Switched on Pop - Beyoncé's ‘Renaissance’ Era

Episode Date: August 9, 2022

Beyoncé’s new album Renaissance is one of her most ambitious albums yet. On this week’s episode of Switched On Pop, we discuss Renaissance with beloved guest Sam Sanders, host of the new Vulture podcast Into It. In Sanders’ words: “it’s trying to do a lot” – but in the best way. The album incorporates seemingly every decade of contemporary popular dance music from Chic’s “Good Times” to Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy.” Much of the early discourse surrounding the album was marred by a confusing controversy over a small sample (we try to resolve the issue musicologically) – but the references on Renaissance are worth listening closely to, acting as a guide through essential dance music. The album is an homage to the black and queer innovators of dance; with samples and interpolations of songs both niche and mainstream flying by, like a DJ set curated by house music pioneers.  On Renaissance, Beyoncé goes out of her way to cite, credit and compensate her influences, resulting in a triumph of musical curation. Just look at “Alien Superstar”: the song credits twenty-four people, largely due to Beyoncé’s musical nods, rather than an exercise in boardroom style songwriting. Sanders says “the liner notes themselves are showing you that this woman and her team have a PhD in music history.” Listen to Switched On Pop to hear how Renaissance honors dance music innovators and finds new modes of expression in the genre.  Subscribe to Into It with Sam Sanders Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3vE4jqf Listen on Spotify: https://bit.ly/3bB7Vmf Listen elsewhere: https://bit.ly/3BI0Nz0 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I am Sam Sanders, host of the Vulture podcast, into it. And is it safe to say now, Charlie, that we have sibling podcasts, sister podcast, cousin podcasts. We do. Yeah, we're kind of part of a larger family, which is really sweet for me because I feel like you are probably number one friend of the pod. You've been on Switched on Pop so many times.

We've talked about Labyrinth. We've talked about Cindy Lopper. We've talked about so many different great artists, but today's kind of special. Not only because we're now in the same family together, but because we're also discussing Beyonce. And you actually kind of inspired this conversation because your first episode of Intuit, the podcasts about the culture we're obsessed with, was a look back at Beyonce's 2013 self-titled album and how it changed pop music. But now Beyonce is back with her first solo studio album in six years, Renaissance. Yeah. Together, I want to see how she might be changing pop music again, listen closely to the album and identify what sounds she's using, what she's referencing, what she's trying to do.

And I think it's trying to do a lot. It is trying to do a lot. Let's start by hearing a clip of the song, Cozy. Okay. What does this album sound like musically and thematically to you? I think there are several themes in there. Like, that's clearly giving ballroom. It's giving queer energy.

And some readings of the lyrics of that song see it as an empowerment anthem for genderqueerness. But I think in general, what I hear when I look at it overall is the biggest theme is that Beyonce is at this point wealthy enough and powerful enough and has been doing this long enough to make an album full of as many ideas as she wants. And to do it with the best of the best in the industry and to pay as much money as she needs to to clear any sample. It is interesting as an exercise in seeing where are the house elements, where are the disco elements, where are the funk elements. But I think what strikes me the hardest when I look at it holistically is just how we are listening to Beyonce just try on a lot of different costumes by spending as much money as she wants to and an hour to do so. And she just vomits ideas in every song. Half of these songs feel like they're two or three different songs in one. She just has that many ideas that she's spitting out at you.

And it feels very overwhelming at first. But once you hear it the third or fourth time, you just realize that this is an artist at the top of their game, creatively, professionally, and to hear her have so much fun while just improvising, really, it's brilliant. Yeah, so on this track, she's, working with the black trans producer honey di jean and revered Chicago house producers and DJs Dave Giles the second and green velvet so she's clearly

making a nod to the dance music that has inspired her but as you said she goes out and she just acquires every possible sample that she needs to make the statement she's sampling here get with you 1992 Chicago house song by DJ Liddell Townsell and MTF oh that's fun and you you you even get samples of YouTube clips from T.S. Madison. Wait, really? I'm dog ground. Dog skin.

