Beyoncé hasn’t released a straightforward pop album, really ever, but generally since 2008. Since then, she changed how music is released with Beyoncé, created a cultural opus on Lemonade, secured her rap crown with Everything Is Love, danced all night on Renaissance, and rode off into the sunset on Cowboy Carter. These explorations were possible, mainly because she had already mastered the pop form. And while she’s exploring new genres and new configurations of how to combine them, she can rest easy knowing that the main pop girls — plus rap and R&B’s new guard — are holding the mainstream down.
“I love and respect all of the female singers-songwriters who are out right now,” Beyoncé told GQ in a recent interview conducted via email. “Raye, Victoria Monét, Sasha Keable, Chloe x Halle, and Reneé Rapp. I love Doechii and GloRilla.” And like the rest of us, she’s been running back Sabrina Carpenter‘s country-flavored single “Please Please Please.” Then there’s the matter of her “II Most Wanted” collaborator Miley Cyrus: “I’m obsessed with my backseat baby…. I’m a Smiler.”
“I just heard That Mexican OT, he’s from Houston…. He goes hard!” Beyoncé added, nodding to the rising rap artist. “And I think that Thee Sacred Souls and Chappell Roan are talented and interesting.”
The way many of these artists have approached their careers at a time of thorough oversaturation in music likely reminds Beyoncé of her own early creative choices. Reflecting on her 2011 album 4, she shared: “I wouldn’t say that I was anti-pop. I respected pop. But it was a time where everyone was doing pop/dance music, and R&B and soul were getting lost. It was popular and fun, but it wasn’t my thing. It was not where I was going with my music career at that time. I was yearning for something deeper with more musicality.”
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There isn’t a word more apt than fun to describe what it’s been like watching Roan build a pop empire of her own, or hearing Carpenter wrap the wildest innuendoes in the sweetest pop melodies; but there are also traces of genre-spanning influences throughout their records. Monét has been doing the same while also sharing intricately choreographed visual performances, an evident graduate of the school of Beyoncé. Meanwhile, Chloe x Halle have had the pleasure of being guided directly by the singer as artists on her Parkwood Entertainment label.
“But the truth is,” Beyoncé continued, “I spend most of my time listening to the classics, like Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and music from artists on the Stax label. I just watched that documentary. It’s so good! I highly recommend it.” On the non-musical front, she has been watching House of the Dragon and The Chi, and crowned Inside Out 2 as the best movie she’s seen this year: “I think it’s brilliant.”
