Beyoncé's B'Day at 20: Track-by-Track (Originally Published on Patreon on May 11, 2026)

Hey everybody, DJ Louie here just dropping in to say that Russ and I are on the last week of our vacation from the main feed, but we didn't want to leave everybody high and dry. So before I get into describing this week's episode, just quick housekeeping up top that there is a gorgeous gorgeous party in New York City on September 11th at the Solchen Room in Bushwick. We will be celebrating three years of Chapel Rones, the rise and fall of a Midwest princess plus playing music by all your favorite pop girlies all night long. You can get tickets at the show notes in this episode or go to gorgeous gorgeous party on Instagram. For this week's Flashback episode, we are publishing an episode from our Patreon channel from earlier this year where Russ and I went track by track on Beyoncé's second solo album B-Day, which is currently having its 20 year anniversary, so we thought it was a perfect time to throw this on the main feed if you enjoy this episode. And you want to hear more like it, plus if you want to hear weekly bonus episodes from us while we're still on vacation, new content. You can subscribe at patreon.com/poppantheon or you can click the link in the show notes of this episode. You can also subscribe for the audio only directly in the Apple Podcast app. So without further ado, here is Russ and I going track by track on Beyoncé's B-Day. Welcome to Pop Pantheon All Access, the podcast where we do even more over-analyzing of all your favorite pop stars and do other stuff too. This is your host, DJ, Louis XIV. Thank you all so much for being subscribers and I'm here with my sugar momma. It is Russ, Martin, Russ. Good morning. Hi, Louis. Good morning. I am so excited to talk about Beyoncé. To pull back the curtain a little bit, we have been debating when to make a piece of Beyoncé content because we've been hotly anticipating the act three, the potential rock, potential R&B, potential question mark record to put our cards on the table. At this point that we are recording, we don't have any details about this, but we are going to slide this episode into your feed when Beyoncé drops something, some titillating news or just randomly. Or just randomly. 'Cause who knows, we could not hear from this lady this year. We don't know. We could be anticipating for much, much longer, but it is always a good time to talk about Beyoncé on this show, so we are seizing that opportunity to talk about Beyday, which is also 20 years old this year, which was our other peg. It's the 20 year B-Day of Beyday. Correct. Yes. I don't know if you remember when this came out. There was an interview at one point during this album's rollout. I guess like some people didn't get that it was called Beyday and somebody called it like Beyday and someone asked Beyoncé if she would have called it Beyday, if she knew that people were going to potentially refer to it as Beyday. And she was like, no. I didn't really follow this at the time that it came out. This came out actually the week that I started university. And I had been a fan of Destiny's Childs, certainly when I was younger. But at that point in my life, I was listening to Indy Rock, I was into hipster stuff, M-I-A-The-Y-Y-Yes, that kind of a thing. I wasn't particularly focused on Beyoncé and what she was doing. I actually would have said going into this that I wasn't particularly familiar with this album. But as it turns out, almost half of these songs were singles. So Vios Moses, I got a lot of these even though I wasn't particularly plugged in at the time. Bring me back to 2006 and your fandom of Beyoncé. Where were you at? I don't know if it was the Vapeek, but it was a peak of my Beyoncé fandom. I was into the stuff you were talking about too. This was a very, very expansive musical moment for me. I was in college. I was just omnivoreously eating music up. I mean, I sometimes look back nostalgicly at this time of just like how much I was consuming, which is knowledge I obviously continue to draw on as a base to this day. But I mean, I couldn't get enough of anything and it ranged from, you know, the most obscure stuff to stuff from the past to present day pop start-up. And I was hugely into Beyoncé kind of pretty much from the beginning to the present day. I don't think there's ever really been an interruption in that for me. Dangerously in love for me. I remember obviously being a phenomenon and being obsessed with the singles, being obsessed with the videos I went to the Verizon Ladies first tour, which was her and Alicia Keys and Missy Elliott and Tamia with my girlfriend Jennifer from high school. And then this record I was, I think, more deeply into like reading about music, reading criticism, and this was kind of the beginning of optimism. Like this, this album came out the same year as Justin Timberlake's Future Sex Love sounds. They were kind of the two like banner pop releases of the year as I recall. And Justin Timberlake's album was definitely a moment in which like major music critics were like giving him plot it for being sort of adventurous and making music that felt like ambitious and scope, which was a big deal for like a former boy bander who had been seen as kind of like pop product. And also obviously they were both the front people of a boy band and a girl group of the same TRL ilk. So there was something sort of like interrelated about them coming out. And then the other big part of this is this album came out in the lead up to Dreamgirls. So that had been like a big story that had been going on. And Beyoncé had framed this album as an expression of the anger of her character that she had basically been so dropped in to the character who was wronged by their man in the movie. And that like she needed to express that sort of like get that characters rage out. I remember this album coming out kind of like in a fury. I remember dangerously in love feeling quite predetermined. Like we knew she was going to do this solo album that was kind of like a very expertly crafted rollout. And there was something even before we heard the music of this that felt like it was a burst of energy that felt like it was kind of like a moment of inspiration that she had to capture. And that feeling very exciting. And then I remember just being 100 million percent obsessed with this album like in a way that I miss feeling about music like I was consumed four years drove to New Jersey to the former continental airlines arena saw this tour. I still to this day probably would say it was like one of the best nights of live music I have ever experienced in my entire life. I was mind blown. It was like life changing, re-alchemizing, changed my brain chemistry, changed my molecular structure evening of live music. This was the error that Beyoncé introduced her all female band with her sugar mamas. The tour was called the Beyoncé experience and I experienced it. I mean, I remember where I was sitting in the arena and I remember just like being in absolute rapture in a way that I think was just like seminal to my passion for this topic. Like I was just completely changed by the experience. And this is an album that I have continued over the last 20 years to love. I recently ranked it as one of my top five albums of the century so far which I can confidently stand behind. I mean, I listened to this album all the time. You have hit so many of the points of information that I think that we need for context. As you said, this was quite well reviewed. I was looking at a 7.2 on pitchfork. And the fact that pitchfork reviewed it at that time was kind of in anomaly. I double checked to make sure it wasn't a retrospective Sunday review. It was not. It was published in 2006 and that's a really solid pitchfork score at any point. But particularly in this era for this type of an album, it's an excellent score. It won the Grammy for Best Contemporary, R&B album. You got most of the timeline down, but I do think that it is worth mentioning after dangerously in love. She went back to Destiny's Child for Destiny, you fulfilled. And this is the album that then comes out after that. So this is her second solo record, but it is her first solo record after Destiny's child. Record it when she was 24 years old, released three days before her 25th birthday. I had listened through this before really thinking about how old she was. And her being 24 is really informative to some of the thematic concerns here, particularly as they relate to love and to Jay-Z. There are two appearances by her then boyfriend Jay-Z. All of Beyoncé's music essentially, until Renaissance is about her love and relationship with Jay-Z. As we discussed on the Beyoncé series back in 2020, June, Beyoncé's entire discography up until this new project is a performance art piece about her heteromonogamous relationship to Jay-Z. If I have the timeline, right, I believe that at this point they had been dating for three or four years, of course, their relationship came out publicly in Bonnie and Clyde. Oh, three. So that is, this is 2006, that is 2003. So this is three years, at least into the public relationship. There is a lyric on this album that bullies a different truth. And there was speculation, there was tabloid gossip. And there still is a lot of tabloid gossip allegedly that like that was a convenient timeline to hide the fact of the maybe aged discrepancies that were less savory. And two years later, they got married. So they were fully public at this point though. Oh, yeah, they had been public for a while. Yes. Because there was a whole long period, including during crazy love, I believe, where they still tried to like not say they were together. Like that was a long period of that. I was reading up on it, and my understanding is there had been speculation, and then Bonnie and Clyde was their way sort of of… confirming it, but I don't know if they confirmed it more than that, you know what I mean? A hundred percent. The big thing about Beyoncé always is that celebrity-wise she is very tightly stitched and then a lot of times where we get the insight is through the music and like in this album I think is one of the most distilled examples of clear emotional clarity, storytelling of her life, even though again she tried to tell us that this was a work of fiction related to her character, but it's just funny to think back on it now and like think about why that was and what she was trying to sort of like protect here because I do think obviously so many themes on Beyday are things that have been borne out in later works and she has been more explicit about them being about her relationship most notably on them. I mean to me, Beyday is the clearest precursor to lemonade thematically, obviously, although as we talked about on the series, Beyoncé dealing with infidelity is a huge aspect of her music. It is all the way back to Destiny's Child, but of course like me myself and I, this record almost every Beyoncé project deals with discord at least if not full sort of like betrayal in the heteromanogamous pact, but it's interesting to think about her as like a press figure during this period where she was trying to sort of like create this dissonance between like her sort of like mythic celebrity persona and like what the music was actually saying and doing. They were reminded me earlier this year of reading about Whitney Houston was talking about 100 percent. It's