Switched on Pop - Beyoncé's House

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

The world stops with a Beyoncé drop. On Monday, June 20th, our prayers were answered with “Break My Soul,” the lead single off of her upcoming album, Renaissance. The song draws from several places of inspiration: lyrically, it’s a cathartic dance-floor ode to liberation, soundtracking the current cultural moment that some have called the “Great Resignation.” Sonically, though, “Break My Soul” is Beyoncé’s foray into house music – a genre that the chair of the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, Jason King, summarizes as “a highly rhythmic dance music created by mostly Black and brown artists in the late 1970s and early 1980s,” propelled by a fanbase of queer and trans communities of color. There’s been an undeniable buzz that Beyoncé is “bringing house music back.” And from Charli XCX to Drake, it does feel like house music is currently having a moment in mainstream pop music, paralleling the original rise of the subculture from the ruins of disco. But the genre “has always been here,” in King’s words, and has decades of history. In this episode of Switched On Pop, we unpack house music – and how Beyoncé’s “Break My Soul” fits into the genre.   Songs Discussed Beyoncé - “BREAK MY SOUL” Beyoncé - “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” Drake - “Falling Back” Thelma Houston - “Don’t Leave Me This Way” Robin S - “Show Me Love” Bob Sinclair, Steve Edwards - “World Hold On (Children of the sky)” Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj - “Swish Swish” Charli XCX - “Used To Know Me” Livin’ Joy - “Don’t Stop Movin’” Mr. Fingers - “Can You Feel It” Madonna - “Vogue” Black Box - “Ride on Time” CeCe Peniston - “Finally” Aqua - “Barbie Girl” Big Freedia - “Explode” Beyoncé - “Formation” Drake - “Nice For What” Daft Punk, Pharrell Williams, Nile Rodgers - “Get Lucky” Destiny’s Child - “Say My Name - Maurice’s Last Days Of Disco Millennium Mix” Beyoncè - “FIND YOUR WAY BACK” Madonna - “Deeper and Deeper” Janet Jackson - “Together Again” C & C Music Factory - “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)”  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. The world stops when there is a Beyonce drop. And on Monday, 20th, we just got the first single of her upcoming album, Renaissance. The song is called Break My Soul. It is a cathartic dance floor, liberatory chorus. The verse is about workers' rights, the great resignation, mass unionization.

This is a significant release for Beyonce. She's teaming up with producers, Tricky Stewart, and The Dream. Do you know what else they've produced with Beyonce, Nate? I'm going to say single ladies. Correct, yes. It's been six years since Beyonce put out her last studio solo record Lemonade and like that record and all of her releases. She's putting this out in a new and creative way.

She doesn't abide by the traditional album and single release model. Right? She always upends it. The song was released, as I said, on Monday. What day do songs release on? Friday. That's right. Do you know why?

I don't know why. So it used to be that new music was released on Tuesdays. But when Beyonce put out her 2013 self-titled album, it came out surprisingly on a Friday. And its overwhelming success played a big part in why the music industry decided to shift release days to Fridays. So Beyonce broke the release schedule. Yes. That's fascinating. And she's doing it again.

Now she's saying Monday's the day. And not just any Monday. It's the combination of pride. the Juneteenth Federal Holiday, the summer solstice. And I think most shockingly, Beyonce is giving us a house track. Why is that shocking? Well, it seems that the whole world has agreed that Beyonce is bringing house music back. Here's a few headlines.

Mother Jones. Beyonce is bringing back house music and not a moment too soon. BBC. Beyonce, Drake, and the revival of house music. Drake just put out a record that has a lot of house music and subgenres like Jersey Club. My favorite headline, though, from The Print. 1990s house music and fashion are back. Unfortunately, so is the 1970s economy.

Real bait and switch headline. All these headlines make it sound like house music was accidentally left at the grocery store. And then, like, Beyonce went and picked it up and dropped it off in her minivan. And now house music is back thanks to her. I assume we're going to unpack the veracity of this claim. that house music just went away. Which brings me to something very exciting. I smell an announcement.

This is one of the most exciting days of the show. We have a new producer that's joining us. Woo! Is this one? Is this one I could speak? You can speak. Hello. Hello. Wow.

