December 2013. I was at a Queer dive bar in Brooklyn, hitting on a basic white twink. The bartender was playing alternative 90s rock, and the twink looked around restless. He growled, “They should just play the whole Beyoncé album, that’s what we’re all thinking.” He was right. The infamous surprise release of her self-titled album had just dropped like a bomb of earworms. It felt like 90% of the city had it on loop for a week straight. We were both experiencing withdrawals. He wasn’t pickin’ up what I was puttin’ down, so I went home, happy to blast the album and dance alone.
The next night, I was at a messy party of mostly straight Black and Brown folks from Queens. It was as if the entire club was waiting for one thing. When the DJ finally dropped the double whammy of Partition and Drunk in Love, the entire club exploded with our wasted, euphoric sing-along, hands in the air like a tent revival.
The album’s reach was unparalleled.
I grew up at the start of the Napster era of free music and single leaks, when the very concept of an album started to diminish. Beyoncé bringing back the “event album” felt like a magic trick. I was a kid again, glued to the TV in 1991, watching humans morph into other humans, knowing Michael Jackson’s “Black or White” video would be the talk of the schoolyard the next day.
I’ve witnessed Beyoncé cast this magic three more times.
I was in New Orleans in 2016 when she dropped Formation, her love letter to the South. It incorporated New Orleans bounce and the wound of Katrina. The pride of hearing it blasting through the streets of Black neighborhoods was contagious.
I was in San Francisco when she dropped the 2020 visuals for Black is King, at the peak of that miserable COVID summer, when we were glued to our streaming services. The afrofuturistic visuals took my friends and I out of our living rooms all at once, if only for one precious hour.
When she dropped Renaissance, I was in Berlin, ground zero for another outbreak (Mpox). Most Queer people I knew were still too scared to go to the city’s massive clubs, so the album became the soundtrack to ketamine-fueled afterparties in tiny apartments in Germany.
Beyonce’s reach is now unparalleled.
Last night, I waited for the midnight drop of Cowboy Carter. As I took in all 27 tracks, I scoured social media for reactions. People argued over the ethics of listening to early leaks, they posted historical lessons on the Chitlin’ Circuit, created memes instantly, commented on viral dances being choreographed in real-time at 2 am (“Girl, it’s too late for you to be this hype!”). I could feel my neurons connecting to other people, even alone in my room. Another magic trick! Most of the time, we confuse social media with real connection, but this felt, dare I say it, pure.
My favorite thing about Beyoncé is that she forces us to deal with these kinds of contradictions, even if you don't appreciate her or her music. As one of the biggest, inescapable artists on the planet, we all have to reckon with Beyoncé. She can be corny, capitalistic, pandering, late to issues, a lil’ dull, and too heteronormative, but she's also earnest, hard-working, a master media manipulator, supernaturally talented, and proud of her heritage in a way that makes others feel proud of theirs.
We are so politically divided that even suggesting people see conflicting sides of an issue now causes a firestorm. Having to examine contradictions expands our mind.
Isn’t that what artists are here for?
My actual favorite Beyoncé moment was in 2008 at Blow Buddies, the notorious sex club in San Francisco…
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