She did it again. Once again, Beyoncé made the internet explode when she fed her fans a piece of her upcoming album. On June 20 she dropped the single Break My Soul and a torrent of speculation erupted on Twitter about what to expect from the album Renaissancewhich comes out today.
Now late Break My Soul also plenty of room for speculation about Queen Bey’s new musical direction. Different from the previous album lemonadewhich is six years old and has ingeniously fused hip-hop, R&B, blues and indie rock, it now seems as if the biggest superstar in the world is embracing vintage dance for the first time in her career. Break My Soul sounds nostalgic because, in the form of the bass line and the bubbling synthesizer line, it has received the pulse of house classic Show Me Love (1993) by Robin S. A sound that Robins S in turn seems to have borrowed from another classic, Push the Feeling On from Nightcrawlers, which came out a year earlier. Then there are those rhythmic piano chords that were a regular ingredient for almost every clubhouse track in the early 1990s, and listen: Beyoncé made house with the accompanying message of liberation.
Because the most famous and influential singer in the world wants us all to go outside again, take off the masks and throw our hair loose. According to Queen Bey, after a period of restriction imposed by the pandemic, an era of laissez faire has now arrived. She sings that she quit her job and fell in love. Big Freedia, the hip-hop star from New Orleans, goes over this in a sample with her list of recommendations: ‘Release your anger, release your mind, release your job, release the time, release your trade, release the stress, release the love , forget the rest.’
Yep, it smells like redemption through the dance floor in here. The scent that rose in warehouses and clubs in the late 1980s, then grew to hurricane force and ripped through the existing music landscape to change things forever.
This plea for a new liberation has been noticed worldwide. The online music magazine pitchfork noted that Beyoncé saw that this summer was marked by millennial burnout, a revival of the labor movement and queer pride and decided to write a song about it. Rolling Stone described Break My Soul as a dance floor hymn for the post-pandemic era. the business magazine Forbes called the song the backing track for ‘The Great Resignation’, the phenomenon that employees resigned en masse in 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic and changed course. Michelle Obama said on Twitter that Break My Soul the number is what we all need now. But it was the megastar himself who in 2021 Harper’s Bazaar already mentioned an emerging renaissance. She sensed it coming. She said, “I want to do my part in whatever way I can to help us get out of the situation we’re in right now.”
A renaissance and the revival of a musical style? Could just be. Not only is the time right, Beyoncé is not the only prophet who seems to show us a ‘new’ musical path.
Drake has his latest album honestly, nevermind stuffed with house style figures, with that oh so recognizable hammering house piano in the song massive.
The English singer Charli XCX has for the song Used to Know Me sampled the same snippet of Robin S that Beyoncé used. And this month the English Jessie Ware let house and disco frolic with each other on her new single Free Yourself.
All those artists are inspired by deep house, the house variant characterized by a lower tempo, a more organic sound than, for example, acid and techno, and by influences from disco and jazz funk. But it was mainly the warm soulful vocals that gave the dance variant a more human sound. A sound that was closer to the pop market, and thus also appealed to non-clubbers. It is one of the reasons that Robin S celebrated her success in the clubs and in the charts at the time. Show Me Love was dance that did what songs do: take a journey from verse to chorus and back again. And then those vocals were also extremely suitable to give a possible message – love, togetherness, liberation.
Deephouse had the best cards to appeal to a wide pop audience. Emerging from the Chicago House of the late 1980s, the emphasis was less on the angular or sharp properties of electronics. It served to create a warm, sensual atmosphere in which you could sink. You hear it in a deep house prototype track like Can You Feel It by DJ Larry Heard/Mr. Fingers (Not to be confused with Can You Party by Royal House with the famous sample ‘Can you feel iiiiiiiiit?’). From the synth bass to the keys, everything is meant to evoke deep, sonic brooding. Deephouse brought about more than just physical arousal, it could also move you. With the most beautiful vocals that dance has known, singer Robert Owens with DJ and house patriarch Frankie Knuckles made many people cry on the dance floor to a track like tears.
Time for the genre to be rediscovered. Not that deephouse had completely disappeared before Beyoncé put her variant on the map. An act like Disclosure has achieved considerable success with it last decade. It is only true that the Lawrence brothers of Disclosure themselves came from the dance corner. Beyoncé and Drake are megastars who have made a crossover from pop to dance, influential icons who often pave the way for the lesser gods. Who knows who will follow.
As far as Beyoncé herself is concerned, we can in any case expect even more. In June, the world was informed that in addition to country, more dance had earned a place on Renaissance. Skrillex, the American producer of electro house, was mentioned as a collaboration partner. The rest of the summer could well evoke a feeling of total liberation.
Beyonce – Renaissance (Sony)