2000's Top500 Track
4. Beyonce (ft. Jay-Z) - Crazy in Love [Columbia/Sony; 2003]
If someone told you that the sheet music for "Crazy in Love" was just a lot of exclamation points on a staff, you would believe them, right? From its first moments on til the end, its enormous beats and blaring fanfare pummel everything its path like a brutal force of nature, leaving us all with a clear choice to either turn away or submit to its indomitable power. It's fitting that this sound would be the basis of Beyonce Knowles breakthrough hit, as it is the ideal showcase for the singer's forthright persona and her gift for vocal performances that manage an improbable balance of poised professionalism and feral emoting.
Amazingly, "Crazy in Love" isn't even Knowles at full blast-- she comes much harder on later hits such as "Get Me Bodied" and "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)"-- but the sheer force of her presence is enough to overshadow a strong cameo appearance by the freakishly charismatic Jay-Z and nearly erase the memory of her former bandmates in Destiny's Child. She was no stranger to stardom before "Crazy In Love," but after its blockbuster success, there was no question that Beyonce had arrived as the definitive female R&B singer of her era, and had become the clear successor to a lineage of superstars including Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston, Donna Summer, and Diana Ross. --Matthew Perpetua
131. Destiny's Child - Say My Name [Columbia/Sony; 2000]
Beyonce is a force now, but it would be almost impossible for her to ever again wield the kind of stranglehold over the world's ears the way Destiny's Child did at the turn of the millennium. At the time, they so thoroughly dominated the charts and airwaves, the hits just kept coming even when they ditched half the band. "Say My Name" is DC at their peak, riding a tidal wave of feisty righteousness to the ladies club anthem of 2000. The girls stop and start like ultrafine robots, sleekly maneuvering through producer Rodney Jerkins' arsenal of space-age R&B effects. I could never figure out why the guy in the song even picked up the phone in the first place, though. --Amy Phillips
183. Beyonce - Irreplaceable [Columbia/Sony; 2006]
Seriously: What kind of numbskull would cheat on Beyonce? She's crazy, she's ringing alarms, and-- most important-- she's Beyonce, almighty one-stop entertainer beamed down from Planet Perfection. But "Irreplaceable" is all about the revelation that there's some unscripted emotion underneath all those hypnotic sequins. She puts on a good front: "You must not know 'bout me, I could have another you in a minute," she sings, hand on hip. But the cracked delivery of "another you" gives her away-- she sounds vulnerable, crushed, human. By the end of the song, the "another you"s are more strident as she turns back into the high-heeled superhero with invisible pores and quite-visible hips. But even when she loses, she wins. --Ryan Dombal
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Top 100 Best Track of 2008
23: Beyonce - Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) [Sony BMG/Columbia]
The best song from Beyonce's misguided I Am…Sasha Fierce album is half "Get Me Bodied", half "Irreplaceable": a break-up song in going-out shoes. Maybe it wouldn't be as good without the video choreography-- and maybe Beyonce's superstardom is able to will anything into a hit-- but credit goes to the song's agitated claps and ticks, to its purring keyboard hums and squiggles. Credit also goes to Beyonce's realization of a nearly universal desire-- to project ourselves onto a screen, even if that screen is a person (or persona). Her screen is called Sasha Fierce. Ours is called Beyonce. Don't believe me? Just ask the hundreds of YouTube stars in heels and cut-up leotards. --Jessica Suarez
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Top 100 Best Track of 2006
85: Beyonce - Ring the Alarm
So many questions! Why does the other girl get everything Beyonce owns if Beyonce lets this guy go? Did she not sign a pre-nup? (Is she secretly married?) If the other girl's rocking of chinchilla coats and VVS stones hinges on Beyonce's letting him go, why doesn't she just, you know, not let him go? And why would anyone cheat on someone as hot and awesome as Beyonce to begin with? Is it 'cause she goes a little crazy sometimes? --Amy Phillips
45: Beyonce - Irreplaceable