already with the whole record, but especially that song very clearly toys with the public perception and what might be happening back behind the scenes except that the public perception of Whitney and Bobby during that time was tumultuousness whereas the public perception of Beyoncé and Jay and Jay-Z at this time was golden couple. And a lot of songs on this record do chronicle explicitly on tracks with Jay-Z and we'll get into this sort of like the basis of the ecstatic love intertwined with the wealth building, brand building, empire building of the Norl's Carter family, which is like, you know, I think the part of this record that feels more purposefully autobiographical and like they want to convey the autobiography of that part of it. I think the parts that she's trying to veil are kind of more in the back half of this album which are pretty much entirely focused on being stepped out on. Now the initial version of this is 10 tracks and a bunch of those were serviced as singles. The lead deja vu was at top five ring the alarm peaked at 11 irreplaceable the biggest hit here. It was number one and eight times platinum. The album itself debuted at number one sold half a million copies in its first week. It eventually sold more than five million copies just in the U.S. alone eight million worldwide credits here packed with hitmakers, nettoons, stargate, darkchild all worked on this record. I just want to also as a piece of narrative about this record put out two things. One is it was eventually repackaged and released as a much longer project complete with the single beautiful liar. We're not going to track by track that longer project but there was the Shakira Beyonce team up beautiful liar that was also a pretty big hit. They rearranged all the tracks into like a much longer track listing and this was also Beyonce's first visual album. At one point there were music videos released I believe for every single song on the traditional track list. So in some ways thinking about this as a blueprint for future Beyonce ambitious audiovisual projects that will come later in her career. You know Bday is a blueprint both thematically and I think also in terms of like how she was thinking about expanding her role in the album format. The other thing is that this album was kind of seen as a flop in its moment again relatively but dangerously in love was an absolutely unharrowed success. I mean multiple number one singles multiple top five singles in the four big hits. It was a pop star arrival par excellence. This record lead single going to number four was seen as a disappointment ring the alarm not going top 10 was seen as a huge drop off and as we're gonna talk about the big hit here is irreplaceable which I would argue although thematically fits in with the record is the most sonically dissonant thing on this album like it's very clearly a hedge it is the only thing on this album that I would say was clearly put there as a backstop against some of the more eccentric material that is on this album and it served its purpose it really did it's not totally disney because it fits in thematically but when that song begins on this album all of a sudden you feel disoriented about where you are I mean it's a totally different type of song the most generous read I think that you can give in terms of how the song sounds versus the rest of the record is it it serves like as an epilogue it serves as a closer right it makes sense if you're going to view it this way but yeah that's an interesting part of this as well is that this album and we're going to talk about this in detail right now was a risky aesthetic move on her part and I think looking back that's only become clearer in retrospect is like how eccentric and strange this is as an album to follow up an album like dangerously in love in terms of major pop star aesthetics she went for something pretty risky on this album I would say and it wasn't as huge of a commercial success and when we talk about Sasha Fears the record that came after it you can see that she's attempting to sort of write the ship in terms of making more sort of down the middle accessible radio friendly music to sort of make up a little bit for b-days swings that didn't totally connect commercially at the time although now I think many of these songs are amongst her fan favorites anything new or different in this listen through that you have been sitting with yes which is crazy because I don't think there's any album on earth I might have listened to more than this album I think I realized more than ever that this really is a narrative structured concept album I do believe we begin in one place we track a situation in order I think there is a very explicit order to these songs that is meant to tell a story about a relationship that sort of picks up with the ecstatic love of dangerously in love and then sort of veers violently into something discordant and horrifying about halfway through and then explores many phases of that fallout through the end of the album in a way that frankly does not feel dissimilar to lemonade for me and I would say pound for pound song for song maybe a better group of songs than lemonade to me overall but was the experience of listening overall for you as like someone that was giving this a full listen for the first time you know it's so interesting what I always like to do when we listen to music is I like to listen to it as much as I can and then read the reviews and then go back and listen again with some fresh ears and when I was doing my listen I'm thinking so much about the recent run of Beyonce I'm thinking about contemporary 2020s Beyonce this current project that she is on and the way also that her music is talked about and received right so I was listening with that in mind and I was struck sort of by the precision of the production which is like maybe silly of me because of course a Beyonce album is precise but that is part of how we think about her maybe now and my understanding sort of at the time was like I was aware of Beyonce's talent but maybe ignorant to her genius right I don't think you were alone in that either by the way I mean I think that was a pervasive narrative totally I think a lot of people accepted Beyonce as a great singer and a great dancer but it took a really long time for people to accept her as a great artist for sure I would argue not fully until the self-titled visual album did that actually like become the baseline default and then I was surprised some of the reviews mentioned her like lack of precision right but they were viewing this in terms of what had just come before and so this isn't quite the pop perfection of crazy in love or of you know like Destiny's Child singles I guess I wasn't listening for that I was listening more with her current music in mind and what I've spent time with as of recent and we're used to Beyonce making eccentric music I mean her music is precise but there's also a wildness and a experimentalism to be on say music that we are now prone to accepting at the time I think this felt like a big step outside of that yeah and we're not necessarily in looking at an album like Renaissance searching for an airtight chorus in every song right because that has no longer been what the Beyonce project is she's transitioned into being a great albums artist a conceptual thinker and maybe the transition was less in her artistry and more in how we viewed her I think there is a matter of intent versus audience that is really instructive in how we look at Beyonce so that's sort of where I was in going in on this yeah and it's interesting because with Justin's album being the other big album of this year I mean he was the one although this album was maybe well received critically to some degree it was really future sex love sounds that was the pop album that got fully embraced and of course it's the white guy it's interesting I think so much of that had to do with biases in our body politic around black female pop stars like it just was a bias that she had to work very hard against but the other thing that I think is really interesting and you know then we can get into talking about each of the tracks is like I think there's something un predetermined about this music that actually makes it a clearer emotional missive from Beyonce than some of her more very thought out later work lemonade for all of its guttural impact is thought about and teased out every angle is explored every idea of how it might be perceived as thought of an advance you know what I mean like there is something going back to this album in all of its imperfect presentations of feminism for one and of gender politics that I think makes it a messier and more. more interesting reflection of who Beyonce is at her court in some ways than some of the more like overly thoughtful, although that's great in its own way, but there's a way in which her later music and just because she became more mature and like learned more about the world and became somebody that like thought about her previous positions from different angles going on later in her life. But that feel more like vetted, whereas this feels kind of unvarnished and in some ways she ends up coming out with ideas about what it means to be an empowered woman that feel messy and sort of retrograde and strange and uncomfortable, even in a modern context, especially as we think about Beyonce as this paragon of pop feminism. This album really like dirties that up a little bit in a way that I think like makes for less clean narratives around that, but also makes for maybe a more interesting reflection of like who Beyonce is at her court, who is kind of a conservative woman with retrograde values around romance and relationships. Yeah, I was incredibly struck by that and I had to sort of force myself not to make notes on that with every single song. Right. Well, it is in every single song. Yeah. For someone that is so elusive, it's very interesting to get a reveal like that because like that is not like the cleanest narrative that a pop diva, and a pop diva who had made her career to this point around the idea of being like a voice for women, you know what I mean, like I mean, Beyonce's entire Destiny's Child persona was like, I make anthems for independent women, for women standing for their own things. And so I think that there's something that I don't think is intentional necessarily in her part. It's more just a revelation of like where she was in her own evolution and who her core values were that really like gusty's that up and is kind of uncomfortable at certain moments to hear, you know, pop's premiere ultra feminists, purposely becoming kind of an objectified and sort of like trot upon secondary figure to a man throughout much of this album. Shelley? Yes. First track. Day Ja. Boop. ♪ Come in and play it all for you ♪ ♪ That's everything that's keeping you ♪ ♪ And I don't want no stuff to do ♪ ♪ And it's where it is, Asia's the key ♪ This is the song on this record that I think has like grown in a steam for me the most over time, because I think the narrative that sort of surrounded Deja Vu when it came out is that it is a riff on crazy in love, but perhaps a less bombastic and less obviously song of a generation type of hit. It's subtler. It's got some of the funky baseline and the sort of horned laden production that we recognize from what would then become like kind of a signature motif of Beyonce's, which are