Imma Let Me Finish

I just rewatched the Single Ladies video a couple times in a row.  Every so often I revisit the music video or the song comes on on shuffle on my phone¹ and every time I'm wowed by it.  I'm, for better or worse, a pretty colossal snob when it comes to music² and have a sort of reactionary bias against pretty much any song that was an inescapably massive hit in my lifetime, but there are a few songs that I ignored when I was first hearing them but have later come to realize are among my all-time favourites.  (Rihanna's 'Don't Stop the Music' is another one of these.)  I don't think any of them top 'Single Ladies'.  Every single time I hear it I can't help but be in awe of just how fucking good this song is.  But this time was something more: I was struck w/ the terrible realization that: 'Single Ladies' might be underrated.

(By the way, I really tend to dislike when people just make wild and unfounded claims about a piece of art's legacy or reputation shifting or secretly being low or high or whatever.  I just watched a YouTube video the other day declaring that Pulp Fiction isn't as beloved now compared to when it came out, and I was just thinking, according to whom?  Isn't it still widely considered one of the best movies ever made?  That's not just the impression I got, right?  So try and bear w/ me here.)

But that sounds ridiculous, right?  I was just recently joking w/ a friend about how obnoxious it is to see the top comment on the music video pulling the old 'Anyone here in current year?' trick when it has literally one billion views³.  It's a Stone Cold Classic.  It's so iconic its Wikipedia page has a 'cultural impact' section w/ multiple subheadings.  It's a uniter, not a divider.  I certainly don't need to remind anyone how it goes.  But, like - why isn't this song talked about like it's one of the all time greats?  I'm a music snob!  I run in music snob circles!  I tend to have my ear to the ground on like the level of acclaim and music-snob-cred things have.  I never see reviewers or hardcore music fans talk about this as one of the all time great pop songs.  I never hear people talk about how creative the production is or how well the melodies are constructed.  Sure, people like it.  Sometimes it'll be on one of those Rolling Stone best songs lists, but of course you will because Rolling Stone is spineless and their lists always try for like the most popular and least controversial choices imaginable.  I feel like it's a song everybody knows and nearly everybody likes, but I don't know hardly anybody who would tell me that it was unbelievably good.  Maybe it's just the aforementioned circles I run in.  I don't know.

But in any case this song is unbelievably good.  A lot of my favourite music in the world hits a balance between being recognizably pop in some way and yet also really weird.  'Single Ladies' hits this balance in oddly the same way songs by Animal Collective or My Bloody Valentine do: it's a hooky, instantly memorable pop gem that also pushes the envelope w/ what kind of sounds can be used to construct the song.  The song is so immediately iconic that Beyoncé was able to get away w/ one of the strangest arrangements I've ever heard on top 40 radio.  It's stripped down to mostly just percussion, electronic noises and vocals, like the R&B equivalent of an OOIOO song and this restraint gives it an oddly dramatic tension behind its singalong nature.  When the supersaw bass finally shows up during the chorus, it feels sinister, playing in a minor key that clashes w/ the major key of the vocal arrangement, only briefly resolving before giving way to the solo lead vocal, alone w/ the percussion during the 'whoa-oh-oh' refrain.  It's thrilling and mysterious.  The production almost feels wrong but every decision is really creative and cool and it all comes together flawlessly.  The glitchy climax is pulled off perfectly w/o coming off as strange.  The whooshing hardpanned low-frequencies that back up the beat towards the end of the song are honestly a really subtly bizarre addition but they're a super interesting detail as well.  The probably most interrobang-inducing element is the little Mario-jump sound effect that goes off three times every measure of the entire song, but it somehow works, and it's honestly a testament to how good the song is that this sound alone wasn't too offputting for the airwaves.  In fact, I've mostly been writing about how good the song sounds, but the whole thing is in fact a testament to how good the song at its core is, because the whole thing wouldn't work if the hooks weren't there.  The only other song I can think of that sounds like this is 'Filthy' by Justin Timberlake, and that song sucks, so it really goes to show how making a song this weird is genuinely kind of a risk.

So ultimately my point is - justice for 'Single Ladies'!  We music snobs need to band together and recognize this song for what it is - one of the weirdest and coolest pop songs of all time.  It's a piece of great art, damn it!  Let's not act like we're too cool for this shit.  Also the video is great too

¹ To bring some clarity here I don't use Spotify or anything, but I listen to mp3s on my phone which means there's a slightly less than 1 in 6000 chance that this song comes on.  I think in a way this means the likelihood is at once higher and lower than if I were to use Spotify, where I'd likely be listening to it on a playlist of like 100 songs, though it is one of literally countless songs to grace the platform and maybe I wouldn't even return to that hypothetical playlist very often anyway.

² I was recently asked by a friend what songs I'd put on a mix tape I'd made for my girlfriend, and after I'd reproduced the tracklist for her she told me she hadn't heard of a single song on it, and I regret to admit that that gave me a feeling of serious pride that I'd made a tape only I would make.  That's right - I'm the type of hipster who makes mix tapes in 2025.  And writes 'mix tape' as two words.

³ By the way, only one billion?  Come on guys.³ᵃ

³ᵃ Feel like I should mention I'm not a Beyoncé stan or even necessarily a fan and I would not be able to promote any of her other songs half as (sasha) fiercely.