FEATURE:
Beyoncé at Forty-Five
PHOTO CREDIT: Melina Matsoukas for ELLE UK
Five Essential Albums from the Icon
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AS the iconic and peerless…
Beyoncé turns forty-five on 4th September, I wanted to use this feature to highlight five of here albums I feel everyone should listen to. In each case, I will provide the release date, label(s), some standout tracks, and the definitive song from each. I will also include a critical review. Showcasing the immense talent and consistency of Beyoncé. If you are a fan or are relatively unfamiliar with her work, I hope that this feature guides you to these brilliant albums and beyond. She is one of the greatest artists who has ever lived, and we will get music from her for many years to come. This is an artist that I have admired since I was a child. From her Destiny’s Child days to now, there is nobody like Beyoncé. Ahead of her forty-fifth birthday, I wanted to show some respect for…
THIS queen.
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B’Day
Release Date: 1st September, 2006
Labels: Music World/Columbia/Sony Urban/Sony BMG
Standout Tracks: Déjà Vu (featuring Jay-Z)/Get Me Bodied/Irreplaceable
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
Key Cut: Ring the Alarm
4
Release Date: 24th June, 2011
Labels: Parkwood/Columbia
Standout Tracks: Best Thing I Never Had/Start Over/Love on Top
Review:
“One of the year's best music videos was directed by Jay-Z and cost about zero dollars to make. The camera phone clip shows Beyoncé rehearsing her new album's opening eternal-love ballad, "1+1", backstage at "American Idol". There she is: eyes shut, standing in front of a mirror, singing her guts out while family and friends look on in quiet awe. The video has a similar impromptu charm to the many intimate, one-shot performance clips popularized by Vincent Moon's "Take Away Show", its appeal compounded by the shock of seeing such a notoriously manicured superstar without embellishment. "Help me let down my guard," she belts. And, as Beyoncé finishes the song, you hear her proud husband let out a joyous "woo!" It's all quite endearing and personal-- two words one might not often associate with this superhumanly talented and famous couple. "Sometimes you need perspective," wrote Jay in an intro to the video on his Life + Times website. "You've been right in front of greatness so often that you need to step back and see it again for the first time."
It's a fitting sentiment and song to introduce 4, which largely deals with monogamy and all that comes with committing to one person for a potential lifetime. Which, like a bad marriage, might sound boring, repetitive, staid. But, in Beyoncé's more-than-capable and still-in-love hands, a relationship that lasts can seem as complicated and rewarding as anyone would hope. "If I ain't got something, I don't give a damn/ 'Cause I got it with you," she testifies on "1+1"-- potentially dubious words from a woman who certainly has "something," but her mainlined vocals quickly dismiss mere logistics. The song boasts some of her finest-ever singing laid over a bed of warm and flowing synths, strings, and bass that manages to connect the dots between Sam Cooke and Prince without sacrificing any Beyoncé-ness. "1+1" is that rare wonder: a wedding song that pleases but doesn't pander.
The only recent pop ballad that comes close to its power is Adele's stunning "Someone Like You". But where that song-- and its massively successful corresponding album, 21-- wrung out the aftermath of young heartbreak, Beyoncé is aiming for something a bit more challenging with 4: love the one you're with, and have some fun doing it, too. The album's relative riskiness extends to its music, which side-steps Top 40 radio's current Eurobeat fixation for a refreshingly eclectic mix of early-90s R&B, 80s lite soul, and brass'n'percussion-heavy marching music. All of the album's best elements, thematically and sonically, burst ahead on Jay-Z ode "Countdown", a honking, stutter-step sequel of sorts to "Crazy in Love". The new track makes 10 years of loyalty seem just as thrilling as the first time, with Beyoncé offering her partner copious praise in that famed half-rap cadence: "Still love the way he talks/ Still love the way I sing/ Still love the way he rock them black diamonds in that chain."
"Love on Top" lilts like a lost Reagan-era smash, its light-as-air bop recalling Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, and Stevie Wonder at their sunniest. And "End of Time" is perhaps 4's most strident declaration of co-dependence; sounding like En Vogue remixed by a high school pep band, the song has Beyoncé finding the strength in two as she sings, "I just wanna be with you/ I just wanna live for you/ I'd never let you go!" That track-- along with most of 4's stand outs-- was co-written and co-produced by the star's other invaluable partner, Terius "The-Dream" Nash.