sort of these like 70s funk illusions as filtered through contemporary hip hop and R&B. And it has like less of a obvious sort of like, you know, heralding of a new queen type of hook coming on. It's a little subtler. And it explores similar themes to me. So crazy in love is a song about being driven mad by ecstatic lust and love, right? And she sounds generally like she's going to, she is going crazy on that song and that's part of the excitement of listening to it. Deja Vu is also like that. The feeling of Deja Vu is a song about being disoriented by how frenzied this love and lust feels. She doesn't know where she is. She doesn't know what's past, what's present. Her brain is scrambled by how fucking horny and in love she is with her partner, who is Jay-Z in this song and in life. And I think this song has really grown in a steam for me just in terms of just like how much it harnesses Beyonce's ability to within the container of a very tightly stitched pop song. Truly sound like she is losing her marbles in a way that's like quite exciting to listen to like when she taps into this vein as she does on count, I mean, she does this on a lot of her discography. When she taps into this vein of like my god, my monogamous heterosexual love pact is so fucking exciting to me that I am genuinely like, I can't think straight. Like I literally cannot get my brain on right is an incredibly effective mode of Beyonce music to me. And I think this song is one of the greatest examples in her discography. And I think I have trouble also disconnecting it from this point from the performances of the song, which are so iconic. The performance at the BET Awards is one of her all time best and she was embracing this new style of dance that was much more kind of instinctual and sort of in her body and like on the floor and kicking her legs. And she was bringing that sort of frenzied energy of like uncontainable lust and love like into the performance in a way that just makes it very, very exciting. And I think this song has gone on to become a deep, deep, deep fan favorite. And it's interesting because that's rewriting history. This song was seen at the time as a bit of a sort of like sub crazy and love disappointment. So I love this song. This has become a favorite of mine. What about you? Yeah. The growl especially. I feel like what Beyonce is doing with her voice across this record and often in other spaces as well. She has a growl that feels just like the base of what we are as people. It feels true to the human spirit, you know? And that is something that not every singer can express. And Beyonce, while she will quite famously later, not be photographed in ways that are unflattering. Unflattering, we'll say, doesn't mind her voice sounding a little ugly. Yes. And I think that that adds so much to the character of her voice. From the jump, I'm on board with the sound of this song when she says base. I'm like, let's go. She introduces each individual instrument. And that's such like a diva kind of power move that feels very 70s to me, you know? A lot of this is Beyonce attempting to I think sort of assimilate into black pop female pop lineages like Tina Turner, Aretha Franklin. Like I hear a lot of Beyonce like attempting to sort of like get into even further back than that Billie Holiday, like get herself in that lineage explicitly. Yeah. So I'm on this, she's placing herself in the lineage of Motown acts of the blues, all of that stuff. And I think that the horns are great. All of this traditional like instrumentation that is being, you know, mixed here very expertly with the hip-hop and like pop RMB of the moment. It could very easily feel dorky. Yeah. It's got a vagacy quality to it a little bit. Yeah. And I think that the Veeche is risky, but there's a coolness both to Beyonce as a performer and to her collaborators here. Their fluency in the hip-hop of the moment. And I think also their fluency in the history of black music allows these things to fuse together in ways that don't end up feeling cordy or dorky. You can be a music nerd and also some of the coolest people in music of contemporary times. And it just, it all really works. The thing that works less for me, I think, is Beyonce being in Service to Patriarch. That is one of my personal least favorite modes of Beyonce. Her conceiting the first verse on a record to a man is like, just like not what I would hope for in an album opener. But the sound of this song, the performance of this song, it all fucking rules. And that's her thing. That's her man. Totally. And they are pop's body and clive. And again, I think this is some of the tension of this record is, these are such exciting, explosive songs that are dealing with pretty uncomfortable maybe for modern feminist listeners, positions on romance. And it really muddies up the basic one level, diva empowerment thing that we all like to see and that Beyonce herself has posited it over and over again, but in a way that I find just genuinely fascinating. Even if it's not my personal politics, I do think there's something so interesting about getting this reveal into this woman. I mean, it's, I find that part very intriguing. And then the other thing that I think is just such a telling little lyrical flourish on this is I can't get over you the word can't because I think the idea that Beyonce is unable to remove herself from this situation is not only like the thesis that undergirds this entire record, but also maybe her entire discography and this relationship like Beyonce is not leaving this man. And I think that that's something that like is clear no matter how much shit she throws at the wall in this record because she lets herself get fucking crazy and angry and you know, she lets a lot of rage come through on this album. And yet you never get the impression that she's leaving this man ever, no matter what happens, whoever the character is. So I think that's really interesting, and the other part that's interesting is like Jay-Z's presence here, I think is meant to be a balm for the future of music and to let maybe let the audience of 2006 imagine this is not Beyonce or imagine this is Dina Jones or whoever it is. I think like Jay-Z's presence here is telegraphing to people that like they're fine, even though this album does not end on a note of if you are thinking it autobiographically that makes it seem like they are fine. So I wonder if Jay-Z's not one, but two appearances on the first half of this album is meant to sort of be like, okay, everybody don't worry, like in present time we're good, no matter what you want to read into this music. So I wonder if that is also for someone who is incredibly macchi-malion as we know Beyoncé is strategic in that way, maybe having him be the first voice's strategy. Last thing I just want to say about this is fascinating to your dark child working in this kind of mode. I mean, we think of dark child as kind of this like futurist in a way. Totally. Yeah. This is such an unconventional dark child song in the way that it's so referential to past music. You know, I think that's just interesting too. I give this a 10 out of 10, which is something I'm going to say a lot when we do this. Okay. I give it a 9 out of 10. Yeah. Great song. [MUSIC] Maybe I just have rock and roll on the brain thinking about Act 3 on the brain. But I listen to Get Me Body and it's a Tina Turner vocal. It is rock and roll that points to the origin points of blues music played by black musicians. Beyonce has this incredible ability to scream in a way that somehow sounds velvety. She's like wailing through the opening run, but it never sounds quite strained. That is a very rare ability for a vocalist that takes an incredible amount of training. And it is also to my ear incredibly effective. It's moving, it's inviting. Her vocal to me here feels like an invitation to join her at a 10 out of 10. And just let something that you need to let go go as you shake it to this song. Yes, this song introduces many important strains of this record and of Beyonce's discography moving forward. This sort of skeletal, propulsive hand clapping nature of this production by Swiss Beats, who is an interesting collaborator for Beyonce to bring in here. This is not somebody that is making tons of pop records at this moment. This is a producer known for working with DMX, working with TI. You know, this is a hip hop producer and this is essentially a hip hop oriented beat. This is a song you could potentially see someone like TI or DMX wrapping over. And instead, you've got Beyonce kind of wrapping over it during the beginning of her versus. Beyonce wrapping becomes a big motif. Beyonce sort of attaining masculinity through the guys of rap is a important sort of like dynamic in the gender play that goes on in Beyonce songs. And this is a pretty unconventional type of pop song. I mean, this is an experimental type of Beyonce song. To this point, we have not heard a Beyonce song that operates in this way. This is basically just percussion. There's whistles blowing. There's random noise effects. It's a very strange type of pop song and a very aggressive stance for Beyonce to take. I mean, this is a kind of bravado song. Obviously, the canon version, which is not on the record, is the six minute version where towards the end of the song, Beyonce does like an entire dance instructional that has become kind of like the main version of this. But even in this song, what I love about it is the contrast between kind of the martialty of it, like these kind of really tight skeletal programmed hits. And then this sort of jingly feeling. So the way that she performs it, like there's a real like looseness, a soulfulness, a funkiness to the way that Beyonce's singing this. And it's just kind of like a wild, like what does get, you know, the term get me body. What does it mean? She's inventing language in a way that's also exciting and fun. I love the way that she sort of is challenging the male partner in this song on the dance floor. Can you get me body? You know, it's kind of this idea of like, are you able to stand up to me? Can you meet me in this space on the dance floor? Are you able to be here with me in this space? We also get the introduction of the material concerns of this record. I mean, this is an incredibly capitalistically driven album that often is about like sort of celebrating wealth attainment. I mean, you know, she's got the vintage role. She's dropping a couple hundred at the door. She's sort of using money as a way to gain social relevance, empowerment over other women, but mainly over men. She's also sort of with her girls. Her girls are benefiting from the financial thing, but I think she uses money a lot in this album to attempt to sort of like assert her upper hand in moments where she doesn't feel like she has the upper hand. And I would say this is potentially the only song on this album that is not about or mainly about her relationship with Jay-Z or whatever, whoever insert male character here, men are present and she is kind of creating a command for them on the dance floor, but it's a song that feels mostly about her and her girls on a dance floor together. It's not really about the one relationship. It feels like to me it's the only song on this album that I would say hits that mark. I love thinking about a Jay-Z-like character. Like if you're making an authorized lifetime movie of this album and there is a man who is sticking in as a Jay-Z-like character, but we can't call him Jay-Z. We have to call him Brad B. I have lots of thoughts about the money aspects, but I think they come up in other places on this record that we will get to as well. Next couple songs in particular. Yeah, the last thing I will say about this is that the production is full and most other vocalists I contend would get lost in all of these stuff happening. Totally. It's very chaotic. I mean, there is no single ladies without get me bodied. Like there's a certain brand of Beyonce songs that are these kind of like rhythmically disorienting martial kind of hip-hop come funk beats that like she's proving herself to be such a dexterous like she dances around this thing with her voice and her rhythmic abilities like in a way that is truly masterful on the song. So many sonic elements happening that Beyonce like remains the ocean that everything else is skipping rocks for sure. She is an absolute master of rhythm. I mean, truly throughout this record I was going to say this about deja vu too, but like her ability to handle rhythmic singing is bar none. I don't know if there's any other singer I can think of like maybe maybe Michael Jackson is another person. I don't know like you could throw anything at this woman and she would be able to ride on top of it like the best rappers James Brown, whoever you want to point out. Like it is truly one of her aces. It's incredible. 