It's really fun to hear that and to know where it's coming from. And to see an artist like Beyonce do it, she is not queer. She is not trans. She is not in any way LGBTIQIA plus. But it just seems like she and or her team have done a lot of research and a lot of reading and found these pockets of culture that are very niche,

and then found a way to put them into songs in a way that still feels effortlessly Beyonce. It doesn't feel like she is trying these skins on and not getting it right. It sounds good. She dedicates the record to her uncle Johnny, who she said was, he was my godmother and the first person to expose me to a lot of the music and culture

that serves as an inspiration for this album. Thank you to all the pioneers who originate this culture to all. all of the fallen angels whose contributions have gone unrecognized for far too long. Her Uncle Johnny sadly died of complications from HIV. Uncle Johnny made my dress that cheap, spandex, she looks a mess. If she initially had the idea of going and making a dance record, and there's a lot of various dance forms that are referenced here,

I think it's really important for her to connect it to the culture from which it truly comes from. I mean, to see her do what she's doing now, if you look at like the trajectory of house and dance to EDM. She's kind of years after the David Gettification of this style of music. Right, right, right. Taking it back not just for black people, but also for queer people. And not even taking it back. I don't think Beyonce hates David Gettah.

I think she's saying us too, and it's always been us, right? Yeah. So I want to take her discussion into the various kinds of music that she's referencing. Many of them are on the nose. For example, if you listen to America has a problem, it's just straight up 80s electro, almost planet rock. Oh, yeah. Or the often cited right said Fred, I'm too sexy,

makes an appearance on Alien Superstar. That portion of Alien Superstar that you played, It does kind of highlight one of my smallest critiques of the album itself. What's that? There's some songs where she's trying to fit so many musical ideas in that she'll get to a really fun musical conceit and then not stay there long enough. That part of Alien Superstar doesn't sound like the part before. To me, it sounds better.

And I want that little mini hook that you played for us. I want three and a half minutes of that. She gives you 45 seconds of that. And this album, because it's so chocked full of things, she'll switch a song on you three times in the midst of five minutes. And then like, you'll love the middle portion. And before you can sing along to it, she's gone on to something else. And it is the most beautiful whiplash. The whole album plays almost like a DJ set.

Oh, yeah. Sometimes there's things and ideas just mashed up. And when you read through the lyrics, which is really fun to do, you realize that these lyrics are long. there are multiple sections. Songs aren't just verse, chorus, verse, chorus. They're like intro, refrain, interlude, verse, pre-chorus, refrain, chorus, post-chorus, and she's just throwing ideas on top of ideas. Well, and that is what makes her, I think, the most exciting of the big megawatt pop stars.

It's not that she's just made a new Beyonce formula for making songs. It's that on this album, the formula no longer exists. she's throwing paint against the wall in the most beautiful way and like there are parts of this album where you don't know where you are but that's the point well let's extend that metaphor

and get a sense of the different colors that she's painting with here I want to check out the song Cuff It's giving who's in there Nile Rogers you hear that guitar and you're just like this is chic but because Beyonce is just opulence getting Nile Rogers on your track

would have been enough. But she also got songwriter heavyweight Raphael Sadiq on this thing as well and The Dream. And Sheila E. on percussion. I had forgotten about that. Oh my God. No, it's just all the superstars. Yeah. And like, it's not just I have the money to pay for them. It's

they all want to work with her. Oh, it's a celebration. All the legends at this point. Know her craft enough. They want to celebrate this with Beyonce and be in this work in any way possible. It's beautiful. To get to collaborate with such giants and have them just on a song or so is definitely a flex. And I think it's a flex to say, why don't we just do Sheik's

good time, but give our own spin on it. And then what I love about it is like when you get in this groove, Beyonce all of a sudden just inserts a dollop of like Beyonce weirdness, which is like her hallmark. She does this thing where she'll perform these lyrics that would sound cheesy and cringe if anyone else sang them. But when Beyonce sings it, you're like, okay. Like she gets to the almost chorus and then out of the blue she just goes, let me sit on top of you. And you're like, why are you saying let me sit on top of you in the middle of this really smooth song? But it works because it's Beyonce and before you know it, you're walking through your kitchen singing at the top of your lungs, let me sit on top of you. Because Beyonce

said it, you know? Yeah, it's a very sexy album and there's a lot of things that feel like language that should only be used in the bedroom, then get used as lyrics. And so, like they they actually land. I think it speaks to the sophistication of her voice as an instrument. One of the things I really notice on this whole album is that her vocal performances

are better than I think I've ever heard than be before. Her voice has gotten deeper and huskier and more full the older she's gotten, but she's still hitting these epic falsettos. She's still doing head voice and she's still doing all the rap voices. Harmonies.