Welcome. Raina Cruz. Hello. You are the new producer on Switchdown Pop. I am. And I'm very happy to be here. And you've been investigating this question of what does it mean to be bringing house music back? And where did it all start?

I have. So I am a house music officiant. But to understand more about house music and its history, I hit up Jason King, who's the chair of the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University. He's a dance music scholar, even published articles on Beyonce herself. So this is like the exact person we need to be talking to. And I asked him what exactly is house music. House music is a highly rhythmic dance music that was created by mostly black and brown

POC queer artists in the late 1970s and early 1980s. So it comes out of the remains of disco music and its subculture throughout the 70s, often repurposing the songs and sounds of disco. Disco had anthems like, I will survive, those kinds of songs that made you feel powerful and assertive on the dance floor. Disco supposedly died in the late 1970s, around 1979, and then there was this post-disco moment. House was one of the forms that came out of that post-disco moment. So we all know Disco, right? Disco is categorized by excess, you know, massive string

sections, soaring vocals, lyrics, usually about things like love, dancing, other great stuff. A great example of this is Thelma Houston's song, Don't Leave Me This Way. House music borrows from disco's sense of optimism and uplift. And that was especially important for the communities that disco was serving, particularly black and brown queer and trans communities. So you guys have heard of the whole like disco is dead moment, right? Yeah, yeah. We reported a story on disco demolition long time ago.

Right. So like, you know, the whole story of that array is that like the supposed death of disco came in 1979. There was the infamous disco demolition night where a whole baseball stadium of people literally celebrated the explosion and blowing up of a massive pile of disco records. And like we could argue the roots of that. in sort of an emerging rock-domism. We could argue its roots in racism and homophobia.

But the impact was that disco was like immediately labeled bad and uncool and anything catering to similar communities went underground as a result. House producers were inspired by the uplift and the four-to-the-floor kick of disco, but couldn't afford the aforementioned sweeping 30-piece orchestra sections like we heard in Telma, Houston. So they lean more towards what they had at their disposal. House music uses drum machines and samplers and synthesizers, this pulsating, incredible, rhythmic music. So a classic example of this would be Frankie Knuckles song, Your Love. So the music found its place in gay clubs, ballrooms, literal warehouses, hence the name House.

Right, right, right. Propeled by a fan base of these queer and trans communities of color. And from there, it spread and became a more mainstream music and became a kind of major dance genre. So house music had a decade or so of being mostly in the underground. And then in the 90s, pop music and house music fully converged. And you could hear it in things like... C&C Music Factory. Janet Jackson's Together Again.

Madonna. But one of the most iconic examples, in my eyes at least, comes from the artist Robin S. Show Me Love is that moment in which house music and pop music were really coming together. Show Me Love comes out of this vocal soul. soulful house tradition. And in that tradition of house music, you had these foregrounded kind of woman, black woman, largely with battleship voices. And that's a tradition that largely had black and brown queer men as the like central fan base, right? And Robin S was definitely out of that tradition. And you hear that in Beyonce's music too. You know,

you won't break my soul. It's like, you know, an anthem of defiance. So in the case of break my soul, you guys previously mentioned it's a house track, right? And and knowing what we know, this is undoubtedly true. I asked Jason how specifically it embodies the genre. The clear thing that I hear in a song like Break My Soul is that percussive four on the floor beats with those high hats going. That's a staple of house music. She's also got this kind of bass sound going on,

and that's produced by a synthesizer called the Corg M1. That was a classic synthesizer that was used in early 1990s music. you might hear it in a song like Deeper Love by C&C Music Factory or finally by C.C. Peniston. And you hear it throughout Show Me Love too by Robin S. So Beyonce doesn't necessarily just use the spirit of house music. She actually samples, or quote unquote, samples Robin S. Yeah, the first time I heard Break My Soul, it was clear to me that there was a Robin S reference because Show Me Love was not only very successful, but it was also one of the originators of that iconic house organ sound that Beyonce's song is clearly reference.

Those are definitely the same sounds, but it's not that surprising to me because the Corg M1 is a very popular synthesizer. It's the best-selling synthesizer of all time. They sold over 250,000 units when it was in production from 1988 to 1995. And Show Me Love made that organ sound very popular. It was ubiquitous in house music of the time, and it's been used in contemporary music in countless examples. Bob Sinclair's World Hold On. I mean, I've also heard it on Katie Perry's Swish Swish, which is produced by Duke Dumont, who's like a house producer in his own right. And a lot of people sample the original Robin S as well.