10 out of 10. Also one of a couple co-rites with Solange on this record who is a kind of like pinch hitter in a bunch of fun songs on this album before her kind of come up. I give this a nine out of 10. So okay, this is the return of Rich Harrison, producer of Crazy in Love. This is really interesting to me with each song we're getting kind of like deeper into the mark here in some ways of this record while never losing like the sort of like burst of excitement that every song provides. This song is kind of like a gut bucket funk blues song about gender dynamics. It's using a 70s song sample. So you really feel the kind of like 70s influence here, but it's a theme about sort of like dominance and submission in this hetero relationship as it pertains to money. And the entire conceit of the song is that Beyonce is so horny and in love with her man the only way for her to fully express that is to spend lots of money on him. And it's also a way for her to somehow like express power to him in a beat of sort of like pure ecstasy like sexual ecstasy. Take my credit card, steal my house. That means she starts like kind of like throwing money at this man in orgasmic ecstasy in a way that is kind of bizarre but also kind of fascinating and like weird. Is it a way to sort of like find empowerment in a mode where she feels disempowered is to sort of be like here is my wealth. I don't know. It's a really interesting thing because it implicitly implies that she's in the submissive role. I guess I can't locate exactly in this song like what she's trying to tell us about the deeper gender dynamic at play here, but it's fascinating to try to figure it out. What do you think? Is she the fin-dom or the fin-sum? Right, exactly. A question here. The first time that I really listen to all of this. I have all of these notes about the gender politics of it. And I think that the answer to so many of these questions is she's 24. Yeah, 100% she's 24 and she's like a small sea conservative woman from Texas. So I think that some of the things that might be confused are just like it's confusing to figure out how you relate to a partner. It's totally confusing to find out how you find power in this world. Or whether you actually enjoy being the sub. I think there's a case to be made listening to this record that Beyonce in 2006 kind of enjoyed in some ways being the submissive character. This song to me, the intro feels like a spaghetti western. It sounds like she's just like sontering into a saloon. The sound of this so lush, so full-bodied, this like very generous helping of horns, guitar licks. Just like beautiful. I was thinking about Phil Spector. I was thinking about how the vocals are sort of arranged like she still is a girl group, but she is the lead singer and she's also the background singers. But it's all Beyoncé all of the time. Just like a real lusciousness to the sound of this song thematically, lyrically. I am also a little perplexed. And there's different spots on this record. I'm going to remain perplexed. I think we have to relish in the perplexing nature because I think that's part of it. It's like a very clear transmission from somebody that I think is deeply confused and conflicted about what her feminism is, what her relationship to this man is. You know, it's really interesting because I think she is finding joy in playing the dumb with the money here. I mean, it's literally driving her to sexual ecstasy is what I kept thinking in this song. I mean, she, that moment with the take my credit card to go my house, that whole part, she is literally so horny. And my mind, I'm picturing her like throwing material items at this man. And I do think that is a subversion of traditional gender politics. I mean, that is somebody saying, I am enjoying taking care of you. It's actually reversing kind of hip hop roles where like guys are generally being like, you know, you sexually pleasure me. I'll buy you things. That's kind of what she's saying here. At the beginning, she goes, damn, that was so good. I'm going to buy him a short set. You know what I mean? She's basically saying like, you are so good at sexually pleasureing me that I am going to treat you. with material goods. - Well, come on, Red Lobster. - Literally, it's Red Lobster before Red Lobster, exactly. And her kind of go and come sit on Mama's lap, she's kind of infantilizing him in a way, which I think is pretty interesting. But at the same time, that entire conceit being radical leans into the idea that that is radical. You don't even mean like implicitly implies that like, she's stepping outside of what the traditional dynamic of this is by just having this one moment of sort of being "I'm gonna treat you, I'm gonna be the sugar mom, "I'm gonna be on top." This one time, 9 out of 10. I give this a 9 out of 10, too. - Upgrade. ♪ Let me upgrade ♪ ♪ If you can, don't grade ♪ ♪ Introduce yourself to some new things ♪ ♪ And upgrade ♪ - Upgrade you, this is not only like, maybe my favorite Beyonce song ever, but the most fascinating and crazy representation of everything we're talking about at this moment. - Mm-hmm. - Yes. So, sonically, I love what's going on here. - Oh my God. - Lyrically and thematically, we are running up against a very aggressive strain of Beyonce's artistry, ran by the men, but the women kept the tempo. Like, that's not for me. Not only can I like not co-side, I like kind of vehemently disagree. It's also kind of an incoherent ideology, like at one point she calls Jayher Equal, but quickly follows that with let you take the lead role. And things can be complicated and nuanced, but I went back and I was reading Bell Hook's critiques that came during Lemonade. This idea that Beyonce is able to offer multi-dimensional images of black female life, but her work still primarily operates within conventional social frameworks. - For sure. - That is so, so clear here, stereotypically conventional. And like, obviously, Beyonce is entitled to whatever type of relationship she wants. - Right, I think we have to take this on its own terms, especially at this moment in her life. She doesn't have to be speaking to our own values for this to be worthy and interesting as music. - Yeah, or for it to maybe not fit into feminist frameworks, but for her to still benefit from feminism and for her work to be taken seriously in that way. And I also think that this is a really interesting time to pause and think about the way in which she grows and the way in which her themes change while still being married to a type of conventionality, I think we thematically see so much growth. And I'll be honest the first couple of times that I listened to this, I was like, some of this is like deeply not upsetting me with some of it. I'm like, I really brush up against it in ways that we're not positive. - Yeah, I think it is confronting, for sure. - And it also does. I mean, listen, there's plenty of critiques we can level up Beyonce in terms of the way that she has benefited from positing herself as a radical while really sacrificing nothing of both her capitalistic endeavors and potentially her devotion to conventionality. I mean, Angelica J. Bastion's piece about the Renaissance movie in Vulture a couple of years ago is a brilliant piece of critique about the way that Renaissance, which again, here in 2022, you have Beyonce at a phase in her career where she is masterful at presentation. She would never say lyrics like she's saying on Upgradue. Even if she might still feel these ways, I mean, how knows what she thinks, right? I mean, Beyonce, we don't know, but she definitely is not gonna say them because they're not part of the brand. And probably, no, she's just evolved in touch. She has a different point of view on all of this stuff now. But the truth of the matter is, Beyonce is very, very canny and smart at positing narrative about telling stories, about what she's trying to say and about really convincingly performing those narratives for us, in a way that does belive the fact that really Beyonce does not throw a ton on the line personally for any of these things. And she never has. I mean, that is the paradox of loving a massive pop star. I think we could say the same thing for Taylor Swift, we could say the same thing for any number of stars that have tried to strike radical poses, although I would argue Beyonce in her latter career has made radicalism a part of her brand in a way that like I wonder, can you be a true radical while still operating within the confines of a capitalism, mega capitalism and be had a Romanogmy? I don't know, like it's, there's questions about that. I don't know if there's clear cut answer, but these are totally fair critiques. I think the thing about upgrade you that is interesting is what I said at the top of the conversation, which is that it feels unvarnished. It feels unvedited in that way in a way that we would never see in Beyonce's later music. Like, Beyonce's later music gets credited for being all of the things that it is. It's ambitious. And in some ways, there are revelations that happen on something like lemonade that we maybe don't hear as explicitly in this music. But on an emotional level and because of her sort of sliding lyrics like this out there, I'm like, damn. Like, this is what she really thought at this moment. Like, that is what she thought. And I think that that makes this song profoundly compelling, not to mention the fact that like, it's such a bizarre, quirky, weird sounding song in the best way possible. You have that kind of martial clicking, clacking beat with the whistles blowing. Like, there's whistles blowing throughout this record. I was like, what are all these whistles about? The sample of Betty Wright's Girls Can't Do What The Guys Do, which is a really interesting sample to choose here. And again, you're saying like, these kind of like strange gender politics that are going on where it's like, again, the sexual frenzy of the co-wealth accumulation. Like, I mean, literally, she's just rattling