot: ”Yes,” a damn-near-Björk-like bit of trip-hop, that could, if we’re lucky, set off a new age of snap-crackle pop. The song’s staticky situation — Beyoncé defending her chastity ‘gainst some greedy boy — resembles ”Say My Name” in its specificity and earnestness.
Most of the disc’s missteps follow. The gimmicky, Missy Elliot-produced ”Signs” is soggy, synth-drenched cosmic slop. ”That’s How I Like It,” also featuring Jay-Z, is ”Jumpin’ Jumpin”’-era jive that only reminds you how fresh ”Crazy in Love” is. A remake of ”The Closer I Get to You” with Luther Vandross also sounds, sadly, a little dated. But for the most part, Ms. Knowles does more reinventing than revisiting — a dangerous prospect, but hey, that’s love” – Entertainment Weekly
3. B’Day
Release Date: 1st September, 2006
Labels: Columbia/Music World/Sony Urban
Producers: Beyoncé Knowles/Rodney ‘Darkchild’ Jerkins/Sean Garrett/Rich Harrison/Walter Millsap III/Candice Nelson/The Neptunes/Rudy Pérez/Shaffer ‘Ne-Yo’ Smith/Stargate/Kasseem ‘Swizz Beatz’ Dean/Shea Taylor/The Underdogs/Cameron Wallace
Five-Song Mix: Déjà Vu (ft. JAY-Z)/Get Me Bodied/Kitty Kat/Green Light/Irreplaceable
Choice Cut: Ring the Alarm
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=41244&ev=mb
Review:
“At least one tactic or event preceding the release of Beyoncé's second solo album inspired a bemused three-syllable exclamation from anyone who was paying attention. The lead single, the late-'70s-funk-inspired "Deja Vu," had the audacity to not be as monstrous as "Crazy in Love" -- its stay at the top of the charts was relatively brief, so clearly there was evidence of some drop-off there. This was quickly followed by "Ring the Alarm," an angered, atonal, and out-of-character song with an accompanying video that invited all kinds of perplexed analysis, along with debate on whether Beyoncé was being autobiographical or, as the singer claimed, channeling her Dreamgirls character. All of this gave the haters plenty of ammo when anything less than 100 percent polite, ladylike, and expected was bound to do the trick. Add to this an album title that can be pronounced just like "bidet," along with the advertisement that the album's ten songs were whipped up in two weeks, and you have yourself a career-killing train wreck. B'day isn't even close to that. While Beyoncé does sound like she's in a bit of a hurry throughout the album, and there are no songs with the smooth elegance of "Me, Myself and I" or "Be with You," it is lean in a beneficial way, propelled by just as many highlights as the overlong Dangerously in Love. Two collaborations with Rich Harrison swagger and preen: "Been locked up in the house way too long/It's time to get it, 'cause once again he's out doing wrong" (the blaring/marching "Freakum Dress"); "Don't give me no lip, let mama do it all" (the spectacularly layered "Suga Mama"). The Neptunes assist on "Green Light," an ambitious, fleet-footed number that continually switches tempos and sounds, as well as "Kitty Kat," a deceptively sweet, rainbow-colored track -- where what sounds like purrs are more like claws-out dismissals -- that could've been pulled from one of the first three Kelis albums. And even with an entirely bonkers line like "I can do for you what Martin did for the people," "Upgrade U" is the most potent track on the album, a low-slung Cameron Wallace production where Beyoncé wears and buys the pants while making her proposition sound more like empowerment than emasculation. If the circus surrounding this whole thing -- which could take up to ten pages to document -- was an elaborate ploy to transform Beyoncé into an underdog, there really is some kind of genius at play, but it's extremely unlikely that anyone in her camp could've predicted that the expectations and reactions would be less rational than any of Beyoncé's decisions and actions. There is nothing desperate or weak about this album” – AllMusic
2. Beyoncé
Release Date: 13th December, 2013
Labels: Parkwood/Columbia
Producers: 40/Ammo/Beyoncé/Boots/Detail/Jerome Harmon/Caroline Polachek/Ryan Tedder/The-Dream/The Order/Timbaland/Justin Timberlake/Key Wane/Pharrell Williams
Five-Song Mix: Pretty Hurts/No Angel/Partition (contains hidden track, Yoncé)/Jealous/XO
Choice Cut: Drunk in Love (ft. JAY-Z)
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=631282&ev=mb
Review:
“Beyoncé’s best songs often reject traditional pop structures in favor of atmosphere—she may have taken some cues from her sister Solange, who now leads a particular wave of collaborative, left-field R&B. The record, her darkest and lushest yet, has a tendency to echo, stop abruptly, or place two separate songs in the space of one. Its most bracing moments are also its toughest and weirdest, like "***Flawless", a two-part growler that makes feminist TED Talk fodder sound legitimately menacing. Timbaland and Justin Timberlake join The-Dream on "Partition" in service of the mean-mugging Yoncé, who snarls and bares her teeth as though the most revered rapper of all time is nobody but her little husband. At the center lies Beyoncé’s practically unfair abilities as a performer—you get the sense that Lady Gaga or Ciara could no sooner pull off the scale or quality of Beyoncé than you or I could pull off a suitable rendition of any of its songs in a karaoke bar.
