The Matt Walsh Show - Matt Walsh Reviews Beyonce's "JOLENE" Cover [Weekly Walsh Original]

Episode Date: April 6, 2024

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If we find anything suspicious, like new loans or changes to your financial accounts, we alert you right away. All through text, phone, email, or the LifeLock app. Get the alerts that could make all the difference. Save up to 40% your first year at LifeLock.com slash special offer. Terms apply. Every once in a while, I'll take a position that I realize is risky. Even while I'm saying it out loud on camera, I am conscious of the fact that I may well come to regret having said what I'm saying. You might argue that it makes me imprudent and reckless to say something publicly that I know I might soon wish I didn't say.

Or you might argue that it makes me courageous. At least I'll try to argue the latter case, but the former is probably more true most of the time. That took courage, my friend. Either way, the problem with venturing out onto a precarious limb, of course, is that the limb might snap and send you hurtling down to the forest floor. And that is what happened to me after I publicly stated a few weeks ago, that Beyonce's new country song wasn't that bad. Wow, there's your problem right there. I didn't say that it was good, objectively. I didn't say that I would be putting it on my Spotify playlist.

I just said it wasn't terrible. It was catchy. It was kind of not awful. It wasn't much of a ringing endorsement, but it was the closest thing to an endorsement that I've ever given Beyonce. And so it was inevitable that I would live to rue the day that I vaguely praised one of her songs, sort of.

And in fact, she's made me regret it multiple times in the intervening weeks, but the real catastrophe struck when Beyonce released her new country album and one of the other songs on that album, and it's Beyonce's rendition of the classic Dolly Parton hit, Jolene. If you're a red-blooded American, then you are well familiar with the original song.

It is Dolly's mournful plea to the woman, Jolene, who is trying to steal her man. No beauty is beyond compare with flaming locks of orphan hair with ivory skin and eyes of emerald green. Your smile is like a breath of spring. Your voice is soft like summer rain and I cannot compete with you, Jolene. Now, what makes this song unique and interesting, which has caused it to resonate over the five decades since it was made, is the vulnerability and the heartbreak and the longing in the lyrics and the performance. Dolly Parton is insecure, fearful, desperately in love with a man who she believes she cannot afford to lose. Those opening lyrics are iconic because of how they kind of invert expectations. She's singing to the woman who is trying to break up her relationship, but instead of attacking her, she praises her rival's beauty.

And already there's more poetry in those opening lines than in every Beyonce song ever written. Now, when I heard that Beyonce was covering the song, I of course knew that her cover wouldn't get within a thousand miles of Dolly's original. Beyonce just doesn't have the soul and gravitas to do a song like that any justice. But at the same time, in a weird way, I was initially impressed with the idea. Because after all, it is a very tender, very feminine song expressing deep insecurity and vulnerability. And Beyonce just doesn't make songs like that. So this seemed to be an interesting departure. But then I listened to Beyonce's version.

Here's a little bit of it. Change and play and nothing new so you don't want no heat with me, Joey. I'm attracted to my man, but you don't want this month, so shoot your shirt with someone else. Ah, well, there you go. Just when you think the Beyonce might be growing ever so slightly as an artist and a person, she proves you wrong. Turns out that she has taken this song full of pain and yearning and emotional honesty

and turned it into yet another mediocre girl boss anthem. Who runs the world? Girls. She has, in other words, taken everything that makes the song great and replaced it with everything that makes modern pop music terrible. Now, Beyonce's molestation of the original,

she sings, Your Beautiful Beyond Compare, takes more than beauty and seductive stares to come between a family and a happy man. Jolene, I'm a woman, too. The games you play are nothing new, so you don't want no heat with me, Jolene.

And later she adds, but you don't want this smoke, so shoot your shot with someone else. And then sings, Jolene, I know I'm a queen, Jolene, I'm still a Creole Bangee bitch from Louisiana. Don't try me.

And finally, she warns, I'd hate to have to act a fool. Not classy. Not classy at all. Day Classy. A few decades ago, private citizens used to be largely that private. The internet has changed everything. Think about everything you have browsed, search for, watched, or tweeted.

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The problem with this new version, aside from the fact that the performance is flat and uninteresting, the lyrics are clunky and kind of stupid and that Beyonce has ripped the song's heart out of its chest and eaten it like some kind of nightmarish Aztec ritual. The problem is that it lacks the vulnerability of the original song. In the original, Dali Parton is desperate. She's worried. She's anxious. She's lying awake at night, listening to the man in bed next door

as he dreams about a woman more beautiful than herself. In Beyonce's version, she's a confident queen. She's unbothered. She's tough and independent and perfect and wonderful and unafraid, and her man would never cheat on her anyway. Which, if that's the case, then why should anyone even care about the story you're telling us in the song? Beyonce's the greatest. She's a queen. She's perfect. Everything's perfect. So who cares? Your boasts are not interesting.

Boring. They are also not relatable to the rest of us mere mortals. Beyonce is a strong, confident queen, she claims. This is your queen? Well, the rest of us are human beings. We're not kings and queens. We're just, we're people. Music at its best expresses those universal human experiences. But Beyonce's music expresses nothing more than how awesome Beyonce thinks Beyonce is. I'm Beyonce. I am Beyonce always. I can't think of anything less interesting than listening to a famous rich person sing songs about how great they are.

But the thing is, it isn't even true. And that's the biggest problem with just about every song she's ever made and with much of modern popular music generally. It just isn't true. It's not saying anything true about the human experience. It's not connecting with anything real inside us. Because the truth is that any woman, okay, Beyonce included, any woman who sees another woman, a beautiful, radiant woman,

hitting on her boyfriend or her husband, will at some level feel insecure and threatened. Not. Like no woman would just wave that off and say, Whatever, I'm a badass queen. No man would ever leave me. Now she might say that out loud, perhaps, but deep in her heart, she'll have doubts.

In fact, it would have been interesting Interesting if Beyonce's version began with the blustery confidence, but then as the song went on, the cracks start to show and she reveals herself to be insecure and anxious about the situation. That would have been a smart, artistic direction to take it. But Beyonce has no capacity for creativity and has none of the artistic intelligence or honesty to even conceive of something like that. But if it appeals to those women or men, it's not because they relate to Beyonce's corny feminist bravado, but because they want to, relate to it. That's the whole reason people like to listen to rappers and pop stars brag about themselves. It's because they, the listeners, want to feel as arrogant and self-assured as those rappers and pop stars pretend to feel about themselves. And in reality, Beyonce, Beyonce is so incredibly

insecure that she's won like 32 Grammys, but still whines because she hasn't won album of the year. She has more Grammys than everyone than never won album in a year. So even by your own metrics, that doesn't work. She's won more awards at the Grammys than any of the artist in history, and it's not enough. That's how desperate for affirmation and approval she really is. And you know what? That would be an interesting subject for a song. If Beyonce explored the fact that she has praised the world over, showered with money and fame and critical acclaim, and yet she still hungers for approval, that would be interesting. I would listen to a song like that. That's the kind of thing, a real artist who has the courage to be vulnerable and honest,

might be able to explore. But Beyonce is not a real artist. She's a mediocre hack. She's been making music for 25 years. And during that entire time, she's never managed to say one interesting or insightful thing ever. She's bland and dull and arrogant.

And also, frankly, not a very good singer. And that is why she is today. Cancer.