Like, I know, Rihanna, you are a big time Charlie XX fan. Charlie XX Scholar, in fact. Come on, Charlie. She used it on her new record crash on the song, Used to Know Me. I feel like when we hear that organ sound, on Break My Soul, just like, boom, takes you right into that 90s house music kind of vibe that has never left us. So Break My Soul credits the songwriters of Show Me Love, basically saying that there's a sample here. But I'm not sure about that.

Like, I don't think this is actually a story of the sample. Hear me out, all right? I'm listening. Break My Soul supposedly samples Show Me Love. That's how it's been reported at least. But I don't think this is a story of a sample. It's kind of screwy, especially when you get a... to the credits. Robin S. performed Show Me Love, but wasn't a songwriter, so she's not a listed

songwriter for the sample on Break My Soul. Instead, songwriting credits are given to Alan George and Fred McFarlane, the original songwriters on Show Me Love, but what's weird here is that their song, the one that they wrote, doesn't even have that house organ sound on it. The version we know with that house organ comes from DJ Stonebridge, who remixed the song in 92. The organ sound that DJ Stonebridge uses is clearly the main inspiration for Break My Soul, but because remixers aren't technically songwriters, he doesn't seem to be getting any songwriting or publishing credits on the Beyonce track.

And maybe weirdest of all is that this isn't even a sample. Both songs have clearly different bass lines. Here's Show Me Love. And here's Break My Soul. So those are similar. They both go from a higher note to a lower note. They're both rhythmically syncopated, making you want to dance. But they're not exactly the same, are they?

No. The show me love house organ line has more notes. It moves around, more. It's a little busier. The Beyonce Break My Soul house organ line. It's a little more streamlined, a little simpler, just two notes going back and forth. So similar, but not identical.

Yeah, they mash up well. And even if you put them back to back with the Show Me Love and the Break My Soul after, you can see that they're different. I actually have to put Break My Soul in the right key because they are in different keys. Show me love. Break my soul.

I would argue that there are classic 90s house tracks that sound even more like the Robin Ness than the Beyonce does. Check out Live and Joy's Don't Stop Moving. They didn't credit the songwriters of the Robin Ness, who didn't originally even use that organ patch. So it makes us wonder, like, why is this a sample? Well, I suppose one reason that they would credit Show Me Love, even though these house organ lines are not an exact sample, is that in a world, in the aftermath of the blurred lines copyright case, where Robin Thick, Farrell, and T.I, even though they didn't sample a Marvin Gaye song, had to pay Marvin Gay estate and the owners of the publishing of his song got to give it up.

Since that moment, artists have become very cautious. And it might be wise to give a copyright credit for a song that you didn't directly sample if there's even a remote possibility that that artist might file a suit at some point. So it's like a way of just covering your bases. So there might be some element of that, just trying to get ahead of any possible controversy by making the show me love songwriters get credits on Break My Soul. Makes sense to me. I also think it comes out of a sort of respect to community because the house music community is a very tight-knit, very protective over their genre community.

And I think by crediting the original songwriters, it's Beyonce sort of extending an arm saying that I'm not trying to appropriate this. I recognize where my sources are, recognize where my inspirations are, and bringing them into the current picture. Okay, so we've got like commercial and cultural reasons why we might have a pseudo sample here. Yeah. I mean, personally, I'd like to believe that's part of the reason, you know, not just cold commercial calculus, but actually a desire to give these legendary house artists their flowers. And I think I saw that Robin S has had this new wave of popularity and maybe rediscovery thanks to break my soul. So if it is the latter motivation, I think that is really paying off.

But part of the thing is, is that Robin S didn't even know that she was being sampled, which I think is crazy. Because I feel like Beyonce could have done this to extend an arm to the community, like I said. But Robin S has to be told by her family members that she was trending on Twitter because she didn't even know her song was being sampled. Well, that's another wrinkle in this saga. I love hearing these connections. That Corg M1 organ bass sound is iconic. It makes me think of Robin Ness. But one sample slash reference does not a house song make.

