Break My Soul (Song)
‘Renaissance’ Review: America Has a Problem and Beyoncé Ain’t It
It’s too much, this being alive. Too heavy, too uncertain, too chronically cataclysmic, too bellicose, too unwell, too freighted with a possibility of the perception of error. The word of the last few years — in American activist and academic circles, anyway — has been “precarity.” Which gets at ideas of endangerment, neglect, contingency, risk. […]
Know More
Beyoncé Unveils ‘Renaissance,’ the First of Three New Projects
Since “Lemonade” (2016), her last solo studio LP and accompanying film, Beyoncé has tided fans over with a number of ambitious in-between projects. In 2018, she performed as one of the headliners at the Coachella festival, where her show paid tribute to the marching band tradition of historically Black colleges and universities, and was widely […]
Know More
A Guide to the Dance Music on Beyoncé’s ‘Renaissance’
Beyoncé’s new album, “Renaissance,” is consciously steeped in dance-music history, cannily embracing decades of samples and sounds: the 1970s disco of Donna Summer and Chic, Jamaican dancehall, internet-speed hyperpop. She chose collaborators, references and even specific keyboard sounds that pay homage to club-land memories while making her own 21st-century statement. Here are some of the […]
Know More
Beyoncé’s ‘Break My Soul’ and the Long Tail of ‘Show Me Love’
“Champion were obsessed with sweet and sour, they called it,” StoneBridge, now 60, recalled via phone from his studio in Stockholm. He dialed his Korg M1 synthesizer to the next preset, landing on Organ 2, and replayed his bass line. That was the bouncy, sweet part. The sour was the grinding sound that opens the […]
Know More