Beyoncé's Jealous

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 Jealous

IT'S BEYONCÉ WEEK, BITCH! I'll do a Beyoncé song today and then next week when it's her birthday.

When Beyoncé's self-titled was released, I was young and a punk rocker. I think that was around the time I was listening to Sleater-Kinney's debut, and Kinney announced they were reuniting and were in the process of writing "No Cities to Love" (2015). A friend and I were texting and I think she referenced a meme involving the aforementioned album. When I asked if the album was any good, she said, "Of course". So, despite having eschewed all pop music because, y'know, I was hardcore, I sought the album out, beginning from "Pretty Hurts".

That was how I found out what makes an album great. That day was a misty, foggy day in upstate New York; you could hear the rain strike the window. I went through "Pretty Hurts", "Haunted", "Drunk in Love", "Blow", then "No Angel". "No Angel" was when I started thinking. I thought, "This is blowing me away." While it was blowing me away, I couldn't think of anything, because I was listening to the music.

That's how you know an album's great: you do way more listening than thinking. If music is really great, you just don't think at all. The music does the thinking for you. After all, it has far more depth than you do as a human being. I think I stopped, texted her back, and listened from the top again, confirming I was not wrong.

2013's radio was dominated by, let's see, Katy Perry's "Brave", Demi Lovato's "Heart Attack", Lorde's "Royals", Daft Punk's "Get Lucky", Capital Cities' "Safe and Sound". I mean no offense to these artists: it's no wonder I disregarded pop. Those are all songs you can analyze deeply as far as technical execution goes, but beyond that they're not interesting as far as meaning goes.

"Pretty Hurts" hits hard. It's Beyoncé taking a golf club and smashing it into the glass case that contained all her beauty pageant trophies. A lot of female artists have tackled on the subject of judgment. It's typically approached with indignation (see: Hole's "Miss World") or suffering (see: Taylor Swift's "I Can Do It With A Broken Heart"). Beyoncé, ironically with the poise from her beauty pageant days, gets the balance exactly. Fucking. Right. The indignation causes suffering and the suffering causes indignation. When you listen to it, you get it exactly. There's no high horse, there's no self-flagellation. It's just art.

The moment "Haunted" starts is the moment Beyoncé and your perception of Beyoncé is shed forever. This is the point of no return. This is no radio diva any longer. This is no artist pretending they make high "art"; she still believes in pleasure, as is indicated by the drum, even when she's in a funk. You see, the depression fuels desire, and it works the other way around. But you're definitely in her world, and she'll introduce you to a world of Eno-esque guitars if she wants to. That's what makes Beyoncé great: she never abandoned the ideas of popular music, but sonically she carved and is carving her own lane. That takes a lot of guts. It also takes incredible tight-rope walking. By gum, she has done so.

Alright, I can't talk about "Beyoncé" forever.

Well, OK, one more: I stopped at "No Angel" because I expected "Drunk in Love" and "Blow". Horny songs were expected. But "No Angel" was a real attempt by Beyoncé to break herself down into a human. That was when I realized she was speaking on a different level. Anyway, I digress.

That rumbling synth introducing the song is one of the many reasons why I choose this song out of the many great songs on "Beyoncé". That bum-bum-crash mimics the sound of thunder or a heart attack, and appropriately at its end is a nameless scream.

I'm in my penthouse half-naked,
I cook this meal for you naked,
so where the hell you at?

So Beyoncé sings with simmering desire; upon reaching the "where the hell you at?" she gives a masterful performance, the 'ell' sung a little more sharply, before reining in the passion with "you at?" as if grappling with her genuine confusion. She then sings, "There's just one last shot left of this drink, / in this glass, don't make me break", bubbling in quiet anger, not boiling over completely as that is the victory of the object of her ire.

THIS is jealousy. It's running through every thought in the night contemplating what everyone else is doing that you can't do, beause you're who you are. It's powerlessness. It's fear. It's resentment. Most of all, it's vengeful. She's almost operatic here, with the slight intonations of her voice.

The song changes face again - this is a true rollercoaster of emotion - as she turns to depression, singing,

I wish that you were me,
so you could feel this feeling.
I never broke one promise,
and I know when you not honest,
now you got me yelling,
that's because I'm jealous.

As she turns his thoughts over and over in the loneliness of her room, she considers why her lover isn't thinking about her, what she has done to deserve this, to deserve this treatment of him to her and to deserve generally her immense sadness, then finally, after realizing the issue isn't about morality or karmic punishment, she allows herself to be human, she allows herself her raging emotions, she becomes human and admits she is jealous. A character arc in TWO VERSES, and every part of it is facilitated by masterful singing. Of particular note is when her voice breaks out in "not honest", when she undergoes a major emotional shift.

The chorus,

Sometimes I wanna walk in your shoes,
do the type of things that I never, ever do,
so I take one look in the mirror, and say to myself,
"Baby girl, you can't survive like this."

As many have noted, this inherits from the themes of "If I Were a Boy" from "I AM...SASHA FIERCE" (2008). Where "If I Were a Boy", musically, is bright, "Jealous" dwells on the darkness of the idea.

Note how much longer the lines are here than in the verses. The longer thoughts are nearly prosaic, and denote revelation, as if her thoughts are allowed to breathe. These are the indulgences one writes in one's diary, and which contain indisputable truth concerning the writer.

And I ain't missed a beat, boy,
you been hanging out all night,
I'm staying out 'til tomorrow,
dancing on them tables,
ain't got no cares, no sorrows.

I ran into my ex,
said "What up?" to his besties,
now we reminiscing how we flex in Texas,
now don't be jealous.

It's disputed whether the events here are real or imagined. It doesn't matter. This is the reversal of the karmic thoughts the singer had in the previous verses; she is indulging herself in the same way her lover is, with the power he is enjoying at the moment that he is holding over her. This makes for a very lovely, pretty brilliant song structure, where the first part of the song is defenestration and the second part is empowerment.

Then the third part:

And I hate you for your lies and your covers,
and I hate us for making good love to each other,
and I love making you jealous, but don't judge me,
and I know that I'm being hateful but that ain't nothing,
I'm just jealous, I'm just human,
don't judge me...

Y'know, now that we're a decade apart from these lyrics, I'm not sure what to make of them. It's obvious that the singer is repenting for her real or imagined escapades, disempowering herself after she liberated herself. This is way before the MeToo movement, so it could be Beyoncé trying to protect herself morally from the audience in her mind. Or, this is Beyoncé's extremely clever way of depicting female weaknesses, that women bear the worse pain as far as needing to look moral in their own eyes.

I actually don't know what Bey is trying to accomplish here, but my ears do. My brain knows it fits the song perfectly, enhanced by the blazing outro that feels like a reckless car ride through the darkened city streets. The singer wants escape, she longs to free herself from this condition, of jealousy, of anger, of her dependence on her man. How she chooses to do so is up to the listener's interpretation. That. Is. Absolutely. Fine. And, I may add: what. A. Fucking. Amazing. Song.

No one should bother writing songs about jealousy anymore. This is the one. No one will ever come close to the precise rhythm, the precise arc of jealousy as Beyoncé has hear with "Jealous". Don't even fucking try. Jealousy, that evil little emotion, has been given so much beautiful breath that it doesn't deserve, that it hasn't seen since Mozart wrote "The Marriage of Figaro".

Alright, I'm exaggerating just a smidge, but it's a truly great song. Even touching these songs, I get the shivers. This is an artist smashing a ceiling for what music can sound like. Shards of glass are still falling. What was left for mere mortals to accomplish, Bey? And this is only the first ceiling. In three years, Beyoncé would shatter music one more time.