Beyoncé's Hold Up

I've given myself the task of writing about one song a week for 2024 because, well, I think it'd be fun.

Beyoncé's Hold Up

Happy birthday, Beyoncé.

By 2016, I was still living under a rock. I only knew Beyoncé had a new release when my sister mentioned it. That same night, with the apartment darkened but the bulb of the kitchen, I listened hermetically to Beyoncé's "Lemonade".

"Hold Up" is a continuation of "Jealous". If anyone recalls the "Lemonade" film, Beyoncé at the end of "Pray You Catch Me" descends into the dark waters. When "Hold Up" formally starts, she emerges out of the waters in a blazing gold dress. The plucked guitar of Andy Williams' "Can't Get Used to Losing You" is in heavy contrast to the dark pulses of "Jealous". "Jealous" is the faint glimmerings of pain, right before it really starts to hurt. "Hold Up" is the final culmination of that pain, the madness it brings, and the things that must break from it.

No one can forget that image of Beyoncé: bearing a baseball bat, a barefoot valkyrie smashing cars and fire hydrants. A woman with a red cup laughs in shocked awe at the sound of the impact we can't hear; children dance in the aftermath. The Freudian concept is that the setting of the singer's mind regresses into this bright, idyllic setting created for the sole purpose of her destroying it. Of note, too, is that the song is not busy; in fact, the silence between the plucks of the guitar is deafening.

Every verse is tense, even when foregrounded to the bright, jangly guitar and the airhorns.

Something don't feel right, because it ain't right,
especially coming up after midnight;
I smell your secrets, and I'm not too perfect
to ever feel this worthless.

Again, compared to "Jealous", the conclusion is long foregone. Indignation has descended and if there is no God in the heavens the singer is a very fucking close second.

I love that "something don't feel right, because it ain't right". The very concept of the song, again, is madness. Madness is distinct from being mad, but it is indeed the ultimate expression of anger. One can only be driven howling dirt mad when one cannot resolve the contradictions of the world and, more importantly, the contradictions within themselves. "Jealous" is realization; "Hold Up" begins when the singer takes that realization and finds she can't accept that truth unless she destroys herself, her beliefs and her history. And if she must break, then she's going to take everything down with her.

Yet the other element that makes "Hold Up" interesting is the sudden zeal for life. Where other kinds of madness lead to despondency and depression, the singer flares. That "I'm not too perfect / to ever feel this worthless" is another brilliant lyric. The madness could be entertained by a retreat from life, but the singer, against all odds, finds herself swinging back.

How did it come down to this? Scrolling through your call list,
I don't want to lose my pride but I'mma fuck me up a bitch.
Know that I kept it sexy, know that I kept it fun,
there's something that I'm missing, maybe my head for one.

That slight increase of the tempo for "How did it come down to this?" Perfect. As I had mentioned in "Jealous", Beyoncé has a knack for the operatic. The quickened heartbeat is followed by the grunting mutter of "I don't want to lose my pride ..." Of worthy attention is the prosaic nature of the lyrics; these lines are longer than the ones in most pop songs. Rather than focusing merely on the emotions of the moment, she wants to wrap you up in the narrative, she desires to show herself as a human being as you are.

Now, the greatest lines of 2016:

What's worse? Looking jealous or crazy, jealous or crazy?
Or like, being walked all over lately, walked all over lately,
I'd rather be crazy.

The last line is about a third in length of the lines prior to it, but it's still fitting rhythmically. It certainly fits dramatically, opening up the chorus in an exhalation of frustration.

I love that dualism of "jealous or crazy" so much, as if they can be distinguished from one another. The audience can immediately see which of the singer's thoughts arise from jealousy and which from sheer paranoia. The schoolyard sing-song approach for the chorus too aids in the formation of the picture that the singer is losing her mind. Then that slight but visible, teeth-gritted transition to "being walked all over lately" ... it's beautiful.

I find something deeply human about that "walked all over lately". Why "lately"? Has this issue really only popped up in the last few weeks, last few months? Do affairs only flare up and smolder in so short a course? My interpretation is: it's not so much the affair that bothers her - oh, of course it bothers her immensely! - but, in the course of recalling her interactions with her husband in the morning, she feels they were all sprinkled with lies. This is the direct consequence of the betrayal, rather than the long-term effect. He said "I love you" in the morning, but this was a lie; in his mind he knew whom he was meeting later, and in the mind of the singer she can't help but ascribe all the demeaning emotions, as condescension, as meanness, that he hid from her. This contradiction, focusing on the small, avoiding the big implications, is conveyed in these four words.