In the January 2007 issue of Vanity Fair , Christopher Hitchens writes a column titled "Why Women Aren't Funny", claiming it's because there are more obstacles for men in the ongoing quest to charm, amuse, and romance the opposite sex; men depend on the art of humor for seduction, and apparently, women aren't. Hitchens clearly doesn't listen to Beyonce. While "Irreplaceable" has a steely tone and traditionalist themes, it's pretty damn hilarious. Naturally, when the song opens "To the left, to the left" from a diva known for her swiveling, thoughts wander to instructive dancing. On the contrary-- Beyonce, more restrained than ever, simply put "everything you own in a box to the left." That's funny. Toying with expectation and convention, she's taken what could have been typical and made it smart and droll. Now if only her man could relocate his sense of humor. --Sean Fennessey
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Top 50 Track of 2004
10: Beyonce - Naughty Girl
In 2003, all the talk was about the 100% gold that was "Crazy in Love", but I secretly wondered how many tricks Beyonce had up (and under) her sleeve. Well, as it turns out, her lightning struck twice: Months after its release, this track is still on most pop radio playlists while other singles like "Baby Boy" and "Me, Myself and I" are not-- and for good reason. "Naughty Girl" absolutely burns. It doesn't overwhelm with a platinum production; rather, its minimal, Eastern-tinged flavor serves up Beyonce's declaration, "tonight, I'll be your naughty girl" like oil in a hot pan. Delicious and practically perfect. --Dominique Leone
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Top 50 Track of 2003
02: Beyonce [ft. Jay-Z] - Crazy in Love
It's an old condescending approach to describe pop music as a genre of transient pleasures, but on the flipside, it's worth noting when a hit song in heavy, heavy rotation takes months and months to grow stale. "Crazy in Love" was the time capsule song for summer 2003-- you couldn't escape it. I think even CMT had added it to the playlist by August. It didn't hurt that the song's message of twitterpation dovetailed nicely with real life, Jay-Z and Beyonce being the music world's answer to Ben & Jen. Of course, one couldn't help but pull for this relationship: the young diva inspiring Jay-Z shrug off the pimp life, with the wizened emcee that makes Beyonce's ass shake like that , where the upper body seems completely oblivious to the lower.
Hip-hop royalty deserves fanfare, so it's not surprising that big brassy horn blasts (courtesy of The Chi-Lites) is the axis on which "Crazy in Love" rotates. And as Hov's showstopping bridge suggests, hip-hop royalty should also wear chinchilla fur. But unlike those couples that insist upon making out in public despite the discomfort it causes others, Beyonce and Jay-Z's PDA is profoundly infectious. Join me in a toast to this new wedding staple for the soft drink demographic. --Rob Mitchum
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Top 200 Track of 1990's
155. Destiny's Child - Bills, Bills, Bills [Columbia; 1999]
"Bills Bills Bills" wasn't the first great piece of jittery post-Timbaland R&B, but it was the first to offer a performance that mirrored the hyper-finesse of the style's insectile stop-start surfaces. Beyonce (in lead) is as precise and syncopated as the beat as she vents ("don't know where none of these calls come from," she mimics, waving the phone bill in your face, "when your momma's number's here more than once!"). Behind her, Destiny's Child are inexhaustible in their contempt, while the creepy, stabbing harpsichord arrangement is unrelenting in its judgment. --Tim Finney
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Top 100 singles of 2000~04
074: Destiny's Child - Say My Name [Sony; 2000]
The fact (1) that every man, woman, and child in America can sing the vocal hook from this song despite the fact (2) that the beat and bassline sequence underneath that hook is so deeply tricked out and bizarre (we're talking deliriously fast doubletime offset snare runs on top of wah guitar, Martian sleighbells, lite classical string stabs and acoustic fingerpicking, y'all) could be called a testament to the ideological triumph of Ms. Knowles and company's yummy vocal delivery over the icily brilliant formalism of Rodney Jerkins' programming, were it not for the fact (3) that both the singing and the programming are shot through with the exact same precision-tooled logic of control-freak paranoia. Which is why this is such a distinctly American anthem. Facts are facts. --Drew Daniel
007: Beyonce [ft. Jay-Z] - Crazy in Love [Columbia; 2003]
