Queen Bey. You know her. The entire world knows her. There’s a reason why Beyoncé is known as the queen.
And although her solo career began way back in the early 2000s, she’s still making chart-topping, record-breaking music to this day.
This 42-year-old, Grammy award-winning artist has too many hit singles to name. She has over 50.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify, over 26 million subscribers on YouTube and 319 million followers on Instagram.
Obviously, people listen to her music. And young girls and women around the world look to her as a role model.
So, I can only assume that many will hear her latest single called “My House.” An aggressive, territorial, arrogant song, this track both yells at listeners about her requests and desires and then lures them in at the end with an out-of-nowhere request to heal the world with love.
This song is about many things. Mostly, it’s about Beyoncé’s home (which could be both figurative and literal), how she longs to get out of it, how she longs to stay in it and how those that don’t share her space with love aren’t welcome.
So, let’s jump into the positives here, because there aren’t many.
First, Beyoncé seeks to set boundaries for visitors to her home. That’s a good thing.
Then, she lets someone close to her know that she will “always” love them, no matter what. However, she realizes, “I’ll never expect you to love me/When you don’t love yourself”). She continues with a seemingly random line, asking listeners to “heal the world” with “one beautiful action at a time.”
Like I said above, the positives in this track are random and seem out of place, especially for such an aggressive song.
Beyoncé makes it clear at the beginning that she is who people come to see and she will not tolerate disrespect (“Oh, who they came to see, me?/Who out there talkin’ out that mouth?”).
She will, however, spend her money however she pleases (“Cash out this pain/…I’m done savin’ this money, tonight we gon’ ball out”), accessorize herself to her liking (“I want pink diamonds on my belly chain and my nipple rings”), drink until she’s drunk (“You can catch me highsidin’, drinkin’ brown liquor ’til I fall out”) and confront whoever bothers her (“Don’t make me get up out of my seat”).
And she’ll do all of that, and more, with a robust amount of profanity aimed at anyone that doesn’t appreciate her or what she has to offer (“Get the f–k up out my house/Get the f–k up out my house/Get the f–k up out my house/Get the f–k up out my house”).
I don’t think this track knows what it wants to be. But really.
It’s aggressive. It’s profane. It’s vulgar. It’s arrogant.
But then, for a brief moment, it’s introspective. Promising. Utopian.
It’s a whole lot of things.
Primarily, it’s not a song aimed at children. And if it’s aimed at adults, I suppose Beyoncé knows her audience. But I can confidently say that this track is not something that our audience will want to invest their time in. Not even a little.
Kristin Smith joined the Plugged In team in 2017. Formerly a Spanish and English teacher, Kristin loves reading literature and eating authentic Mexican tacos. She and her husband, Eddy, love raising their children Judah and Selah. Kristin also has a deep affection for coffee, music, her dog (Cali) and cat (Aslan).