off brand names at one part, the automobruquet watches, dimples in your necktie, Hermes briefcase. ♪ Automobruquet watch, dimples in your necktie ♪ ♪ Hermes briefcase, Caudier, tacclips, silk lime blazes ♪ ♪ Domically precious, VBS cuff, blank, sick, stop, pinch, sweet ♪ And again, the sort of sexual romantic interplay of that. The building of the idea of like, this black excellence thing, which becomes a big Carter Knowles theme that through their own capitalistic enrichment, they are doing activism is a big kind of like thing that I think is really solidly introduced on this song. I mean, it's there on Bonnie and Clyde and other songs too, but it's really codified in this song where they believe that their material success is in and of itself an act of radicalism and an act of racial equity that I think is like a very fascinating element of their kind of like worldview and life approach. And then you have the weird gender things that she keeps saying, where she keeps going as you said. Like, I want to be the submissive. Take me just to compliment the deal is another kind of crazy lyric where she's essentially saying, like, I am a luxury good. Like, you are taking me as a purse or like as a trophy next to you and I'm happy to be that role is somewhat weird and uncanny and a little bit disturbing, but also like deeply fascinating. ♪ Now you're in the pain made of swabba man ♪ ♪ Take me just to compliment the deal ♪ Last thing I'll say is crazy lyrics. Like, I can do for you what Martin did for the people is a wild thing for someone like Beyonce to say at 24 years old. Yeah, the 24 is the thing that I really am circling back to. This is the sentiment of a young woman, a child-free woman. I think it's also important to think about. She's at this point in her life where she is sort of moving from one patriarch to the other. And I can imagine finding a lot of security in this point with Jay-Z. I think later in life, we see Beyonce more clearly seek power for herself or seek a type of power that is more primarily hers. And we actually conversely see Jay-Z step into the role of supportive partner much more publicly, don'ting father much more publicly, both the presentation and politics of them as a coupling shift. And especially as Beyonce now is the one who is putting out more work. She's a much more prolific later career artist than Jay-Z is. And so we see her out and there's things to support. But also a lot of the business stuff is much more public where as Jay-Z's business stuff, he is operating much more behind the scenes. Now when we see Jay-Z in public over the course of the last half of a decade, it has primarily been in service to Beyonce's work publicly supporting his wife standing next to his children. We see a rebranding of Jay-Z as family man. So that is another thing that I was reckoning with is how do you think about the gender politics, when we know about the end of the story too. - Their images were so different in this time period. Like he was stoic, hard-edged, male, rapper, and she is and remains one of the most femme presenting female pop stars of all time. I mean, if not the one. Thinking about the lineage of female pop stars, they were filled with androgynous characters who are attempting to blur these lines from Madonna to Grace Jones to even someone like Tina Turner who presents like a sort of wild gruffer edge to herself Beyonce is all womanliness. The hips, the hair, they were male, female, embodied of this particular generation of this ought hip-hop generation in this moment as well. - Yeah, the thing that actually bothers me more, I guess, about the song is the capitalist critique. - It's crazy. - It's crazy. - The key lyrical conceit of this song is that I am going to improve the life of my partner by introducing him to more expensive things. - Yes, right. - And that paired with the regressive gender politics on display does sour for me what is sonically showstopping. It is an incredible song. I mean, as a piece of music, this song is absolutely amongst the best things she ever did. It is so bizarre, quirky, propulsive, exciting, unique, eccentric. I mean, she's a weirdo musically, and it's really fun to see that come into form here. But yeah, I agree. I mean, it's a fascinating representation of her politics. And I think also we should talk about the fact that, like, she's trying to expand beyond an experiment outside of sort of pop diva presentation at this moment by adopting the language and pose of wrappers. And I think that that's what a lot of the wealth accumulation stuff is here to do, as well as some of, like, the subdom sexual politics. I just also want to say that, like, I am now attempting to read this, the way that Beyoncé has invited us to read her later to her work. And that is not the way that she invited us to read this work. Nor were we as critics or anybody was doing this. Like, let me tell you, I read a bunch of the criticism here. It is not read with the amount of depth, the close read to the themes and the lyrics. And it is not as serious. No, no, no, it's not, but it doesn't make it less interesting. No, totally. I think you're right that she has presented herself intentionally as a rich academic text to us that then invites us to look at her work that way. And I think there's no issue in doing so, even if she wasn't quite doing that yet at this point. Although I would argue that she did want to, I mean, she wanted to be taken very, very seriously at this time in a way that she wasn't exactly. The last thing I just want to say before we get on in terms of my narrative arc idea that I'm presenting about this being a concept album is I do think that in some of the frenzy or the way that she's utilizing the money on songs like Sugar Mama and upgrades you, it is presenting intrinsically a dis-ease in the dynamic. There is almost like a desperation to shore things up that is belying what is about to happen on the next track that there's a sense of growing discord beneath this sort of like frenzy on the surface of proving love, buying love, using money to express love, all of these things like there's has to be a come down and it's coming because there feels like something almost manic about this song and about the previous ones. The lady doth purchase too much. Yes, hello. That was good. Did you give this a 10 out of 10? I gave this a 20 out of 10. As music to me, the thing where we differ is that I'm just fascinating. Yeah, yes, but it doesn't detract from the quality at all to you. I don't need this to align with my personal politics to enjoy it personally. In this particular instance, I don't think that would be true of anything, but for some reason here it doesn't bother me. I just find it fascinating and I love it as music. I gave it a 7.5 out of 10. Very good song. Ring the alarm. Okay, we have to give credit works credit to do. This is a strange album. Is this the most experimental song she's ever made? I mean, this is like really crazy. Again, just kind of like martial hip-hop beats with this blaring siren where she's essentially just like going ape shit, police caught out their style screaming shit at this guy that's betrayed her. It's like the total inverse of the previous songs where it's like I gave you all of this money. We made all of this money together and her expression of the betrayal of being cheated on is that the woman is then going to take her financial gain from her. Her biggest fear here is that the woman's going to be rocking a hurt and chill of coats living in her house off the coast and that everything that she built wealth-wise with this man is going to be stripped from her. And she is, she came on this bitch mad as hell about that. Let me tell you, I mean, this song is wild. This is a crazy, crazy song and it's crazy hearing these songs back to back. The first words that I wrote down her, she comes on this bitch mad as hell. Okay, well, this bitch mad as hell. And this being the second single of the album Russ, like she was really going for something here in a way that we really got to admire, I think. I was just loving this. I threw this on and I was like, God, I forgot what an incredible song this is. This is amazing. When I stopped to listen to the words, I was like, wow, I guess I've only ever listened to this song very uncritically because the song is mesmerizing in that way. I was having this experience, too, of remembering, having danced to these songs over the years in various environments and whatever, and just being like, I guess I never thought about them. Which you can enjoy them in that way because spiritually, you're getting that like classic Beyonce like fuck you energy, which we've heard on a lot of Destiny's Child songs. I mean, this is a much more baroque expression of it, but it's an energy we have heard from her many times before. Then the other thing that I have to say is I have so much critique of these thematically and lyrically, but I am able to do that because she is always telling an incredibly precise story. The emotions that she's expressing and the politics of her relation to other people, that is messy, that is very nuanced, but the story is laid out right here for you to understand and pick apart if you so choose. Not every artist is like that. There is a level of precision here that is unique to Beyonce that mimics the precision of the production of the vocal of all of those things. But yeah, the conceit of this song, her basic saying, you cheated, but I want to keep my stuff. That's troubling. I don't even know if I don't know if it's you cheated, but I want to keep my stuff. It's like he is the stuff. And like what they built together is fully represented to her in stuff. Like I think it's less about like I want to keep the coat. And it's more like the coat is the emblem of our love. Like I do not see our love as materially different from the empire of wealth that we have built together. And that is what makes it so interesting to me is like I think there is a complete intertwinement of those two notions in her head, which is fascinating. It's maybe morally ambiguous, but it's definitely a fascinating insight into this celebrity couple. It gets really interesting to me. I think contextually too, in terms of commodity fetishism, we have to think how could they have thought that this was revolutionary? And perhaps one of the ways is throughout the course of the 90s, a lot of corporations use black cool to sell products. Exactly. Then turn around and like Tommy Hilfiger, for example, turns around and makes disparaging comments about the way that the culture has used his branding. And then towards the end of the 90s, we start to see rappers and others within the broader world of hip hop start to make their own companies and start to make wealth for themselves. And if you look back, particularly the history of the music business, of course, there has been so much exploitation. And I think that this is a moment in which there are people who are taking the reins of the opportunity of the money making side of hip hop as a culture. We're so far away from that now that it can be hard to see that because we have now gone through a whole 2010s pop music undoing of that post-Lord Royals. It all seems and major fashion brands now embrace black artists. But like we have to remember at this time, major fashion brands like high fashion brands wanted nothing to do with hip hop culture. As much as hip hop culture was like, they're