But every little voice she tries on in this album, she embodies it perfectly. So she's selling the snarl. She's selling the grouse. She's selling the falsetto. She's selling all of it. And so whenever she does those wacky weird vocals and those wacky weird lyrics, it's too good for you to say it's corny at all. It's just too good. She even goes out of her way to give interpolation nods for the la-la-laws that she does throughout the record. So really? On cuff it. we have little La La La La right here. That gets credited to Tina Marie for her song, Ooh La La La La. Really?

Ulala feels like something maybe beyond copyrightable speech. And Beyonce, I feel like, is going out of her way, both to cite credit and compensate her influences, but also potentially a bit of cover your own. ass and make sure that somebody doesn't come around and say, uh, that was something that I did before. Here's a $10 million lawsuit. I would like a cut of your song. I think we see a little bit of that throughout the album. Oh, for sure. I mean, there are some of these references where like if it went to a court of law, she probably wouldn't lose. But when you're as rich and powerful as Beyonce and you can

afford to clear the sample, clear the interpolation, why not? But I like to also consider it as like Beyonce and her team showing their work. Yes. And I think like for a woman artist like Beyonce who has for so often in her career not been taken seriously, the liner notes themselves are showing you that this woman and her team have a PhD in music history. They know their stuff. Let's listen to the end of Cuffit because it sequences in that DJ kind of way perfectly

into the next song, which is a real sight of, uh, Controversy, let's say. Yeah. It's my favorite moment in the album, this transition. Look it up, fuck it up. It's perfect. It's so perfect. This is what's crazy about this album, Charlie.

So we're listening to Energy now featuring Beam, yeah. Yeah. You know, there are some albums where a certain lyrical moment makes you scream, a certain musical note that the vocalist hits makes you scream. There are several just transitions on this album that make me scream every time. And that's one of them. It's so good. There's a really good sequence that goes from Cuffet to Energy to Break My Soul to Church Girl.

We're going to listen to a bunch of them. But we got to stay on energy for a second. Yeah. Because in addition to having to update an Ableist slur that had been in the album, Beyonce actually has to change one of the credits on Energy. Are you willing to get into this debacle for a moment? I would love to because I have some bones to pick. Attention Spotify.

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because people like Beyonce don't really talk to the media except for on her own terms and everyone's under such fierce NDAs. We don't get full stories. But do you mind just sort of summarizing what has happened in energy? And I want to spend some time listening to it, deconstructing it.

I want to hear what you have to say. So this song, Energy, we've heard a snippet of it, but it becomes another song kind of a minute into it. Look around. It's me and my grew big energy. And that song is borrowing lightly from the Kalees mega hit, Milkshake.

And it seems as if Farrell and the Neptunes, who wrote the song and produced the song, it seems as if they cleared that, but they didn't let Kalees know. And when Kalees found out that her hit, milkshake was on this Beyonce album, she was really, really, really angry about it, publicly went off on social media. and just a few days after Kalisa's first critique, Beyonce just took out the sample. And what's crazy, Charlie, is if you listen to the Beyonce version of this song with the sample

and the one without, you honestly can't tell the difference. I couldn't. The part that was actually removed from energy was a little la-l-la-la segment that supposedly sounds like milkshakes la-l-l-l-las, which I don't hear whatsoever. So here's the original energy.

Those la-l-l-laws supposedly sound like Kalee's La-L-Las on milkshake. Which la-l-l-l-la-la? Can you play the Beyonce one again? Yeah, here are the vocals isolated from the track. ...that's... ...from page vogue, no pose. Check from much more... ...that code...

...andage... ...different rhythm, different melody... Yeah. ...energy today, those la-l-l-las don't exist. It's weird because the thing they say... they say that has been fixed is this Lala sample, not the beat? I guess the Lala

would have been the thing that Kalees would have performed, making her feel there's more right to it. But she doesn't own any of the publishing or masters on the original milkshake. She claims that the Neptunes made her sign an exploitative contract. Well, this is the thing I want to take a second on.