The pair first combined forces on super hit "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)", but their collaborative relationship fully blooms on this album's ramped-up back half, including the bombastic, Major Lazer-sampling empowerment tract "Run the World (Girls)". As a songwriter, The-Dream has a way of drawing out a side of Beyoncé that's both more personal and brash, and, as seen on his several brilliant solo albums, his production style routinely references past greats while standing in the now. Tellingly, without his help the album stumbles, as on the overblown "I Was Here", a faceless, theoretically-inspirational slog written by veteran schlockmeister Diane Warren. (Unsurprisingly, "I Was Here" is the only cut on the record that wasn't co-written by Beyoncé herself, too.) Elsewhere, Babyface spearheads the decent "Irreplaceable" retread "Best Thing I Never Had", which probably wouldn't sound out-of-place on a Vanessa Carlton album, and Sleepy Jackson/Empire of the Sun leader Luke Steele worked on the ungainly "Rather Die Young", which ruins its Philly soul vibe with a theatrical Broadway glaze. (Steele also contributed an awful hook on Jay-Z's Blueprint 3 trash-can bait "What We Talkin' About"-- can we get him away from this couple, please?)
Ironically, 4's deluxe edition comes with three bonus songs that would easily count among the proper album's finest moments. Chiefly, The-Dream co-written/produced "Schoolin' Life" is an irresistible Prince tribute that's much more motivational than "I Was Here" could ever be: "Who needs a degree when you're schoolin' life?" struts Beyoncé. The singer has said she recorded more than 60 songs while making 4, and some of the wrong-headed inclusions are lazy attempts at re-creating her past hits. But they are few. And the lion's share of the album-- along with its excellent deluxe tracks-- has one of the world's biggest stars exploring her talent in ways few could've predicted, which is always exciting. After 2008's I Am... Sasha Fierce, which saw Beyoncé catching up to trends when she wasn't trying Streisand-wannabe ballads, 4 is more akin to her wily sophomore solo album, B'Day. But where that record was preoccupied with the club, 4 is happy at home; on Off the Wall-style bonus track "Lay Up Under Me", the contented 29-year-old gushes, "You ain't gotta worry 'bout a club, just come on lay up under me tonight." If anyone can make a quiet Friday night come off like an open-bar blowout, it's Beyoncé” – Pitchfork
Key Cut: Run the World (Girls)
Lemonade
Release Date: 23rd April, 2016
Labels: Parkwood/Columbia
Standout Tracks: Hold Up/Freedom/All Night
Review:
“What does it mean for Beyoncé to drop a new surprise album on the world within days of a giant like Prince leaving us? It’s a welcome reminder that giants still walk among us. Lemonade is an entire album of emotional discord and marital meltdown, from the world’s most famous celebrity; it’s also a major personal statement from the most respected and creative artist in the pop game. All over these songs, she rolls through heartbreak and betrayal and infidelity and the hangover that follows “Drunk In Love.” Yet despite all the rage and pain in the music, she makes it all seem affirming, just another chapter in the gospel according to Beyoncé: the life-changing magic of making a great big loud bloody mess.
There’s nothing as blissed-out on Lemonade as “XO” or “Countdown” or “Love On Top” – this is the queen in middle-fingers-up mode. When the first four songs on an album add up to “you cheated on me and you will pay,” then there’s a country song about her daddy teaching her to solve her problems with a gun, it’s hard not to believe Mrs. Carter might mean it when she sings about regretting the night she put that ring on it. Whatever she’s going through, she’s feeling it deep in these songs, and it brings out her wildest, rawest vocals ever, as when she rasps, “Who the fuck do you think I is? You ain’t married to no average bitch, boy!” She’s always elided the boundaries between her art and her life – especially since she really did grow up in public. But by the time she gets around to telling her husband “Suck on my balls, I’ve had enough,” there’s an unmistakable hint that Jay-Z might be living the hard-knock life these days.
Beyoncé dropped Lemonade on Saturday night right after her HBO special – one of those “world, stop” moments that she’s made her specialty. But the public spectacle can’t hide the intimate anguish in the music, especially in the powerhouse first half. She begins as a supplicant in “Pray You Can Hear Me,” alone with her wounded heart, and then explodes in “Hold Up,” which takes the staccato strings from Andy Williams’ Vegas-crooner classic “Can’t Get Used To Losing You” and a chorus hook from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ NYC punk ballad “Maps” (“They don’t love you like I love you”), with a Soulja Boy coda, as she mourns a husband who let all her good love go to waste.
Lemonade is her most emotionally extreme music, but also her most sonically adventurous, from the Kendrick Lamar showcase “Freedom” to the country murder yarn that struts like buckskin-era early-1970s Cher (“Daddy Lessons”). She mixes in a spoken-word snippet from Jay-Z’s grandmother Hattie White, the obscure 1960s Mexican garage band Kaleidoscope, indie slop like Father John Misty, Animal Collective and (with a production credit) Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig. Her guests range from James Blake (“Forward”) to the Weeknd (“6 Inch”). She goes full-on rock-queen in “Don’t Hurt Yourself,” making Jack White sound feistier than he has in years, as she compares herself to a dragon breathing fire – that’s an understatement – and samples the John Bonham drum thunder from “When The Levee Breaks.”