promoting and making this shit cool, like Little Cam, wearing mosquito and all that stuff. Like she was making mosquito. That's why I remember mosquito, not for any of the other bullshit about it. But at the time, I'm not even saying mosquito in particular, but largely speaking, major fashion brands were very, very condescending, demeaning, dismissive to black artists in general. As we talked about in our podcast, I think Whitney Houston was never on the cover of Vogue. The idea of breaking into these spaces and taking ownership over these spaces of wealth of traditionally white spaces in America was seen as an act of radicalism. I think we now view these things differently through our contemporary lens. But that was one move that Jay-Z was spearheading at this time. Jay-Z was the first music billionaire. I mean, to have a black man ascend to that space was a huge deal. I mean, that was a huge thing to have a rapper showcase that business acumen to put himself in the same space as all of these white, wasp CEOs was a big freaking deal. That was a big deal. So that was a big part of their cultural ethos as a couple. Was like our success in this country materially is our protest. You know, that was how they saw it. We see that as more complex now. And maybe she does, too. Does she? I don't know. Maybe she does it. I'm not sure. Mark Jacobs and Donna Telver such a non-listanding. I gave this nine out of ten. Yeah, this is a tenet. I mean, as music, this is incredibly explosive and exciting kind of pop song. I mean, she was trying shit. I'm constantly impressed by the weirdness of this album. Like, this is a weird, dissonant, unnerving pop song. We are very, very far away from a naughty girl on this song. This sort of step forward artistically, her willingness to be adventurous and to try stuff. The Swiss beat songs are extremely exciting to listen to still to this day. Last things I just wanted to throw in that I just forgot about were the like deja vu inseparable from the visuals to me, the basic instinct to music video, and the performance of the VMA is where she. She wears the trench coat and does the crank back, lean back, dance move where she almost goes fully back. It goes into a full back bend is one of her most astounding and memorable dance images as well. I put up a 10 out of 10 on this one. I put it in 9 out of 10. Kitakats! This is an album that takes you on a journey through the dissolution of a relationship. Although not dissolution. I would say not dissolution through some sort of tumultuous thing that does not really end with any sort of conclusion. Dissolution perhaps of the perfect relationship in the mind, especially in the mind of a young person who is grappling with the first time of adult love being actually a messy thing. Yeah, right, like we're out of the fantasy, we're into the reality. And the sound that carries us there, the song I find almost bit menacing, the percussion gives this song so much energy, but it's kind of like a mid tempo song dressed up differently. Beyonce with the vocal has gone from screaming to whispering, just to really, really settle vocal performance here. To me, it sounds like righteous anger with a tight lid just squeezed right on. I was picturing sort of like a movie mobster coming in, calmly explaining to someone that they're about to die. That is the energy that she has. The Kitakat in question being the pussy this man is no longer going to be getting. And him himself, because she's kind of beckoning him. Just like when she sort of infantilizes some of Mama's lap, she's also saying, "Let's go, little Kitakat." Already kind of a whole suite of energies and vibes on this record. We are continuing to have this pop-up hip-hop and R&B sound mixed together with dashes of throwback sounds. But there are different energies within that, despite most of this being quite up tempo. This has this very cool energy to it. I think it serves the album really well as an album track, but as a standalone song, definitely not my personal favorite here. I love this song so much. I see some of the things you're saying, but I see it more as like in the stages of anger, like she can't possibly rage as hard as she did on Ring the Alarm anymore. And this is sort of like, "I'm still mad, but I'm like lighting a cigarette." You know what I mean? Like in the burnt ashes of the house, I just like lit on fire. Yeah. Kind of vibe. Yeah. That's a great visual. And you need the release, because there has been a lot of tension, both like sexual and rageful up to this point, like this album has been pretty terse and propulsive to this moment. So I really feel like you kind of need this moment of respite. But it's not respite. I mean, she is still super pissed. This is produced by the Neptune's, who I think are a great addition to the producer line up here in the sense that they are essentially like re-alchemizing funk for the 2000s. And I think that's kind of like what this album is doing. One of the reasons I think sweetener is like a less impressive Ariana reimagining than people thought it was at the time is because like the Neptune's were doing this kind of thing that they did on sweetener like on kitty cat 20 years before that or 15 years before that. So there was a reheating of nachos vibe there where I was like this did seem like adventurous sort of like modern funk music in 2006 and a way that it did not seem to me in 2018, but that's the progression. Also the song "Rem" from sweetener was a Beyonce and Ferrell collaboration that reminds me a lot of this song. I think this is an interesting moment because it sort of like balances the frantic anger with a woundedness. Like I can hear the wounded quality in here more so than just kind of like lashing out this song feels like her kind of moaning like what about my body body? You don't want my body. Like she's kind of reckoning with like what the actual betrayal means. Like in a hurt way like she's angry but she's hurt at the same time and I think the spacious and slow down nature and sort of like pillowy nature of this song allows us to sort of like go in all of those different directions and I think it's still interesting though because this is the song that solidifies to me that she's never letting this man go no matter what happened. And as at one point like he's not calling her back so she's still trying to call him first of all which I think is really interesting. She's still trying to grab his attention even as wounded and upset as she is this is still a song about like but you still want my pussy don't you like you still want to you still want to get back like she's not there's no indication even as wounded and angry as she is on the song that she's actually attempting to move on she's still trying to act out to get him back into her control and I think that that kind of comes through on a lot of the rest of this album in terms of how she expresses the betrayal is like I'm going to like make you jealous I'm going to use my sexuality to try to rope you back into this thing and I am mad but I'm never leaving you like as you just need to fall back in line little kitty cat is kind of like the vibe that comes through on a lot of the rest of this album to me. I have a question for you as we head into this string of songs that are about exactly that. Yeah even if we take this just as character not necessarily as Beyonce if we take Beyoncé at her word that this is character what do you think might be the reason or reasons that this character does not see leaving as a viable option it's hard for me to separate that from like who I think Beyoncé is I think Beyoncé takes her marriage very fucking seriously and again small seek and serve of Christian way I think she is like we fucking committed before God and we are staying together but at this point we're still two years out for marriage right that's true I didn't even think of it that way I just sort of feel like she right that's a you know what that's a really good question do you have a theory on that it's one of the things that gives me so much pause when I'm thinking through this it makes the stories a little bit difficult for me because I don't understand the character motivation I think it is the power thing I think she has found a match for her ambition and her ability to build empire I don't think she sees a lot of other people that match her in that way one thing that I find really interesting about Jay-Z and Beyoncé as a couple is a lot of pop divas it seems to me just anecdotally prefer to be in relationships with less visible and powerful man you know Michael is a rich man but he's definitely like submissive to her cultural capital and power from the beginning you mean Lady Gaga that's Michael when you started talking about Michael I was like Jackson Michael Rihanna and Asap Rocky like Asap Rocky's a star but he is nowhere near a star on the level of Rihanna like she's clearly the more powerful person the richer person in that dynamic we've seen Janet and Mariah be in relationships with people that are again sometimes they're rich but they're not the same celebrity as them Brittany you know dating her personal trainer share marrying you know little bit ever like it's it's just interesting to me that Beyoncé is kind of a rare example of a pop diva who really seems to enjoy being in like a co relationship with an equally famous equally rich person who at this time we should remember is probably more famous and more rich and more powerful than she is now I don't think that's true so I think that that's the answer to the question is that I think she feels like she has found this like mythic partner in this broader quest to attain power and I don't think she feels like there's another match for her in that way yeah the answer is easier for me in thinking about Beyoncé then it is thinking about the character on record as presented in this body of work which makes me believe that it just is Beyoncé I'm sorry Deena Jones like this is I mean like give you a break come on I would say respect is another part of it I think that we should also say probably at this point Jay-Z is much more respected for sure one really important to say like he's he's lending her credibility right yes and Beyoncé wants to be respected and Jay-Z simultaneously has the respect of industry critic and also a important area that she is not native to he has a respect of New York and the burrows and he is somebody who came up from nothing very famously and really has respect of the local hip-hop culture situated on the east coast that is also really valuable to Beyoncé in this moment particularly with the poses that she is striking on this record as she borrows from hip-hop posturing I think that she is entitled to I don't mean borrowing in the way that she's appropriating them some negative sense right but that is one of the things in terms of storytelling that maybe isn't entirely clear maybe it is and it's just in how I'm reading it like maybe when she's talking about the commodities and all of that it is there I think it's there I mean I think it's there in the text I mean I get what you're saying I think the fact that like I do think then you add the marriage into it and it's like bitch we're locked in but I do think that's what it is and I think the building empire is deeply intrinsic to the card or no I mean it just is they and they've done it masterfully I mean they have achieved it on a level that I would argue