Apparently, if we believe some reports, milkshake in its iteration that Kalee sang wasn't originally written for her. Pharrell and Chad Hugo of the Neptunes had written the song, Milshake, and tried to sell it to Britney Spears. Britney turned it down

and then Calice got it. And of course we know that milkshake as we know it is not milkshake without Calise. Surely. But the song itself wasn't a creation just of her. I was genuinely confused by this story because on first listen, I couldn't originally find the interpolation either.

To my ear, the la-lalas sound nothing alike and probably are not protectable copyrightable speech. So removing them feels like a cover your ass sort of situation that doesn't, to me, properly resolve this dispute because the part of the song that I think sounded most like milkshake was the beat and energy, which sounds a little bit like it's in the same musical family as the synthesizer line from milkshake. So I transcribe them both onto piano and changed their key to compare them.

So here's milkshake. I love it. And here's energy. I think they're different, Charlie. They have some similarities. They both start with a little downbeat baseline. And then on an offbeat, they both have this little minor second melodic motif. But they're in different keys.

They're actually using different scale degrees. And this melodic motif that they use is something that the Neptunes actually used a lot of. It's the Neptune's sound. It's the Neptune's sound. It's the Neptune's sound. It's very similar to Norse nothing, a song the Neptunes produced the year before milkshake. Isolated sounds like this. They're all in like the Neptunes-ish family, but you can own that. I want to say Farrell and Chad own that sound, not Calise. As much as I love milkshake, as much as I love Calise, when I think of that sound and who it belongs to, the Neptunes were making beats like that for 10 years that were all over the radio, and it wasn't just milkshake.

Totally. I don't know. Some folks have said this is more about a beef between Farrell and Kalees that really doesn't involve Beyonce at all, but she's involved now. I just think that there are larger questions of songwriting and production and who owns what and who the sound belongs to that are kind of lost in this finger-pointing conversation between Kalease and Farrell. I also wonder, had they not credited any of this at all, would Calais or her team ever have even noticed? No one. This is the thing. I feel like no one would have picked up to know. No one would have noticed. When I started to hear about the story and listen for versions with and without, I'm someone who literally studied music composition in undergrad. Right. And I really couldn't find it myself.

You know what I'm saying? There you go. There are instances of clear musical theft that are blatant and disrespectful. I don't think this is one of them. At most, it might be a, hat tip, which I don't think requires a clearance. But that's just my subjective opinion. I think the unfortunate thing is that so much conversation has been spent on this one little complication that some of the music has been missed. And one of the things I really love about this song, again, is the way that it sequences so beautifully into the next track, Break My Soul, because at the end of energy, we get a sample of frequent collaborator. Big Frida, the New Orleans bounce artist.

It just takes us exactly into the next song. Crank my soul. Man, if that doesn't get you off your ass and on a dance floor, man. Wow. Just wow. These transitions below my mind every time. It's to your point where it feels like there are multiple scholars of music here thinking about how do you blend energy, which has a house-style rhythm, maybe there's some

Afro beats in it, there's this Neptunes vibe, who knew that the bridge into a 90s house beat was going to be a bounce-style reference. Oh, yeah. And we're not going to talk about Break My Soul because we did a whole episode on that song specifically. Instead, what I thought we could do is see how she uses that Big Frida sound and works it into the next song, Church Girl. Yeah.

So what are you hearing here? I'm hearing a Clark Sister sample, which I just love. To see Beyonce not just reference sometimes obscure house music and obscure ballroom nods. To see her reference this gospel supergroup that is so beloved by a certain portion of the black community, it warms my soul. and to see her take this gospel song and put it on top of a Trigaman beat that is just asking you to shake your ass in the club

and she pulls it off and she pulls it off and it's not hokey, it's empowering. She's threading this needle that shows you that she cares about not just the fullness and totality of these musical styles, but she cares about the fullness and totality of black identity. And I just think it's really powerful.