Beyonce is pulling out all the stops here. We're going to hear more the second half of the show. Convierte your passion in a business with Shopify and bathe records of ventas with the form of pay with a better conversion of the world. Has you heard of bien? The best conversion of the world. The incredible system of Pago of Shopify facilitates on your site

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in your audio and video feeds. So when we hear Beyonce's new single, Break My Soul, it takes us right into classic 90s house music. Before we get into what that means, I want to listen to a couple more of those signifiers. Rihanna, you spoke with Jason King. He mentioned specifically the sound of the drums.

Right? The pulsating four to the floor synthesized drumbeat. House producers are known for using drum machines. Many of us are very familiar with the famous 808 drum machine. That's primarily the sound of hip hop. It's simple. It's

siblings, the 707 and the 909, those are the sounds of house music. You can hear the 909 on Mr. Fingers. Can you feel it? Jason mentioned Madonna. It's on Vogue. At least the high hats on Show Me Love. They sound like a 909 to me. And we're getting that same vibe, of course, on Break My Soul. These drum stamps, to me, sound a little brighter, a little lighter, less, deep in the 808. And I wonder if that's because house music has quicker tempos, it has a little more

bounciness and brightness. And so these drums maybe support that kind of groove. They're definitely very punchy. And in music, which is meant to be primarily dance music, for sure, it's a good sound. It definitely fits. Keeps you on your toes. So we've got the Robin Ness Corg M1 organ sound. We've got the 909 drums. The other thing that stands out to me is the house piano. There's like a sound of house piano. S-H-P shitty house piano. I think it's a great sound.

It's actually another one of the factory patches off of that corg M-1 synthesizer. It's great. I say shitty as a compliment. It's like it sounds like a really bootleg piano in a way that. is so unique and so sharp and effective. And it can't be bad because it's totally iconic. It's everywhere. That sound is a strong signal to me that, okay, we're in a house track.

I think of a song like Black Boxes right on time. Jason mentioned C.C. Penisdison's finally. And if you want to fire me for making this reference, you're totally welcome. It's also all over Barbie Girl by Aqua. You never have to apologize for Barbie Girl, Charles. As a Eurodance apologist, I love Aqua. What strikes me about this constellation of characteristic house music sounds from the 707 and 909 drum machines to the Corg M1 House Organ and House Piano is that they take these familiar sounds, drums, organs, pianos, and they transform them into something that is kind of tight and clipped and. bright and slightly unnatural in this way that just pulls you into the song and gives the song

so much like explosiveness. You can't help but dance. There's some uncanny property to these sounds that make it irresistible to dance. Well, it's funny that you mentioned explode, because that leads us to maybe one of the most essential parts of Break My Soul, and that's the big free-to-bounce record, explode. So Big Frida, love her, queen of bounce. She's credited with bringing bounce music to a national stage. Bounce music is very regional, located to New Orleans, and is adjacent to the sort of hip-hop club music of the area.

It's founded on these call-outs and chants. You know, you could hear it. She shouts over and over again, release your wiggle, right? She's telling everybody to get down and buggy. And Explode came out in 2014, and it was like a perfect distillation of what Bounce is. And in the context of break my soul, the general ethos of both songs is the same.

It's to let go, to set yourself free, specifically leaning on the plights of labor and to loosen up and using Big Frida's to Beyonce's credit because they work together on formation. I do not come to play with you hold. I came to slay, bitch. Similarly, I think it's interesting that, you know, in passing we brought up Drake in these conversations,

but Big Frida also connects us to Drake because she's the voice that we hear at the beginning of Nice for What. So, you know, she has an immediately recognizable voice. The minute I heard Break My Soul, I was like, that is Big Frida at the top carrying us through Explode. So using Frida on a song like Break My Soul is honestly intentional for thinking about the sort of perceived community references because Big Frida exemplifies the queer, gender non-conforming communities of color that House music was designed for. And by bringing somebody in who specializes in this form of bounce, right, the Queen of Bounce, as I said, Beyonce is kind of fusing together these regional subgenres under the sort of all-consuming banner of House

and bringing it all together in quite a lovely way. But one thing I take away is that this Beyonce release, Break My Soul, the Drake. album that you mentioned and possibly some other tracks coming down the pike might represent a transition away from the disco revival which we've been living in at least since

Daft Punk released random access memories and maybe we're transitioning now into a house revival era of the 2020s which kind of parallels how disco itself evolved into house back in the 70s and 80s.