Beyoncé has loosened up her delivery, too, in a way that highlights her elasticity and shows her pop-cultural antennae tuned to the right channels. Who could’ve predicted that some of the most infectious snippets of pop music in 2013 would not arrive by way of anthemic chorus or assembly-line arrangement, but in Beyoncé’s ad-libbing? You already know the ones: Surfbort, she grunts on “Drunk in Love”, slinging a hashtag like it’s the name of a line of Ikea chairs, the single word serving as both shorthand for woman-on-top and a neat summation of an entire era of trends in rap cadence. You’d also be hard-pressed to find an internet-savvy person in America who hasn’t been possessed by the idea that he or she woke up like this, brain emblazoned with Beyoncé’s half-second I’m so flawless I gave myself a seizure dance. She's achieved the rare feat of validating meme culture by capturing its sneaky potency and delight rather than falling into its cheap, dehumanizing traps. This is a “visual album,” sure, but it’s also a package of modern codes and discreet campaigns, a field of meaningful virtual dioramas. In this sense Beyoncé has a newfound spiritual ally in Drake (Worst! YOLO!),—he shows up on Beyoncé on the bruised "Mine"— her only peer to successfully streamline an internet-rooted mindset into a large-scale pop arena and seek profundity in the process.
Which is all to say that Beyoncé has delivered on the promise she inadvertently made by dropping an album and its expansive visual counterpart late on a Thursday night in December on iTunes, free of traditional fanfare. Call it a coup or just another victory for her mammoth PR apparatus, but consider the alternatives: The strategy probably would have failed if the quality wasn't there, and the album could not have achieved such an impact without its rogue—in spirit, at least—method of distribution. Beyoncé was unleashed upon the world in a way that could only succeed right now, with an aim to make the audience consume it the way it would have long ago. It’s a line that could be ripped straight from the mouth of an investment-drunk tech startup founder, but it’s true: Beyoncé seized the powers of a medium characterized by its short attention span to force the world to pay attention. Leave it to the posterchild of convention to brush convention aside and leave both sides feeling victorious” – Pitchfork
1. Lemonade
Release Date: 23rd April, 2016
Labels: Parkwood/Columbia
Producers: Beyoncé/Diplo/Kevin Garrett/Jeremy McDonald/Ezra Koenig/Jack White/MeLo-X/Diana Gordon/Boots/DannyBoyStyles/Ben Billions/Mike Dean/Vincent Berry II/James Blake/Jonathan Coffer/Just Blaze/Mike Will Made It
Five-Song Mix: Hold Up/Don’t Hurt Yourself (ft. Jack White)/Daddy Lessons/All Night/Formation
Choice Cut: Freedom (ft. Kendrick Lamar)
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/beyonce/lemonade-5a2dfde2-bb82-4d5b-8afc-d849e09d90e1/lp-x2
Review:
“Beyoncé's sixth album loomed once "Formation" and its video were issued ahead of the superstar's Super Bowl 50 half-time performance. Two months and a couple weeks later, it appeared as a culturally seismic visual album. Loaded with layers of meaning and references, and experienced en masse through its televised premiere, Lemonade honored black sisterhood with the presence of Warsan Shire, Serena Williams, and the mothers of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner. Subsequently given audio-only release, its title comes from a popular proverb given extra personal relevance by Beyoncé's grandmother-in-law, whose citation is heard here during a crucial moment in the sequence. Mrs. Knowles-Carter indeed turns her own lemons into Lemonade. She uses the platform to demand contrition from her adulterous partner, assert her excellence, reflect upon the bonds with the men in her life, and their relationships with other women, and wonders if her trust can be earned back. The cathartic and wounded moments here resonate in a manner matched by few, if any, of Beyoncé's contemporaries. She sometimes eclipses herself in terms of raw emotion, as on the throttling Jack White encounter "Don't Hurt Yourself." At the low-volume end, there's more power in the few seconds she chokes back tears while singing "Come back" -- timed with the backing vocal in Isaac Hayes' version of "Walk on By" -- than there is in most contemporary ballads. Romantic conflict is nothing new for her, but there is a degree of concentration and specificity, and an apparent disregard for appealing to commercial radio that makes Lemonade a distinct addition to her catalog. (Another distinguishing factor is the length of credits which, due to a vast assortment of collaborators and samples, exceeds that of the self-titled album.) Lemonade can also be heard as the dark flipside of Beyoncé. When "Dishes smashed on the counter" is bleakly observed, just before "Pictures snatched out the frame/Bitch, I scratched out your name and face" is delivered with seething wrath, it's hard to not flash back to "Drunk in Love," in which the presumably same couple were revelrous in the same room. After the first three-quarters play out in compelling if somewhat erratic fashion, Lemonade closes with a torrid stretch. "Freedom" is a marching anthem of resilience and preservation, produced by Just Blaze with a glowing guest verse from Kendrick Lamar. The loved-up "All Night" is a tangle of emotions and hints at reconciliation, facilitated by the horns from OutKast's "SpottieOttieDopaliscious." And then, at last, there's the strutting "Formation," simultaneously a tack-on and an ideal finale, where Beyoncé delights in her blackness, femininity, and Southern origin with supreme wordplay” – AllMusic