Beyoncé is back with a new project, and I couldn’t be more excited about it.
Born to be a singer and a performer, Beyoncé’s talent is well known and recognized in the music industry. It seems like there’s nothing Beyoncé can’t do: she’s a singer and a dancer, and her role as Etta James in the film Cadillac Records (2008) proved that she can also be an actress (if she wanted to, she could even become President of the United States – I’m kidding of course. Maybe.). But there is one more reason why people love Beyoncé this much.
Tell me: when you think about Michael Jackson what comes to your mind? You might remember songs like “Billie Jean” or “Thriller” – but is that really it? When you think about the king of pop, you may also remember songs like “Black or White”, “Heal the World”, “They Don’t Really Care About Us” and “Man in The Mirror”. Songs that made history because they wanted to draw the public’s attention to important matters like racism and poverty. There’s a difference between a singer and a true artist. Stage presence, songwriting skills, and a good voice are all features distinguishing a good singer. A true artist though, is whoever tries to make a difference through their craft – just like Michael Jackson did.
Beyoncé’s most recent song ALREADY goes toward that direction, presenting itself as the new anthem for the Black Lives Matter movement. Beyoncé is not new to exploring this theme: her album Lemonade (which didn’t win the Grammy for album of the year, duh) already included songs with allusions to black history and to slavery conditions (“Formation” and “Freedom”). In 2018, she confirmed her intentions to pay homage to her roots by monopolizing the Coachella stage (later renamed Beychella) with a performance full of references to black culture and black college culture for the sake of doing “what’s best for the world and not what it’s popular”.
Unsurprisingly, the queen stroke again. The new single ALREADY (which features Shatta Wale and Major Lazer) comes as a part of Black Is King, a visual album included in The Lion King: The Gift. The music video for this song has been filmed in different locations and it celebrates Beyoncé’s ancestors. The video opens in the nature, where we see black people hiding their faces while a man (whose skin is blue) is looking for something. Suddenly, we see a fierce Beyoncé sitting on a tree with her skin painted with blue and green stripes. Soon after, we are in an abandoned warehouse, where Beyoncé and other women are hypnotizing us with their psychedelic dance moves. They are all wearing a half-moon-decorated bodysuit – which I would very like to buy, by the way – and they are later joined by the man we saw at the beginning. Throughout the whole video, we get the impression of being the lucky intruders of a pure and untouched world where black culture is imploding, with Beyoncé as the undiscussed queen of a soon-to-come revolution. “It’s time already” echoes throughout the whole song as a warning that a change is about to happen. The time for a revolution has come.
It’s important to say that Beyoncé is not the only one addressing the importance of black culture. Kendrick Lamar is also another artist who proudly paid homage to his culture through his music (not by chance he collaborated with Beyoncé in “Freedom”). “All The Stars” (which features SZA), the lead single of the Black Panther soundtrack, is a proof of Kendrick’s intention to do justice to a culture unknown to many. Another one worth mentioning is Childish Gambino, who exposed the sad truth about racism in his “This Is America”, a song about the difference between people’s perception of black life in America and how it actually is. For the sake of conciseness, I will not go on, but there are many more artists I could quote for trying to address this same matter. The truth is, no one has the audience Beyoncé has.
So, we should all thank Beyoncé for not being a people pleaser and for being brave enough to open the eyes to those who are not interested in history or politics. Because come on, you might not watch the news, but I’m sure you do listen to music.
I finally get why people call her Queen B. Do you?
Comments