All she really had to do was show up, right? She had the beat, the guest-rap, the chorus, the fucking pre-chorus; Beyonce's melody was as smooth as it was minimal as it was hard to actually mimic. She has better flow than Jay-Z here, and when she accuses her man of making a fool of her, it's as desperate a declaration of love as it is hard to believe. The track itself is a throwback, not to the disco anthems of Donna Summer but to the soul-symphonettes of Ike & Tina Turner and the Supremes, with more than a pinch of Aretha Franklin's fingerwagging-- not to mention her voice. Beyonce sings like everything is hopeless, but sounds on edge. "Uh oh, uh oh, uh oh, oh no-no," goes her mantra, and so goes the this song, spiraling down a drain where, at the bottom, sits love and lust and sweat, and yes, it's getting hot in here, and yes, we play this when things are getting really good after they were already incredible. A classic. --Mark Pytlik
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Best New Track
Beyonce - 1+1
By Brandon Soderberg; May 31, 2011
Among other things, Beyonce's "1+1" is a clever, of-the-moment update on Sam Cooke's "Wonderful World". Writer/producers Tricky Stewart and The-Dream retain the 1960 hit's "don't know much about algebra" line, but they scoop up that love song sentiment and plop it down into the perilous world of 2011. Cooke told his girl, "I know that if you love me too/ What a wonderful world this could be," while Beyonce, referencing death, war, and maybe even a pending apocalypse, knows that the world is chaos, and just hopes that love can still do what Sam Cooke promised. "Make love to me," she implores, mixing vulnerability and confidence, and then she even explains why you should: "When the world's at war/ That our love will heal us all."
But this Sam Cooke update is also a Prince homage. Specifically "Purple Rain" thanks to those delicate guitars, melodramatic piano, and Beyonce affecting the Purple One's high-register whimper a few times. But what could have been just a musical exercise for Stewart and The-Dream ("I don't know about guns/ But I've been shot by you" is a Prince-like head scratcher for sure) becomes something so much more for Beyonce. So she really digs in and sells the song's knotty qualities, and when that over-the-top guitar break appears exactly when it should, it's cathartic. At that precise moment, this passionate pastiche of timeless pop becomes a classic all its own.
Beyonce - Broken-Hearted Girl (Alan Braxe Dub Remix)
By David Raposa; October 20, 2009
Alan Braxe does (as Ryan Dombal calls it) bubble-gum disco; Beyonce does diva. In another time, with another track, perhaps these killer Bs could have joined forces and given this generation's Diana Ross her own "I'm Coming Out". Instead, Braxe can only get his hands on Sasha Fierce's "Broken-Hearted Girl", the sort of bathetic Hummer-sized show-stalling ballad that Beyonce's shown a debilitating fondness for. And Alan Braxe, being Alan Braxe, strips this Hummer down to its frame and takes only what he wants-- a bit of Beyonce's voice, a few of her words, and the song's bridge. He pays lip service to the source material by throwing in the chunks of the original's words-- they're sped up and made all sparkly to match its surroundings, but it's there. For the rest of the track, however, Braxe bends Beyonce's voice to his will, turning her brass-knuckle vocal flourishes into little gremlin-sized hiccups and burps as the song rises and falls and the synths ebb and flow and the wah-wah guitar wah-wahs and the beat goes on and on and on. If that description makes this remix sound a bit perfunctory, that's because it kinda is. Whether it's because Braxe is doing the same old voodoo that he did way back in the age of Discovery, or it's just the source material's ennui seeping into this club cut, there's something about this remix that's a little, well, broken.
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Top 40 Video of 2008
Single ladies
Top 25 Video of 2006
Ring the alram
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Album Review
Beyonce - B'Day (7.2) Sony; 2006
By Tim Finney; September 7, 2006
According to most reasonable criteria, Beyonce's second album B'Day is a success, outpacing her solo debut Dangerously in Love. Here, Beyonce delivers precisely what many listeners have always wanted from her: a short, tight, and energetic set that's heavy on upbeat numbers and funk affectations, and light on the balladry and melisma.
