Single Review: Beyoncé - Break My Soul

Beyoncé dropped a new single over the Juneteenth weekend. It turned out to be a house song, to run out the last couple of weeks of Pride month and kick off the Summer. This bitch knew exactly what she was doing.

Let’s rewind real quick though. Because I think we need to.

Beyoncé. A house song!?

Yes bitch.

And as much adoration as Beyoncé is getting for her foray into house music, it is also getting her a whole lotta backlash. But she’s probably going to have her biggest chart hit since “Halo”. So she really won’t give a fuck about no backlash. Especially when the extent of it is just dislike of the song.

Beyoncé doing house or club music doesn’t feel weird or alienating. At least not to me, as somebody who still listens to the Maurice Joshua remix of Destiny’s Child’s “Illusion”, and whose favourite song on self-titled was the four on the floor jam “Haunted”. But the Tricky Stewart produced and Robin S sampling “Break My Soul” being so divisive, even within the Beyhive, is no surprise.

Beyoncé has long been known for having a certain sound. So for her to pivot with it now, and to pivot to a sound which is so far removed from anything she’s done before, it’s going to put fans off. Understandable. And if the response to The Gift is anything to go by, then there is already a section of the hive who will willingly skip albums and singles of Beyoncé’s where she deviates from what had become her signature sound. Beyoncé has kinda brought this on herself.

I like Beyoncé. I would consider myself a fan. But I’ve always been a fan more so off of Beyoncé’s talent as a singer, a performer and a star, than her music. Beyoncé has songs I adore. But I always felt that Beyoncé’s talent far exceeded the quality of music that she put out. I always felt she sold herself short musically for too long when it came to albums - opting to stay in boxes which allowed her to stay getting airplay on ‘urban’ radio and pop radio, without leaning so far out that she’d lose airplay on urban radio. It’s why I Am… Sasha Fierce ended up being what it was - because Beyoncé wouldn’t commit to the I Am… side outright. And I feel that this is why we ended up with Lady Gaga on “Video Phone” and not “Radio”, which would not only would have been a better fit for Lady Gaga, but would have give Beyoncé a better shot at a hit comparable to “Telephone”. Only from her self-titled album did we finally get Beyoncé teetering out into different genres and fully embracing them; something that she pushed further with Lemonade, which worked wonders for her on songs such as “Don’t Hurt Yourself” and especially “Daddy Lessons”.

I won’t crucify Beyoncé for making these choices so late, because it’s better late than never. So, props to a bitch for finally taking the dive. And house is a good fit for Beyoncé. I’ve been wanting Oontzyoncé for years. House has long had a commercial adjacency to pop, so it gives Beyoncé an easy shot at a chart hit. And house is Black as hell, so it works with the narrative that Beyoncé has been building over the years. And whilst “Break My Soul” is very much engineered to be a hit, it doesn’t feel like some left-field song choice, or like a desperate attempt in the wake of songs that Beyoncé has released over the past few years. It all makes sense.

But enough about Beyoncé’s journey to the House of oontz. Is “Break My Soul” any good? Well, yes. But.

Beyoncé | Break My Soul

There’s a meticulousness and cleverness to “Break My Soul” that I can’t fault. The fact that there is a rap on the second verse to switch things up. That a Big Freedia bounce song is sampled throughout, so the gworls can actually shake their ass to a house song. That Beyoncé approaches singing a house song like it’s an R&B song, with a hint of gospel…and then flat out gospel. There are lots of elements that come together to make “Break My Soul” more than just a generic house song. But the crazy thing is, is that to some it will STILL sound like nothing more than a generic House song - which is down to how seamlessly all of the different elements that make up “Break My Soul” come together. It doesn’t sound like a very obvious Frankenstein of the varied genres that make up its DNA, which is both a good and a bad thing.

There are so many neat little details in “Break My Soul”, many of them stemming from the production. Tricky Stewart’s productions are always solid and super tight. Even when he has the most simple sounding song, there are nuances and layers to the arrangements and production. Just listen to a song like “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)”, which he also produced. It sounds like nothing but kicks and handclaps at a surface level. But musically, it’s actually pretty dense, even when you take the contributions of Beyoncé’s musicality out of it. “Break My Soul”? Same shit. Lots of subtleties and choices in the production when you really sit and listen to it, which make the song feel richer. Despite the repetitiveness of the song (and house music in general), “Break My Soul” never feels repetitive to the point that it bores or feels too monotonous, because there’s always some form of variation which is occurring in the song. And this leads into how Beyoncé herself approaches the song, almost as though she’s matching Tricky’s approach with it. Or maybe it was the other way around. For instance, the chorus features a total of five times, but Beyoncé sings it differently each time, as opposed to the standard approach of chorus vocals just being copied and pasted. And the background vocal arrangements are also different each time. The second verse? It features a rap. And despite “Break My Soul” clocking in at four and a half minutes, the song never drags or feels like it’s trying to push its runtime.

