Tag archives for Beyonce

The love equation

By Grace Published July 30, 2011

Beyoncé’s newest sin­gle “1 +1” has all the soar­ing gui­tar riffs and vocal acro­bat­ics one could expect from a Bey ballad.

Take a lis­ten:

The sin­gle got me think­ing about the “love equa­tion” and its use in pop­u­lar music. “One plus one equals two” is not only a math­e­mat­i­cal fact, it is also a pop­u­lar idiom for the cou­pling process. As a species that aspires to mate for life, we need the notion of the “holy union” between two indi­vid­u­als. We must find the one, our other half, the ying to our yang, the salt to our pep­per, the mac to our ‘roni. One plus one equals two is, sim­ply, the equa­tion for love.

Bey­oncé did it well, but she didn’t do it first. Let’s take a look at the var­i­ous incar­na­tions of the love equa­tion in pop music.

“1+1” / Bey­oncé / 2011

“1+1″ is cer­tainly a depar­ture from the first sin­gle off her lat­est album, “4.” “Who Run the World (Girls)” was fierce and all, but, as the Guardian’s music blog­ger Michael Cragg points out, “it’s not really what peo­ple want from Bey­once.” Cragg does not elab­o­rate on what “it” is that peo­ple do not want from Bey, and I really don’t feel like doing his job for him today.

Like 90 per­cent of what Beyoncé’s sell­ing, I’m buy­ing, this sin­gle included. When she yelps “yeh-EEEW,” I like to imag­ine it’s because Jay-Z just pinched her, per­haps as some type of fore­play.  And then they do it like it’s never been done before.

I also dig “1+1”’s anti-war mes­sage. Bey croons, “Make love to me, so that when the world’s at war, that our love heal us all.” If any cou­ple could bring world peace just by doing it (a la John and Yoko), it’d be Bey­oncé and Jay-Z.

2ge+her / “U + Me = Us (Cal­cu­lus)” / 2000

Y’all remem­ber 2ge+her, the satir­i­cal boy band cre­ated by MTV? Well, their sin­gle “U + Me = Us” makes my point for me, mock­ing pop music’s addic­tion to the love equation.

On a per­sonal note, 2ge+her and haters like them still put me on the defen­sive. Back off my boy band, you mean­ies! And I said boy band, sin­gu­lar, because there was only ever one real boy band, and if you have to ask (which means you’re either older or have awful taste in music), it was *NSYNC.

Con­tinue read­ing »

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“Show runners: The women of pop”

By Grace Published June 27, 2011

When I first read “Show run­ners: The women of pop,” I thought to myself, “Self, this is an inter­est­ing arti­cle. You should share it with the world.”

Before I began writ­ing, I reread the arti­cle. I let it soak in. I started to notice a few things that, well, pissed me off, partly because the author, pop-music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, writes for the New Yorker, of all rags, and he should know better.

Thor­oughly soaked, I real­ized that I dis­like how slop­pily and con­de­scend­ingly Frere-Jones ana­lyzes these women. The Guardian’s Kitty Empire sums up his approach nicely:

You could – and Frere-Jones does, to some extent – assign roles to these three singers. He’s got Adele – clas­sic, mature (in sound if not in age) – reserved for the soc­cer moms who buy CDs in Star­bucks. Bey­oncé is America’s sweet­heart, while Gaga is, broadly, for the freaks. This is a reduc­tivist take, but let’s exam­ine it all the same.

Yes, let’s. Here’s how I exam­ined things:

Let’s get Adele out of the way ASAP, just as the author does. Frere-Jones begins the piece by list­ing the three women “who run the world of pop right now” (in terms of album sales): Bey­oncé, Lady Gaga and Adele. He then says this about Adele:

Her career is likely to be long, because she is sell­ing to the demo­graphic that decides Amer­i­can elec­tions: middle-aged moms who don’t know how to pirate music and will drive to Star­bucks when they need to buy it.

So ends the first para­graph, and Frere-Jones sets us up to expect fur­ther analy­sis of this trin­ity of pow­er­ful female pop stars. He doesn’t deliver. He only men­tions Adele once more, and it’s to com­pare her record sales to Beyoncé’s.  I won­der why.

Con­tinue read­ing »

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Beyonce responds to feminist blogosphere…indirectly!

By Grace Published June 16, 2011

In an inter­view with Dazed & Con­fused, Bey­once ends the debate over her sin­gle “Who Run the World (Girls),” for me at least.

Accord­ing to Bust Magazine’s report on the inter­view with Dazed & Confused, Beyonce was asked, “Do you think a woman has the same oppor­tu­nity for suc­cess as a man in today’s world?” She said yes, and also a cou­ple more amaz­ing things, like: Con­tinue read­ing »

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One song, big debate

By Grace Published June 15, 2011

Beyonce’s hit sin­gle, “Who Run the World (Girls),” has a big beat and makes a bold claim. It’s the type of song that com­mands you to dance (and you’d be happy to make it look even half as good as she does). You huff along with Bey­once, “Girls, we run this motha!”

Yet even bet­ter than the song itself has been the fem­i­nist blogosphere’s debate over “Who Run the World” (hint: it’s not girls). Some have called its faux-girl power dan­ger­ous to the cause of women, while oth­ers have her­alded Bey­once as the face of new fem­i­nism. Best of all, you can watch the video five times in a row and call it “research.”

For those who are new to the debate or sim­ply need a refresher, we at Her­Linked have col­lected some of the best responses to get you up to speed. The debate’s not over yet, so get to reading/watching! Con­tinue read­ing »

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