B'Day captures the r&b singer at her warmest and most in-the-moment: There's a certain ramshackle messiness to these grooves, elliptically orbiting the classic pop song in a manner more reminiscent of Amerie's "1 Thing" than Beyonce's sonically similar "Crazy in Love". Beyonce sounds more relaxed as a singer, expanding on the Tina Turner resemblances she's been toying with recently, her performances growing ever-more instinctive and unpredictable in their appropriations of soul hollering. Most radically, the siren-assisted caterwaul of second single "Ring the Alarm" sounds genuinely (and marvelously) incoherent, her voice thrillingly sharp with anxiety and paranoia.
Remaining in soul mama character throughout, her newfound expressiveness fits so hand-in-glove with Richcraft or Neptunes-style funk drum patterns and surging horns that even when she departs from this style sonically-- such as on the percussive, Diwali-esque jam "Get Me Bodied", or the stiffly blaring "Upgrade U"-- the shift feels negligible, and you can still hear the ghosts of horn sections. Beyonce's lyrics are also funnier and more idiosyncratic than ever: "I can do for you what Martin did for the people," she boasts on "Upgrade U"'s extreme makeover hard-sell, and I suspect she knows she's the only r&b singer who could deliver the line with a straight face.
So far so good, but what prevents this from being the classic pop album the above would suggest is that, well, Beyonce simply isn't making classic pop anymore. By resolving the criticisms of her earlier work (too strident, too deliberate, too driven) Beyonce has weakened her perfect pop technique. B'Day lacks the precision with which her earlier hits were crafted-- the alluring poise of "Baby Boy" is nowhere in evidence, and the glittering impregnability of the great Destiny's Child singles feels even more distant. B'Day sounds like an entire album of third and fourth singles, which is still better than an album of filler, but in a genre so overwhelmingly defined by its hit singles, a "Crazy in Love" or a "Baby Boy" can punch above its weight-- the consistency of "Deja Vu" in this regard becomes a double-edged sword.
Most of all, though, Beyonce just sounds too real here: It was her pitch-perfect plasticity which gave much of her earlier work its majestic aura, as if she had transcended ordinary goals in a narcissistic drive for perfection. Having voluntarily stepped down from her pedestal, she now struggles to inspire the same sense of awe: Her songs emote as intensely as before, but their emotions are all too human.
Ironically perhaps, this switch delivers its biggest pay-off, and B'Day's best song, with the ballad-of-sorts "Irreplaceable". It's as if, having lost the Midas touch of gleaming pop perfection, Beyonce has opened up the possibility of stumbling on brilliance by accident. "You must not know 'bout me/ I can have another you in a minute/ Matter-fact he'll be here in a minute," she boasts to a swiftly exiting lover, in a hopelessly unconvincing attempt at callous indifference. Before, Beyonce's approach to heartbreak was always literal, her voice and her words declaiming her feelings with a studied earnestness that at times was difficult to believe, let alone connect with. "Irreplaceable" is the first song in which Beyonce lies to herself, and the way her voice perfectly betrays that lie (revealing a giveaway tremble in the stiff upper lip of the lyrics) simultaneously renders it her most sophisticated and her most honest performance to date.
Beyonce - I Am... Sasha Fierce (5.7) Columbia; 2008
By Ryan Dombal; November 21, 2008
Though she's only 27, Beyonce goes out of her way to be an old-fashioned celebrity, the type offended by Pete Wentz blogging about Oscar the Grouch or Britney Spears Twittering her life away. "I feel that, especially now with the Internet and paparazzi and camera phones, it's so difficult to maintain mystery," she said earlier this year. "It's almost impossible to have superstars now, because people will never get enough." And, in our TMZ-addled world, her reluctance to entertain most questions about her personal life is both refreshing and a bit stubborn. She's a megawatt anachronism in sky-high heels and a frozen smile. So, without much outside interference, Beyonce's fan-artist connection relies almost wholly on her music-- the only place to find the "real" Beyonce is on her albums. With that direct relationship in mind comes I Am... Sasha Fierce, a supposed window into the soul of Beyonce as well as her hair-flipping sexpot alter ego who happens to be blessed with the ultimate "Project Runway" moniker.