Yet the most astounding sound is always Bey’s voice, as she pushes to her bluesiest extremes, like the hilariously nasty way she sneers, “He’s always got them fucking ex-cuuuu-ses.” She hits some Plastic Ono Band-style primal-scream moments in the devastating ballad “Love Drought.” (“Nine times out of ten I’m in my feelings / But ten times out of nine I’m only human” is a stunning confession from a diva who’s always made such a fetish out of emotional self-control.) “Freedom” and “Formation” reach out historically, connecting her personal pain to the trauma of American blackness, with the power of Aretha Franklin’s Spirit in the Dark or Nina Simone’s Silk and Soul. She can’t resist adding a happy ending with “All Night,” where the couple kisses and makes up and lives happily ever after, or at least until morning. But it’s an uneasy coda, with the word “forgive” noticeably absent and the future still in doubt.
Whether Beyoncé likes it or not – and everything about Lemonade suggests she lives for it – she’s the kind of artist whose voice people hear their own stories in, whatever our stories may be. She’s always aspired to superhero status, even from her earliest days in a girl group that was tellingly named Destiny’s Child. (Once upon a time, back in the Nineties, “No No No” was the only Destiny’s Child song in existence – but make no mistake, we could already hear she was Beyoncé.) She lives up to every inch of that superhero status on Lemonade. Like the professional heartbreaker she sings about in “6 Inch,” she murdered everybody and the world was her witness” - Rolling Stone
Key Cut: Formation
RENAISSANCE
Release Date: 29th July, 2022
Labels: Parkwood/Columbia
Standout Tracks: CUFF IT/VIRGO’S GROOVE/AMERICA HAS A PROBLEM
Review:
“To millions, Beyoncé is still running it all. From her accomplished performing abilities to her extended displays of talent, the Texan singer’s reputation over the last two decades appears to have only grown, even in this recent considerable period of inactivity. It’s been six years since her last full record, 2016’s ‘Lemonade’, which, with time, has come to represent perhaps her highest point, as she reclaimed her narrative amid rumours of infidelity by her husband, rapper Jay-Z.
‘Renaissance’, her seventh studio album, marks the sound of an artist refreshed: this is her most relentlessly upbeat and fun record yet, one where she explores love, friendship and relationships across 16 spellbinding tracks. In a note to accompany the album, she describes the three-year period that it took to complete the record over lockdowns as one that “allowed me to feel free and adventurous”, providing a space where she could “scream, release and feel freedom”.
The pursuit of Black joy is central to the record, as she draws on house music – and particularly New Orleans bounce – to join the latest wave of Black stars reclaiming gentrified genres that they were once pushed out of. Samples and collaborators on ‘Renaissance’ include influential Black figures like Barbara Ann Teer, founder of Harlem’s National Black Theatre, as well as rapper Big Freedia and producer Honey Dijon.
The homage to that scene’s unique spirit is keenly felt on ‘Church Girl’, which samples Cameron Paul’s ‘Brown Beats’ – a song integral to the inception of bounce music – and the album’s huge lead single ‘Break My Soul’. On the latter, it’s the sample of Big Freedia’s hook that sets the album’s tone of empowerment: “Release ya trade, release the stress / Release the love, forget the rest.” ‘I’m That Girl’, meanwhile, is another declaration of self-confidence, and the bewitching ‘Cozy’ plainly offers: “Comfortable in my skin / Cosy with who I am”.
It’s on ‘Alien Superstar’ where she expands her influences, and draws on ballroom culture. With the credits boasting a hefty cast (Labrinth, Lucky Daye, 070 Shake, Jay-Z) the song pairs a thumping rhythm with an understated, posh accented rap – the hallmarks of a ballroom MC – and flirts with fluttery high register; this instantly becomes the record’s most indulgent and intriguing track.