almost no other couple in music history as if I'm clearly no other couple in music history ever as so I think that's deeply important to them and they're incredibly ambitious in that way and I don't think that she's leaving that for shit and I think she's proven that over the course of her career over and over again because this is not the last time this theme is going to come up again so and I just think last thing I want to say about this is the rap at the end is an iconic fan favorite moment that she highlighted during homecoming she performed the rap from kitty cat. only the rap from kittycat during homecoming. - ♪ I'll wrap diamonds on my neck ♪ ♪ Got diamonds on my records ♪ ♪ Since 15, come and I'll rip and take this ♪ ♪ How you gonna collect this ♪ ♪ You was just a hot mess ♪ - I give it to an eight at a time. I give it to say 10 out of 10. (laughs) - I love how much you love this record. - I love this album. - It is like, it is core to my being. - It's so fun to do these track by tracks for albums that we have selected partially out of enjoyment and comparison to figuring something out of the weekend. - I love it. - And something that I've thought so much about. - Totally, yeah, yeah. There's so much joy on your face right now. It's very sweet. Let's talk about Freakum Dress. (upbeat music) - Now I know this is your favorite song on this album. - Oh. - No. - Why did you think that? - Because it's just giving club and thumb like dance, anthem, like again, it's getting into some of the complicated themes that we've talked about ad nauseam already. She's building on the kitty cat thing of like using her sexuality and desirability to other men to make him jealous. And a really fascinating part of this song is it's a classic Destiny's Child thing of like an anthem for the ladies, right? Like you can see her thinking about like she's created a whole image of this dress that's like a thing that we can sort of like brand as like we're heading out to the club ladies and our Freakum Dresses. This is like also crazy in love's like dark sinister sister. It's produced by Rich Harrison who also produced crazy in love and it has that same sort of like explosive horn-laden, rhythmic funky energy that crazy in love has, but it's like it's dark unhinged. It's like crazy parentheses negative. Crazy like it's kind of dissonant and weird, but it's also frenetic and ecstatic at the same time. Interesting lyric to me is the lyric where she goes, the thing about the dress blah, blah, blah, blah, my man's gonna take it off tonight. So there's this interesting tell where it's like she's threatening to go out and do back to him what was done to her, but she's not gonna do it. She's morally superior in a way that I think is really interesting. She's gonna walk it up to the line in a way that is potentially upsetting to him, but at the end of the day, she's not going to cross the line. He's going to be taking the dress off. I think that's just fascinating. I was doing a coffee run yesterday. I was running errands and I was waiting for a light and I caught myself physically dancing and not knowing that I was doing it. This song is explosive. That build up to the chorus is one of her most exciting moments in her entire discography to me. (upbeat music) I was also thinking this is sort of Beyonce with a bat in lemonade energy. - Absolutely. - It's that type of a song, but yeah, the thing that stops me from this being exactly the type of song because songically obviously it is. Yeah, this is a type of club shit that is very much mine, but this is not about retribution via revenge dress. This is about performing one sexuality for a man who has behaved poorly. - Totally. - And I certainly don't do that and I don't think anyone else should either certainly not Beyonce. - Yeah, I mean, should, should, should, I mean, people do whatever the fuck they want to. But yes, I mean, it's definitely not clean, caught pop feminism, that's for sure. It's definitely a very retro gait version of feminism. This is Beyonce's eye-kissed girl like Tiddly Shed. - But attitudeally, she sells it in. - The singing is so fucking crazy. - Come on. - There's so many tracks with these big whistles, like someone's blowing like an emergency whistle. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Talk about ring the alarm. There's a feeling of like a five alarm fire going off like through most of this album that is just like so exciting and fun. - And an energy of that too. - And it's unhinged. I mean, Sasha Fears in the building. I mean, this is a woman possessed. But yet as you're saying, woman possessed, but what's so interesting is always contained by this. - Control. - Control, morality. - She's never totally unbridled. - Metro-gradeism, right? Like, she always has to kind of reel it into some degree. She's not really gonna do the thing. She's just threatening. It's very interesting. And again, I would say that happens on Lemonade too. I mean, she's beating that car up. But she goes back to him at the end of it. It's like, it's a theme that always comes up in her music. This is a 10 out of 10 to me. It's an 8 out of 10. I love this song. "Been Light." ♪ 'Cause I just went up over to feel it ♪ ♪ We went to ♪ ♪ 'Cause I just went up over to feel it ♪ - I would like to highlight the lyric, "Like a perm that's been left too long." It starts to burn. That is so specific to somebody who was raised in a salon. - Yeah, it's right. Tetonoles in the building. - There's an element of biography there that I really appreciate that type of specificity. Some of the other, I'm leaving you songs up to this point, maybe the fourth in a row or something like that, but is saying green light go. - I think it's more like, do you want me back? You have one chance, grab it. You got the green light. You a king right. You holding up traffic. I.e. other people that want me. Green means go. I think she's kind of saying, like, I'm threatening to leave. You need to grab it now or I'm done. Is how I read the lyrics. - I think other interesting lyrics on this. I love the perm line. For some strange reason, you're done pleasing me. Like, it's okay. So like, if the beginning of the record is all about how pleased she is. I mean, she's sexually beside herself. I mean, Beyonce she is. And she's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like fucking, can't handle the level of sexual pleasure she's getting. Here, he's done pleasing her. So it's not even just about the breaking of the pact. It's about the fact that he's lost interest in her sexually or that he's backed away from their sexual dynamic and she's trying to get back with it. She also says at one point, this pimpous shit gets no older. Like, she's kind of taking the piss out of his whole, like, swaggering pose in a way and being like, you need to drop the shit and like, come back to me. Is how I sort of view this more. It's like, I wrote pain and horniness combined. - Sure. - And I think this is her final sort of like, again, affirmation, no matter how angry and wounded I am on this, I'm still trying to invite you back. I'm still trying to forge pathways, forge green lights for you to return to this relationship. I also love the production on this. This is another Neptune song that again feels like kind of like space-aged funk in such an exciting way. I gave this a 10 out of 10. - Oh my god. (laughs) - Awesome. Okay. I gave this a 7.5 at its end. - Period. - E-replaceable. - Okay. The album's big marquee hit. Here we go. ♪ You must not know about me, you must not know about me ♪ ♪ I can have a name, I'm a mouse ♪ ♪ Won't you ever for a second get to thinkin' ♪ ♪ You'll place a bow ♪ - This is really interesting. What did you think when this song came on? Beauty. Light strum, acoustic guitar, really new sound to be playing with. Usually this kind of guitar signals something sunny, but here the lyrics like she could be screaming. I could have another you in a minute. In fact, he'll be here in a minute. It's a sensational dismissal. This is sort of like a mid tempo song also a ballad, which I like a lot more than a real slow time ballad. And the other thing I was thinking about here is that this is a country music song. Totally, 100%. Which she sees through even further on if I were a boy from the next record. So like a pretty classic story song. Like this is a real Texas story. Right, sit down, let Graham tell you about the man who did her wrong. Standing in the front yard is such a great little piece of narrative scene setting. The way that she is singing it is not country, but lyrically and even format, I might say, you know, this is the type of thing that like if given to someone else could be a country music hit for sure, I think. To the left has got to be one of the like greatest refrains in pop history and just like in culture. Rare that you put something out and yeah, it becomes part of popular culture in a lasting way, which she has many, many, many times. I have to say it's one of her gifts. In someone else's career, having that would be enough for the history books. - Right, it would be like your whole legacy. - It would be a whole thing, yeah, yeah, yeah. You'd be doing your summer amphitheater tour and everyone would be waiting to scream to the left, but because it's Beyonce, it's something else. I really, really like this song. - This song is like, I have such two minds about it because I agree with everything you say. I think this is a brilliant pop song. It's so aesthetically out of line with the rest of the album, which is one of the reasons they celebrate it is for its cohesion and it's like clarity of purpose on every level is one of the things that makes it so exciting and I think introduces us to Beyonce, the album "Autor," who makes no concessions, which is what we will later get, but this is a concession. There's no question when I hear this song, I hear a record label coming into the room or Beyonce herself and saying, this is all well and good, ma'am, but we need an anchor hit on this record. And so in classic Beyonce form, I think she found a way to make a song that definitely leans into the same themes. I mean, we hear lyrics like rolling her around in the car that I bought you, you know, we're getting into some of that same stuff that we've been talking about throughout this thing. Call up that chick and see if she's home. Oop, so that's your thought that I didn't know. I mean, it all happened. some of it also really reminds me of say my name too, but I think there is a racially coded concessionary nature to this song. I think bidet is Beyonce's blackest album to this point, it is an album that makes very little concessions to the notions of like cross-over whiteness of the odds, and I think this song is sanding some of that down for a mainstream audience in a way that again I still think this sounds like a Beyonce song, everything Beyonce does she can't help but make into her own. So she makes it work, and I think it's a great song. I think I bristle just slightly at the concessionary nature of it in the context of an album that feels very uncompromising to me in terms of her artistic vision to this point, but I think the thing that redeems it for me and I was thinking this a lot listening to it this time is, I think this is the saddest song on this album, because I never believe anything that she's saying. I think she's trying to talk herself into these ideas that she's really kicking this guy, and I