The "split-personality" gimmick is now a tired and, more often than not, hapless pop theme (see: Garth Brooks's proto-emo character Chris Gaines, T.I. vs. T.I.P, the street vs. boardroom dynamic of hubby Jay-Z's Kingdom Come). Sasha Fierce will not disturb that unfortunate trend. Unlike 2006's underrated funk-fest B'Day, which held together remarkably well as an LP and saw Beyonce ditching sap for sass, this record isn't supposed to coalesce. Speaking once again to her penchant for the outdated and obsolete, it's a 2xCD affair also available in a deluxe edition with five additional tracks. (Didn't anyone tell her about Christina Aguilera's recent diva-fied double disc disappointment Back to Basics ... and that you're supposed to put the deluxe edition out six to eight months after the regular edition?) Sasha Fierce puts Beyonce back into the "singles artist" column-- only the blindly devout would consider slogging through the deluxe edition multiple times; only the foolishly puritanical would deny the occasional high-gloss super hits.
Nobody wins the Beyonce vs. Sasha battle-- often, the listener loses. On the Beyonce side, while tracks like the effective (and affecting) gender-bender "If I Were a Boy" and the stunning love-as-god power ballad "Halo" (courtesy of "Bleeding Love" scribe Ryan Tedder) find the singer both strident and exposed, there's lots of wispy nonsense seemingly dug out of Celine Dion's scrap pile. Her twist on "Ave Maria" is vocally impeccable, but it reads more like recital fodder rather than a true confessional. Flip to Sasha, which is more listenable overall, but also more pandering. There's the one that sounds like past Beyonce hits ("Single Ladies [Put a Ring on It]"), the one that sounds like "A Milli" ("Diva"), and the one that sounds like Rihanna ("Sweet Dreams"). For someone famous for effortlessly sparking trends, there are a surprising amount of opportunistic retreads here.
Beyonce is a capital-S Star, and one glimpse of her onstage makes it clear why she's earned her right to operate above the fray. But an album isn't a concert, and there are simply not enough Sasha Fierce songs worthy of her or our time. (The hopelessly benign "Smash Into You" will provide a prime bathroom break moment on her next world tour, though.) While this LP is more painstaking than B'Day, the extra effort dulls any emotional wallop; B'Day, in all its hectic glory, offered a much more vivid peek into the elusive mind of Beyonce than Sasha Fierce, which often reads more like projection than reality. Considering the wealth of characters this multi-talent is currently amassing between movies and alter egos, the notion of Beyonce is more splintered now than ever. Sasha Fierce doesn't help her put the pieces back together.
Beyonce - 4 (8.0) Columbia; 2011
By Ryan Dombal; June 28, 2011
One of the year's best music videos was directed by Jay-Z and cost about zero dollars to make. The camera phone clip shows Beyonce rehearsing her new album's opening eternal-love ballad, "1+1", backstage at "American Idol". There she is: eyes shut, standing in front of a mirror, singing her guts out while family and friends look on in quiet awe. The video has a similar impromptu charm to the many intimate, one-shot performance clips popularized by Vincent Moon's "Take Away Show", its appeal compounded by the shock of seeing such a notoriously manicured superstar without embellishment. "Help me let down my guard," she belts. And, as Beyonce finishes the song, you hear her proud husband let out a joyous "woo!" It's all quite endearing and personal-- two words one might not often associate with this superhumanly talented and famous couple. "Sometimes you need perspective," wrote Jay in an intro to the video on his Life + Times website. "You've been right in front of greatness so often that you need to step back and see it again for the first time."
It's a fitting sentiment and song to introduce 4, which largely deals with monogamy and all that comes with committing to one person for a potential lifetime. Which, like a bad marriage, might sound boring, repetitive, staid. But, in Beyonce's more-than-capable and still-in-love hands, a relationship that lasts can seem as complicated and rewarding as anyone would hope. "If I ain't got something, I don't give a damn/ 'Cause I got it with you," she testifies on "1+1"-- potentially dubious words from a woman who certainly has "something," but her mainlined vocals quickly dismiss mere logistics. The song boasts some of her finest-ever singing laid over a bed of warm and flowing synths, strings, and bass that manages to connect the dots between Sam Cooke and Prince without sacrificing any Beyonce-ness. "1+1" is that rare wonder: a wedding song that pleases but doesn't pander.