There’s success, too, when she moves her focus away from a literal exploration of house music. ’Cuff It’ nods to the heyday of Motown and disco on a salacious tune soon to be a staple in pre-clubbing playlists. Likewise on ‘Heated’, she adopts an afro-bashment vibe with the help of Drake, who, too, recently dabbled in house music, though with mixed results. ‘Plastic Off The Sofa’ offers up groovy R&B that gives Beyoncé an opportunity to show off her powerful chops as she riffs and runs all over the punchy jazz band accompanying her hushed tone: “I think you’re so cool / even though I’m cooler than you,” she winks” – NME
Key Cut: BREAK MY SOUL
COWBOY CARTER
Release Date: 29th March, 2024
Labels: Parkwood/Columbia
Standout Tracks: BLACKBIRD/16 CARRIAGES/II MOST WANTED
Review:
“Ever since Beyoncé – to quote the lady herself – “changed the game with that digital drop” via her self-titled fifth album, released without warning in 2013, she’s become the fixed point around which popular culture oscillates. Bandwidth-swallowing think pieces, detailed decoding of every lyric, plus an increasingly vexed right-wing America have kept her name on everyone’s lips. She wasn’t exactly a cult concern before, but the last decade has seen her move beyond mere superstar status, aided by 2016’s internet sleuth-facilitating infidelity opus Lemonade and 2022’s liberated, post-lockdown dance party, Renaissance.
That last album was billed teasingly as Act I, and now arrives the second part of a mooted trilogy. While Renaissance, with its celebration of the oft-ignored influence of Black queer dance pioneers, facilitated a healthy amount of debate, you could cobble together a hefty book on the discourse that’s already swirling around Cowboy Carter. Inspired by a less than welcome reaction to the Texan’s performance of her country single Daddy Lessons at the 2016 Country Music Awards – where she was dismissed as a “pop artist”, seemingly code for “Black woman” – it’s an album that takes country music by its plaid shirt collar, holds up its (mainly) male, pale and stale status to the light and sets it on fire.
Thrilling opener Ameriican Requiem – a slow-burn, country-rock opera – references that CMA controversy directly (“Used to say I spoke too country / And the rejection came, said I wasn’t country ’nough”), before making broader statements on who gets to call themselves a “true American” (“A pretty house that we never settled in”). It is followed by a cover of the Beatles’ folk-y Blackbird (here retitled Blackbiird, a consistent motif used throughout the album to denote it being Act II), a song that was inspired by the experiences of nine teenage Black girls attending an all-white school in post-segregation 1957, featuring vocals from upcoming Black country singers Brittney Spencer, Reyna Roberts, Tanner Adell and Tiera Kennedy. It’s an opening salvo ripe for music scholars to unpick.
But Cowboy Carter is never just one thing. Nor does its scholarly detail weigh it down. Just as it uses country music as a backdrop to explore other genres, it also utilises anger and injustice as shades of a bigger picture. There’s fun to be had via the playful, thigh-slapping single Texas Hold ’Em, which makes more sense preceded by an introduction from a stoned Willie Nelson. The unhinged Ya Ya is a freewheelin’ sprint through social and economic disparity that channels the electifying spirit of Tina Turner, and samples Nancy Sinatra and the Beach Boys.
While Beyoncé’s take on Jolene by Dolly Parton (or Dolly P as she’s recast here) loses some of the original’s desperation by morphing into a glint-eyed warning, it’s still a hoot to hear her spit lines like “Jolene, I know I’m a queen, Jolene / I’m still a Creole banjee bitch from Louisiane.” Daughter is a deliciously camp revenge fantasy that suddenly breaks into – and this is one of Beyoncé’s many vocal flexes on the album – a snatch of the 18th-century aria Caro Mio Ben, sung in Italian.
By swapping the tightly packed synth and drum programming of Renaissance for live instrumentation (including percussion made from the click-clack of Beyoncé’s nails), Cowboy Carter has a looser, baggier feel than its predecessor. The excellent, loved-up Bodyguard unspools like a lost Fleetwood Mac classic, all rippling 70s soft-rock melodies, while the sweet Protector, dedicated to her daughter Rumi Carter, sounds like it was knocked out around a campfire. II Most Wanted, meanwhile, finds Beyoncé and pop-country maven Miley Cyrus trading odes to their ride or dies as if sharing the same mic.
If this all sounds decidedly mid-paced, Cowboy Carter isn’t solely about rustic shuffles. Spaghettii, which features Linda Martell, the first Black country star to perform on the Grand Ole Opry stage, is a trap-infused head knocker; II Hands II Heaven rides a soft electronic pulse and samples Underworld; while the finger-pointing Tyrant fuses fiddle filigrees with rib-rattling bass, perfect for a sweat-soaked dosey doe at Club Renaissance.
Cowboy Carter’s scope and scale can be overwhelming, as can its 27-track runtime – the shorter interludes-as-songs cause a dip in excitement midway through – but there’s something about its construction that pleads with you to consume it as a whole; a journey not just through, and beyond, American roots music, but through various moods, shades and emotions that coalesce as a celebration. It feels like a feast at a time when pop is offering up scraps. As she mentioned herself when announcing the album to a mix of anger, intrigue and confusion: “This ain’t a country album. This is a ‘Beyoncé’ album.” It’s also her fourth classic in a row” – The Guardian
Key Cut: TEXAS HOLD 'EM