don't know if that's an intentional part of the performance for her or not. I'll give it to her, maybe that is part of what's selling it is the pathos of it. She is saying all the things and throwing his shit on the one and you know saying to the left to the left, but I don't believe for one second that she's kicking this guy out. I just don't. At the end of the day he'll be back and we know that he is, and I just kind of think that adds a level of depth and pathos to and otherwise you know one of the simplest pop anthems on this album that I think like gives it a power that like really makes it work for me and I think it's just memorable and I'll never forget at the Beyoncé experience when she played this song at the peak of its success, the entire arena song, the entire song without her singing, with no band playing to her and she just stood there on stage listening to it like everything it was spine tingling magic. I'm not talking about one verse of course. I'm talking about the whole song to her and it was insane. It was just like that moment like where Beyoncé was still kind of like mainstream pop star in a way that like you know now she's just so beyond that and so other than that, but this was a moment where Beyoncé was just like kind of the biggest a-list mainstream pop star on the planet and it was just like a moment of that. I just remember, I just remember that being such like a spine tingling moment of like pop to me. I think you because you have listened to this album so many times over the years have a different relationship but I have that relationship to this song. Yeah when it comes up for me I'm just like well that's irreplaceable that is like yeah that is part of the Beyoncé canon it's a pop classic it is just like an incredible song and beautifully sung and a song that just feels so much like I guess a part of my life. For sure. It's a song that has been over the years and I can't separate it from that to really think about it in the context of this album which I totally agree with but then I'm like man it's irreplaceable. It's irreplaceable. I totally get it but I think what's also really interesting about it is it's one of her biggest hits by all metrics. Yes it's a signature song. But she has a weird relationship to it. I mean she didn't perform this song for years after it came out. I think she maybe did it on the social fear store but I don't really know but basically never again until she whipped it out randomly on the cowboy carnator. Recently where it made sense because as you mentioned it has some country vibes going on but I just think that's really interesting that like her other two big number one hits from this time period. Crazy in love and single ladies. She whipped those bitches out all the time. I mean those were songs that I mean crazy in love there's never been a Beyonce drama that hasn't featured crazy in love. You know most of them up until recent have featured single ladies. She kind of I think has a bit of a tertiary relationship to this song for the reasons that I was sort of saying I think this was concessionary to her in a way to otherwise an uncompromising pop vision I think. And because it worked right yeah I think that it might have signaled to her. This is what people want you to be. There's a limit to what people see you as. Absolutely and I think so much you can trace about like the way that pop start them evolved between 2006 and even when Sasha Fierce comes out in I believe 2009 which is that at the onset of the Sasha Fierce era Beyonce releases two singles two lead singles if I were a boy which is clearly operating in the lineage of the song and single ladies which is clearly operating in the lineage of get me bodied and upgrade you and ring the alarm more clearly. And I think the expectation was that if I were a boy was going to be the massive irreplaceable style hit and single ladies was going to be like the one for the girlies but the opposite happens where single ladies becomes the indelible smash number one smash from the album and if I were a boy becomes a bit of a more of a footnote. And I think at that point people were perhaps ready to embrace this quirkier more eccentric blacker sound in a moment where hip hop was beginning to dominate at the be at that time period little way. All these people were having these huge moments and I think there's so much you can trace about sort of the way that pop music is functioning between these time periods. Did you give it 10 at a 10? I gave this a 9 out of 10 just because I have those minor reservations about it. I give this a 9.5 out of 10. Yeah, the album closer resentment. This is a wallop. This is Beyonce's Aretha Franklin, Cumbilli holiday kind of like whoosh like I mean she really gets into some pretty dark shit here. I mean it's basically like again about someone cheating. She drops that was riding with you for six years. Why did I deserve to be treated this way lyric which makes me feel like she wanted us to kind of know. Yeah that is counter to the timeline from the press that I was giving you at the top of the episode. But who do we believe is often a question with figures such as Beyonce who don't necessarily give to their public a detailed accounting of their lives and timelines etc. Do we understand this as you know a character on record you know K on say bowls. Not K on say bowls. What's the conspiracy theory about her being Italian Marie Lurie. There's a whole conspiracy theory online that Beyonce secretly Italian. Also like what is it with pop stars in six years? It's giving very six whole years. Six whole years. Yeah I know she was attractive but I was here first. I used to be so strong now you took my soul. I got a look her in the eyes and see she had half of me. I mean this is giving me Billie Holiday like I am a broken woman like excavating the deepest wounds of my soul song. It's you know very minimal. Are you aware this is a cover of a Victoria Beckham song? Actually in the deep recesses of my mind I am. Yes it is a cover of a Victoria Beckham song. I was not thinking of that at all but as soon as you say it yes I guess I did know that. I mind Buried that it's a crazy fact that also they're like like I couldn't do it for you like your mistress could I mean she's really like getting into it here. I think it's interesting to think about like an album like Lemonade ending on this note of reconciliation and this album ending on this note. It really leaves you like damn yeah it's a sad note to end on the lyrics that you highlighted I used to be so strong but now you took my soul is devastated. It really is. One of the key successes of later or mid career however we're gonna look at it let's say mid career Beyoncé music is that she is able to add into the themes that she's discussing and I think that that leaves me at least more thematically satisfied when you look at Lemonade. It's much neater but it's also about women. It's about matriarchy. It's about history. Yeah she like expands it out of her own experience and like brings it into like this more broad social thing. Yeah and for me I think that that is very additive and it provides pathways for me to more cleanly appreciate her decision-making because I understand a much more holistic view of who she is as a person what her values are you know what else is going on in her life that I'm like okay amongst that story you deciding to stay with this man I have empathy with you because I see you so fully here the story is much more limited in its scope. Yeah and I struggle much more with it narratively speaking. She doesn't leave you with an all good you know what I mean. No and you that's cool too unless you include check on it. There's something that would satisfy me about that but I do appreciate that she didn't and I think that why I'm highlighting what she's able to do later is because it's a neat trick. Yes and it shows how much she grew in terms of her being able to realize the ambition of her artistic dreams. Yeah saying trick makes it sound like it's something the very clever and nefarious and I don't mean that whatsoever I mean it's like depth just adding new layers to her art via yeah via that context but this I found very sad to leave us on and I kind of keep wondering like does she know that she's doing that does she feel think that she sort of like has regained the upper hand in some of these later songs on the album. Like, I was wondering how much of it is like intentional and how much is not, which is something I never wonder in later period Beyonce music, which I think is part of why I find this album so resonant. Yeah, totally. It's like the fact that there is sort of like little bit less control in that way in terms of like vetting every single angle out and having the wisdom and knowledge of, you know, being an older person, being in the music industry for that long, knowing more about life, making more for that long. When I was thinking as we left this record, I was like, I wonder what she thought the note that she was leaving us on here was. Like, I don't, I don't know. And I think that's kind of interesting. Yeah. Let's out attend this and then final thoughts. Yeah. I nine out of 10 to this. I mean, I think it's an interesting song. I mean, at this point for me, I'm like, this whole thing is just such a big part of my musical DNA that I'm like, I don't even know. Yeah. Eight out of 10 for me. I will say that this really gave me an appreciation going back and listening to these and giving them songs that I had been a casual listener to a close read really gave me an appreciation for the level at which Beyonce was crafting her work at an early phase in her career, even when it's messy or even when the themes are things that like bother me personally, they are out there in ways that are artful and that are thoughtful and vicious. And yeah, there is something cool about how raw and messy it is. And the thing I keep going back to is just age. Like, this is such a 24 year old record, but it doesn't sound or feel like one until you dig into the stories because it is so masterful as a work. And because so many masters worked on it as well. I mean, listen, I will never not be interested in this album. And I also just think as a purely emotional experience, it's just so propulsive and exciting to listen to. And so distilled, you know, it took me a while after this to get back to that distillation feeling, like where it was just like, it's so tight, but every minute is like so dropped in. Sassafiris was the sprawling double album. Even for which is more in line with this was a little shaggy or immoral over the place, you know, then she had these kind of like sprawling audio visual projects, you know, I think in some ways you could say like up until Renaissance, she never quite like got to that like pinpoint distillation of the energy ever again. So I just love that about it as an appreciator of albums and as an appreciator of Beyonce as the premiere album maker at the pop star level of our century. Like, I just think that like, this is the first real expression of that part of her. And I find that so exciting. So this was really great. Let us know what you think about B-Day. And what are your favorites? What are your least favorites? Do you struggle with some of the themes on it? Are we overthinking it? Do we just need to throw in our freakum dresses and get bodied? Etc. Let us know. Russ, this was amazing. Delight. Thank you, Louis. Bye.