But the one thing that I feel defines “Break My Soul” however, isn’t the genre hop or even Tricky Stewart’s stellar production. It’s Beyoncé’s voice. She sounds so fucking good on this song. Perhaps barely anybody streamed The Gift. Maybe everybody was so focused on Black Is King. Or maybe everybody was still in a state of shock that Disney managed to get Beyoncé to do press for The Lion King. But her voice was very different on The Gift compared to Lemonade. If you weren’t aware of how much Beyoncé’s voice had changed, then you will definitely notice it on “Break My Soul”, and house seems to really highlight it. Beyoncé sounds amazing here. Beyoncé has always sounded good. But there’s a richness and fullness to her voice now which just makes her sound even better, and she seems to be in a place where she is indulging in it, which is great. Not all singers accept big changes in their voice, and stubbornly continue to stay trying to sing as they once could, which in turn damages their voice. But Beyoncé has always been a smart singer, and I’m glad to see that this hasn’t changed. 

Another aspect of Beyoncé’s singing that I always liked were her vocal arrangements. But these felt pared back on her self-titled album, pared back even more on Lemonade, and were non-existent on The Gift. So it’s nice to hear Beyoncé bring her old style vocal arrangements back again. It helps “Break My Soul” still feel like a Beyoncé song, despite it being a very different Beyoncé song.

Whilst I really REALLY like the elements that make up “Break My Soul”, something about the entire thing itself still feels lacking to me on occasion. Sometimes I listen to “Break My Soul” and I’m fully into the song, and think it’s great. And then other times I find it lazy and think ‘Could Beyoncé have not given more than this!?’. And I think the reason for me landing here, is that house music as a genre is so broad. And yet, despite how masterfully I feel the song is put together, the end result still manages to feel…a little too basic. Basic doesn’t always equal bad. Sometimes basic is best. But “Break My Soul” does feel like an entry level house song. This makes sense for it being Beyoncé’s first foray into the genre, but it also makes the song feel less special. The special factor is that Beyoncé is on the song. Not necessarily the song itself. SO many people have sampled and interpolated the StoneBridge remix of Robin S’s “Show Me Love”. Charli XCX only put out a song in March of this year which sampled the damn thing. And me being in the UK, where house music has never really left the airwaves, charts, or the clubs; I feel like I hear a new version of “Show Me Love”, or a song that samples it every year or so.

I bounce between wishing that Beyoncé and co. had given me more, and feeling the right call was made for this to be Oontzyoncé’s introduction to the world. On one hand it’s risky. Far more risky than I’d expect from Beyoncé musically. On the other hand it’s safe, as Beyoncé’s music has always been. But the one thing I could never say is that I think the song is bad. Because there’s too much about the song that I like to ever think that. And in terms of how the song makes me feel, it ticks all of the boxes. I can’t stay still when I listen “Break My Soul”. It just commands that I move. And the lyrics being about self-love, self-acceptance and walking away from a toxic workplace, it speaks to me and makes me feel good about myself and decisions I’ve made to prioritise my heart and mental well-being. I genuinely did quit a job with NOTHING to go to, because of how much of a toll it was exacting on me mentally. So it’s real.

Beyoncé | Break My Soul

I think “Break My Soul” is going to be one of those songs where the appreciation of it releasing over the Juneteenth weekend, releasing during pride month, the discourse it has sparked over house music, and the preferential racism of white gays and how they only like house music when its packaged a certain way, is gong to be the legacy of the song more than the song itself. And I don’t think Beyoncé would be mad at that. Sparking conversations seems to be a big part of what Beyoncé seeks from the music she puts out these days. And in true Beyoncé fashion, “Break My Soul” features enough memeable and quotable moments which will have it stay in pop culture conversations and undoubtedly become slogans for merch - the same way that ‘Surfboard’ and ‘watermelon’ were popularised by “Drunk in Love”, and Red Lobster was popularised by “Formation”. Now we’ve got Beyoncé telling people to quit their jobs, because she said she quit her 9 to 5, and talkin’ about ‘Queens in the front and doms in the back’.

“Break My Soul” is probably gonna be a grower for me, as is the case with all of Beyoncé’s singles. I’m never big on her lead singles initially, but they do end up growing on me later on. Well, except for “Run the World (Girls)”. But I can foresee myself becoming obsessed with “Break My Soul” at some point. And if I were in the club and it came on, I would absolutely buss down and duckwalk across the floor. Well. If my knees allowed for such a thing.

Hopefully “Break My Soul” is just a surface scratch of what Oontzyoncé will deliver on Renaissance.

VERDICT: OU’SIDE