With an opening that is instantly identifiable to any 90s music scholar as Robin S.’ “Show Me Love” (which Charli XCX also recently took to sampling more conspicuously), it’s clear that Beyoncé’s “Break My Soul,” like most music of the past two decades, is relying on nostalgia to bolster its already assured success. For even Bey can see that modern times are shite, and would prefer to think of more carefree days (which are generally few and far between for Black people in America before the 70s). And that’s really saying something when a celebrity has to stop and pay attention long enough to shift their sonic tone so palpably into the past.
While Bey isn’t the first to “pay homage” to a genre of the beloved decade, no one quite so “at the forefront” of Top 40 has dared to go all-out with house interpolations. But, like another hyper-calculated star named Taylor once said, “I come back stronger than a 90s trend.” And if anything was trending in the 90s, it was house music and vogueing (the gay male equivalent of peanut butter and jelly). Both of which Madonna brought into popular consciousness with, what else, “Vogue,” in addition to serving up various house-oriented singles (not to mention their often Junior Vasquez-remixed iterations) throughout the Clintonian era. Indeed, Madonna has recently revived her own 90s club hits, “Deeper and Deeper” and “Ray of Light” for the purposes of remixing them for a fifty-track compilation called Finally Enough Love. For if anyone loved and appreciated house music in its time and place, it was Madonna (who often takes a shine to playing the prototypical hit of the genre, “Good Life” by Inner City, in many of her social media posts). A consistent ally for the gay community.
But, of course, Bey will get all the credit for, like, “inventing” house because she’s more “likable”—or whatever. And she had the good business sense to hit up both sets of marginalized demographics in time for Juneteenth and Pride-heavy spiritedness. Granted, it’s up for debate as to whether Yoncé truly qualifies as a gay icon (before the daggers fly, this is when taking into account the HERO debacle of 2015 and the fact that she gleefully sang “Cater 2 U”—which, actually, many gay men can get on board with as a boudoir sentiment). Because, based on history, before the LGBTQIA+ population, Beyoncé values the Black community above any other. If one happens to be Black and queer, then lucky for them this song came around.
All that said, Bey falls prey to something she’s done so often in the past: pretend to know what the fuck it’s like out there for the common man, and really sell it with vocal earnestness. This isn’t to denigrate all the hard work she’s done her entire life to get where she is, but it wasn’t the kind of work she’s trying to relate to on this particular number. It happened on her 2013 self-titled album, when she feigned identifying with the working set via the lyrics on a hidden track called “Ghost” that offered, “All the people on the planet working nine to five just to stay alive, how come?” Um, does someone need to tell Beyoncé about capitalism and how she’s benefitted from it precisely because of such office workers having the income to buy her shit or…? Other out-of-touch declarations (also related to the soul) come when she announces at the end of the same track, “Soul not for sale/Prolly won’t make no money off this/Oh well.” Naturally, the album sold almost a million copies worldwide on iTunes within the first three days of its surprise release (with Bey helming the notion of the “surprise drop”).
This was also when Life Is But A Dream came out. Which critics didn’t take too kindly to, at a time when it was still permissible not to bow down (bitches) full-stop to every project the singer released—which is actually the mistake a certain critic took one step too far via the article entitled “Why Beyoncé Makes Me Want to Die.” Not the best headline for an album that solidified Bey’s deification. For it truly was after 2013 that a person—least of all a white male—could never dare to say anything negative about America’s true queen (despite what Kim Kardashian thinks about herself).
The aforementioned documentary tellingly features a heavy emphasis on being oppressed by her father for so long (i.e., “Daddy made me dance”). This much is made clear when she decides to break away from him as her manager, at which time she stares into the camera and tells us, “I feel like my soul has been tarnished.” So yeah, she’s been on this “you won’t break my soul” mantra for a while now. Perhaps as a direct result of letting it be tarnished during that period when her father was Joe Jackson-ing it.
With “Break My Soul,” Beyoncé is inclined to provide outright advice about (not) working as opposed to just wondering why people do at all. As the quintessential “lift me up” song (complete with the word “motivation” wielded multiple times), she once again tends to speak on things she can’t much connect with as she insists everyone should simply “release” their jobs. As though that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for her own livelihood, being that fans need money if they’re going to keep celebrities accustomed to a certain lifestyle. And although they say money is the root of all evil, it’s actually really helpful when you have lots of it already to preserve what’s left of said soul so that it doesn’t get sucked away entirely by middle management. Which is why Bey is giving out this “sound counsel” with a straight face, yet not offering to provide financial aid to those who would heed her recommendation and quit working (honestly, the first step to “release the anger”). A class action lawsuit feels imminent.
Another odd detail is that it took so many co-writers to come up with the song’s lines, including The-Dream, Christopher Stewart, Jay-Z, Allen George, Fred McFarlane (team Robin S.), Adam Pigott and, that’s right, Big Freedia. Did it really require seven additional heads apart from Beyoncé’s to invoke, “I just quit my job/Damn they work me so damn hard”? These lyrics are semi geared toward identifying with the “Great Resignation” trend (one that no one seemed to want to reveal the secret to in terms how they did it…apart from having a magical “savings” stashed away). A phenomenon that happened after Covid, while Jay and Bey were yachting. Beyoncé loses the thread of attempted post-Covid relevancy when she throws it back to the 90s not just sonically, but with reference to antiquated cubicle hours via the lines, “Work by nine/Then off past five”—seeming to have forgotten that Covid permanently opened the floodgates on more flexible work hours. Elsewhere, like Anna Delvey, she claims, “I’m building my own foundation,” as opposed to working that nine to five nonsense that Dolly Parton already has the monopoly on lamenting. Mainly because it was more real back when she was singing about it.
Itself a falsity, Beyoncé exhorts, “Tryna fake it/Never makes it/That we all know.” Tell that to half the people who faked their way into the entertainment industry, and continue to fake it every day with regard to presenting a “lifestyle” (read: being rich) through rose-colored glasses for the hoi polloi to view as “aspirational.” To that end, more Madonna-on-her-Kabbalah-tip isms arise in the form of, “If you don’t seek it, you won’t see it/That we all know/If you don’t think it, you won’t be it” and “We go up and down, lost and found/Searchin’ for love/Looking for something that lives inside me.” This much was also expressed on Madame X’s “I Don’t Search I Find.” For good measure, she gives subtle credit (as she’s done in the past more outrightly) to M’s tacit influence on this song with the lyrics, “I’ll justify love” and the repetition of “Everybody” (a.k.a. the title of M’s first single).
Co-produced by The-Dream and Tricky (who brought us “Me Against the Music”), Bey obviously also owes a debt to Big Freedia’s sound on this single. Not to mention a debt to any listener willing to ignore her various disingenuous claims that take from what Big Freedia wrote on “Explode” when she said, “Release ya anger, release ya mind/Release ya job, release the time/Release ya trade, release the stress/Release the love, forget the rest.” But it’s hard to forget that even if Bey were working for “The Man,” insisting that They won’t break her soul infers that a Faustian pact wasn’t made in exchange for fame to begin with. How else could one explain her ability to avoid the everyperson’s job her entire life (save for working in her own mother’s hair salon for a brief stint)? Not to say that being a world-renowned singer and undisputed cultural icon isn’t work, but one must admit that it’s a far more rewarding kind of toil than, say, retail or office life. The kind of thing one can’t “release” so simply as Bey could with her own unique profession and the endless reserves of bank that come with it to assist in “just being free.”