There is an undercurrent of the deity in this song. I believe Ezra Koenig's "They don't love you like I love you" was initially about God, which tracks for Koenig. One could see in the song a woman who vies, to the point of obsession, of being perfect, only to be destroyed by the things she cannot control. She is ultimately a powerless goddess. Which ties in the album's overall feminist themes.

If we're constricting this write-up to the song's themes, there's not much more to say that hasn't been said about the song's other verses. From a technical viewpoint, holy shit, how can Beyoncé wring out so many different emotions in this song? Writing needs variation, and Beyoncé delivers in three differing perspectives, emotionally to philosophically, on the issue. The first verse is perfectly designed, putting the audience right in the action and the moment when the singer loses it; the second verse is a fictive essay on the circumstances and destiny that led them to meet, so you don't dare betray me motherfucker (which also goes to show that SHE puts waaay more stock into their history together than he does); the third verse reframes the narrative back to her and all the energy she has put into the relationship. The song flows like an argument. This is too much for a pop song. This is singer-songwriter territory. Someone has to lock Bey up for murdering the entire competition.

The end of the song is the final regression. "I hop up out of bed and get my swag on, / I look in the mirror, say What's up? / What's up, what's up, what's up."

The sample of "Can't Get Used to Losing You" is fitting; the real dilemma of the song, beneath the expression of rage, is the fear that the singer must listen to reality and lose her partner. Andy's song is the fearful sequel of "Hold Up". (Y'know, I hadn't heard "Can't Get Used to Losing You" until now. The song itself deserves its own write-up.)

Who wrote better stories than Beyoncé in that decade? I can't think of any other song that felt as real to me, like I'm there with her, as I feel I'm there with her now listening to it, a song that feels as urgent to the audience as it is to the singer. (I say "stories" because I am trying to practice separating the art from the person, even though the second verse is clearly about HOV.) You're with her. You feel that same transportation as when Bob is tangled up in blue, when Joni feels she is just like this train, when Tracy is in a fast car. You feel that same exhilaration when you hear a song about a situation you can't even come close to understanding, but do at the song's end. I'm not a black woman married to Jay-Z (or JAY-Z), but I'm also not Joni's trouble child, breaking like the waves at Malibu (you better fucking believe we're gonna talk about Joni come November). This is art. What else can we call it? What else do we call "art"? That Beyoncé planted these immense trees in a genre once considered niche is astounding. Almost always an artist is given an opportunity; some seize it; it happens their lives, up to that point, culminate into something coherent. Beyoncé built a fucking four-lane highway, not just into R&B, but into modern music. The unfortunate thing about Beyoncéland is that no one else measures up. Here's an odd observation I've made, possibly more about myself than the audience's taste: more than a third of my favorite albums of 2010s was created by a high-profile artist (Fiona Apple, Kanye, Beyoncé, JAY-Z). 2000s, much lower rate; only one, in Radiohead's "Hail to the Thief". This is not true at all for the 2020s; my list is dominated by artists who skirt the limelight but stay firmly in the darkness. There may be two exceptions: Fiona Apple's "Fetch The Bolt Cutters", for it is entirely possible now is the time to fall in love with it, and 2024's album, which spot may be grabbed by THE album of the summer, created by an artist who so richly deserves the recognition.

Beyoncé doesn't have to do anything anymore. She can eat as many cheddar biscuits and calamari at Red Lobster as she wants. There is indeed a point where no one needs to expect anything from an artist anymore, they have distilled so much of their essence into their oeuvre. She has entered immortality. Maybe she should, so that people can have some hope to achieve new frontiers in music before she does.

Which is why I am perfectly content with her recent projects, "Renaissance" (2022) and "Cowboy Carter" (2024). Both are diffuse and messy, and thus I don't enjoy them as much as I enjoy the cohesiveness strength of "Beyoncé" and "Lemonade". I see her earlier albums as about herself, which means it's about us, the listener. I see her later albums as being about society and how blackness fits in it. This can be interesting. I say, the messiness is capital G Good. The messiness is messy but it's not confused and incoherent as Kanye's output since 2016. The messiness means she's exploring new ways of using her voice. This is an excellent thing for an artist to do; this means she's still taking her career seriously and hasn't settled yet. I'll always be in her corner until she starts her acting career. (Actually, Beyoncé might make a good actress. Something to think about.)

I forgot "Love Drought" existed and I'm wondering why the hell I didn't write about that instead.