The only recent pop ballad that comes close to its power is Adele's stunning "Someone Like You". But where that song-- and its massively successful corresponding album, 21-- wrung out the aftermath of young heartbreak, Beyonce is aiming for something a bit more challenging with 4: love the one you're with, and have some fun doing it, too. The album's relative riskiness extends to its music, which side-steps Top 40 radio's current Eurobeat fixation for a refreshingly eclectic mix of early-90s R&B, 80s lite soul, and brass'n'percussion-heavy marching music. All of the album's best elements, thematically and sonically, burst ahead on Jay-Z ode "Countdown", a honking, stutter-step sequel of sorts to "Crazy in Love". The new track makes 10 years of loyalty seem just as thrilling as the first time, with Beyonce offering her partner copious praise in that famed half-rap cadence: "Still love the way he talks/ Still love the way I sing/ Still love the way he rock them black diamonds in that chain."
The album's carefree retro sensibility pops up on three more highlights, including the Kanye West-assisted "Party", which combines a pitch-perfect Andre 3000 guest verse, a Slick Rick sample, bubbly 80s keyboard tones, and 90s girl-group harmonies. The track has Beyonce infatuated once again while its mid-tempo bounce provides prime summer barbecue background. "Love on Top" lilts like a lost Reagan-era smash, its light-as-air bop recalling Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, and Stevie Wonder at their sunniest. And "End of Time" is perhaps 4's most strident declaration of co-dependence; sounding like En Vogue remixed by a high school pep band, the song has Beyonce finding the strength in two as she sings, "I just wanna be with you/ I just wanna live for you/ I'd never let you go!" That track-- along with most of 4's stand outs-- was co-written and co-produced by the star's other invaluable partner, Terius "The-Dream" Nash.
The pair first combined forces on super hit "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)", but their collaborative relationship fully blooms on this album's ramped-up back half, including the bombastic, Major Lazer-sampling empowerment tract "Run the World (Girls)". As a songwriter, The-Dream has a way of drawing out a side of Beyonce that's both more personal and brash, and, as seen on his several brilliant solo albums, his production style routinely references past greats while standing in the now. Tellingly, without his help the album stumbles, as on the overblown "I Was Here", a faceless, theoretically-inspirational slog written by veteran schlockmeister Diane Warren. (Unsurprisingly, "I Was Here" is the only cut on the record that wasn't co-written by Beyonce herself, too.) Elsewhere, Babyface spearheads the decent "Irreplaceable" retread "Best Thing I Never Had", which probably wouldn't sound out-of-place on a Vanessa Carlton album, and Sleepy Jackson/Empire of the Sun leader Luke Steele worked on the ungainly "Rather Die Young", which ruins its Philly soul vibe with a theatrical Broadway glaze. (Steele also contributed an awful hook on Jay-Z's Blueprint 3 trash-can bait "What We Talkin' About"-- can we get him away from this couple, please?)
Ironically, 4's deluxe edition comes with three bonus songs that would easily count among the proper album's finest moments. Chiefly, The-Dream co-written/produced "Schoolin' Life" is an irresistible Prince tribute that's much more motivational than "I Was Here" could ever be: "Who needs a degree when you're schoolin' life?" struts Beyonce. The singer has said she recorded more than 60 songs while making 4, and some of the wrong-headed inclusions are lazy attempts at re-creating her past hits. But they are few. And the lion's share of the album-- along with its excellent deluxe tracks-- has one of the world's biggest stars exploring her talent in ways few could've predicted, which is always exciting. After 2008's I Am... Sasha Fierce, which saw Beyonce catching up to trends when she wasn't trying Streisand-wannabe ballads, 4 is more akin to her wily sophomore solo album, B'Day. But where that record was preoccupied with the club, 4 is happy at home; on Off the Wall-style bonus track "Lay Up Under Me", the contented 29-year-old gushes, "You ain't gotta worry 'bout a club, just come on lay up under me tonight." If anyone can make a quiet Friday night come off like an open-bar blowout, it's Beyonce.