So that leaves me pretty excited for the upcoming House wave. I think the question is, how will it pay homage to the progenitors of the sound and the community that has sustained it and not just supporting a narrative of, oh, Beyonce is bringing back House. House music might be having a very mainstream wave, but I was talking the other day with Friend of the Pod, Michael Salkind, who is also a House scholar. And he was saying, you know what? Has House Music ever gone anywhere? Hasn't it always been here? Especially Beyonce.

From the very beginning, there have been house remixes of Destiny's Child. And she's comfortable working in that four-to-the-floor kind of vibe on the Lion King album called The Gift that she worked on. Her song, Find Your Way Back is sort of like an Afro beats house kind of vibe. So maybe in her own words, we actually don't need to find our way back to house. Maybe it's just been there all along. I mean, I also thought of track four off of the self-titled Blow, which is very clearly drawing from disco as well as House. So Beyonce sort of has this history of using House beats and incorporating that into her music. But I also think it's natural for people to be a little bit bristly, maybe, about somebody like Beyonce taking this sound that's near and dear to a particular community and bringing it to the mainstream once again.

I know that when I first listened, I was like, oh, this song rocks, but in the back of my head, I was. was like, what does this necessarily mean? So I asked our expert, Jason, what he thought about the genre's resurgence in this current moment. Some people are concerned about Beyonce or Drake taking house music or using house music on their tracks. I think both of them I look at as kind of curatorial geniuses, especially Beyonce. You know, her career legacy has been to synthesize all of these strands of American and global music, whether she's doing R&B or soul or pop or electronica. So she's a synthesizer.

She's a curator, even more than, I think, being an avant-garde innovator. So knowing what we know about house music, its history and its communities, on Break My Soul, I also asked Jason, does Beyoncé effectively capture the essence of house music? So on one hand, you know, I can understand how some people would see a song like this as a exploitative moment in which, you know, she's releasing a song on Juneteenth, and it's also Pride Month and it's Pride Week in New York City. So it feels in some ways like Beyonce could just be similar to a corporation who's kind of jumping on the bandwagon. But it could also, from the other hand, just be a moment to claim the beauty and the historical bounty of house music and intersectional identities.

This is like a queer, friendly summer, 22 anthem of defiance and resistance. I think when the community she's serving needed it most. So, you know, we've been talking a lot about house music revival and it might seem like Beyonce is bringing house back, right? like these headlines and what we talked about. But keeping it real, Jason puts it really well. So house music has been here. It's going to be here for a long time. And house music happens to be the latest thing

that people are sampling more and more. Beyonce is probably just the most high-profile artist to be working with house music in this current moment. So right now, Beyonce is giving us house music. And I'm viking on it. And I don't know about you all, but I'm very excited to see what happens when Renaissance comes out later this summer.

I've heard inklings in the atmosphere that it's going to be part country and part dance. Stop it. No. There was a source in an article that said it's supposed to be half-country half dance, which me put my Madonna Stan hat on gives 2000s music. But who am I? Who am I to say? This may not be the last podcast we devote to Beyonce. All right, I'll see you all real soon. Switched on Pop is now produced by Rihanna Cruz.

We are edited by Jolie Myers, engineered by Brandon McFarland. Our illustrations are by Iris Gottlieb, community management by Abby Barr, executive producers, Honor Rosen, Nishak Kerwaw, a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and a production of Vulture. And a big thank you to Jason King. In addition to being our Beyonce expert, he has a new podcast launching called Sound Barrier

with the first season focusing on the icon Sylvester. It's available only on Spotify. Check it out. You can find more episodes of Switchdown Pop. anywhere you get podcasts and our website, switchedonpop.com. You could follow us on social media at Switched on Pop, Twitter, Instagram. And our question for the week is house music is very big and broad. What is the iconic, the essential house track to you? If you're given one track to somebody to be the house song in question, what is that song?

Marshall Jefferson movie about it. Oh, sorry, you weren't asking me. Okay, that's for the listeners. We'll be back again on Tuesday. And until them, thanks for listening.