You know, Church Girl isn't my favorite song on the album, but it's my favorite statement. There are all of these different styles that she's bringing together to make a larger commentary on identity and putting all of these things together in one big pot and calling it a Renaissance. Yeah. Well, and like when I think of the term Renaissance and what the name of that album means, I think the first thing I'm thinking is references to the Harlem Renaissance. And all that was was a real celebration for many years that said, Black artists and black creatives are allowed to be as free in their work and their identity and in their presentation of self as they want to be. They're free to go crazy. They're free to have fun and try out all of their ideas. And so it's really fitting that, you know, the most

powerful statement on this album is a song very much about black women like Beyonce celebrating their secular and their sacred as well. Which you very much hear on Church Girl. That was the idea of the Harlem Renaissance. You get to be all of you. Right. I think of the Harlem Renaissance as well as the original Renaissance as both periods of great collaboration and citation coming out of some real dark ages. And that these were both scenes throughout history were places where you would find artists in conversation with each other, artists developing workshops.

And I think one of the most misunderstood things. in looking at this album and so much of Beyonce's work is the disconnect with all of her citations and artists like Diane Warren making famously bad takes asking, well, how can there be 24 writers on a song? Seeing 24 writers on a Beyonce song is saying to me, it's not a song, it's more than that, it's a salon. She has brought these minds and these voices

and these references together and put them all in a room And they are in the most interesting conversation with each other. That is Renaissance. That is the energy of the Harlem Renaissance. Put all the ideas together. Put all the collaborators together. Let's all just get together and brainstorm and make fun shit because the limit does not exist. We refuse a limit.

And clearly we have a vision of curation. But something I feel like is so underappreciated, despite it being her greatest skill, is the way that she performs. Her voice is such an incredible asset, and it is a place of immense agency. The density of samples is matched by, I think, the density of her voice. You can get a song like Cozy, which is, in its core, a very heavy, very deep song. Yeah. But it is awash in these huge vocal harmonies that are unlike anyone else. To hear that, to me, it's channeling the best songs of, like, Destiny's Child.

there were some vocal arrangements that Beyonce was doing with them back then where I would say, oh, that's not pop, that's jazz. Their ears are advanced. They're hitting notes that most pop singers don't even know how to hit. And so there's just certain parts of this album where you're just reminded

Beyonce isn't just a really gifted singer. She has a jazz artist's musical mind. And I keep thinking about the end runs of the song Plastic Off the Sofa. She's scat singing, and it works, and it's still danceable. But the notes that she hits with her voice indicate just a higher knowledge of the way chords and notes work. The music major in you is very excited by this record. I'm so excited.

I mean, like, there's sometimes where I'm just like, did Beyonce just hit a tritone? Oh, my God! Like, it's just amazing. It's amazing. And, like, besides just being able to hit those notes and those really strange beautiful ways for pop. She can speak several different musical languages with her voice. She can do the falsetto. She can do the growl. She can do the rap sing. She can sound coquettish. She can sound like a man doing chopped and screwed rap when she wants to. Beyonce has been singing steadily and

strongly for 20 years. And the voice just gets better. That's amazing to me. And so as much as this album is a feat in collaboration, a feat in sampling and musical referencing, a feat in improvisation. It's also a moment to look at how well Beyonce has protected all of her instruments over the course of 20 plus years. Who else has had that kind of run and gets better every time? I think we should really take a step back and just see how virtual of a talent she is. Her mind continually jumps to new ways of how to be Beyonce, but still be Beyonce. And that's a feat. Here, here.

This has been really fun. This is really fun. I'll talk to you soon. This episode of Switched on Pop was edited by Jolie Myers, engineered by Bill Lance, illustrations by Iris Gottlieb, community management by Abby Barr. Our executive producers are Nashok Karwa and Hannah Rosen, a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture. Big thank you to Sam Sanders.

You should absolutely go subscribe to his new podcast into it. It's my favorite culture podcast. I'll post a link in our show notes. You can catch those anywhere you get podcasts. and on Switchedonpop.com. You can catch us on social media at Switchedon Pop on Twitter and Instagram. We'd love to hear how you're feeling about Renaissance. We'll be back again next week.

Rianna's finally going to give us an episode on Demi Lovato and The Return of Pop Punk. And until then, thanks for listening.