Needed Me Vs. Yonce/Partition

Beyoncé is a singer known for her fantastic voice, rejuvenating dance moves, and most importantly her empowering throughout her songs. These skills are no different in her song “Pretty Hurts.” Released on June 10, 2014, from her self-titled album Beyoncé, the song written by Sia, Joshua “Ammo” Coleman, and Beyoncé herself resonates its empowering message with people of all different genders, body types, and races. This song, in particular, is targeted towards women, especially young women who are still developing. Beyoncé gained popularity when she started off in an all-female group named Destiny’s Child back in 1997, and once she broke off from the group, she only continued to grow as an artist and person. In all six of Beyoncé’s solo studio albums, there are songs with galvanizing messages of female power and all of them reached number 1 on the charts. In Beyoncé’s song “Pretty Hurts,” she uses social issues, rhetorical appeals such as pathos, literary devices, metaphors, and vivid imagery to further the theme of female empowerment.

This successful woman released the first song with rap in it, which topped the charts in both The United Staes and The United Kingdom. Although the lyrics do not contain any depth, this is still considered a very significant accomplishment because a caucasian woman participating in an activity that is mainly dominated by Black and Latino men takes a lot of courage . Despite all odds, she was able to take on this new music genre and make something out of

“I love you, please say you love me too,” she sings. “I love you / I will be your light, shining through your eyes.” Still yet, we have “Crazy in Love” by Beyonce’ and Jay-Z, hip-hop artists. “Your love’s got me looking so crazy right now,” they sing/rap. “Looking so crazy in love.” Despite the musical differences between all these artists, all three songs/genres were able to give light to the theme of love. And even though the theme may be the same, the music and words were not. So even though two songs may have a theme that is similar, themes in music add diversity.

Beyoncé Knowles, a well-known singer, songwriter uses two of her songs: “Freedom” and “Formation” to tell the story of herself. “Freedom” is the beginning of her story where she is searching for freedom and equality showing that there is still much inequality and injustice for African Americans in America today. The song slowly transitions to a more positive tone when she seems to have made something beneficial out of her difficult situation. “Formation,” however, has a completely different tone. While she does address negative situations from the past at the beginning of the song, she quickly transitions to a more positive tone full of pride in where she came from, who she has become, and what she has overcome. Together, the two songs

The main purpose of Beyoncé’s songs is to emphasise feminism and invigorate gender equality through her lyrics. She does so by using by conveying feminist philosophy in her lyrics. In Run the World, Beyoncé sings “strong enough to bear the children, then get back to business.” Figurative language is used to express be that women give birth however then after they proceed to work. Throughout the song used is both repetition and rhetorical question as this is how Beyoncé portrays the women empowerment theme, domination as well as confidence in her tone whilst preaching the line “Girls, we run this motha (yeah!)” and “Who run the world? Girls!”. Having expressed the line “My persuasion can build he nation” Beyoncé is building women up by speaking

This song is full of multiple literary devices such as hyperboles, metaphors, and imagery. The hyperboles in the song emphasize strong feelings such as love, hate, and pain. For example, “Just [going to] stand there and watch me burn” (Rihanna, 1), is emphasizing that she is in extreme amounts of pain and all that her significant other is doing, is watching her suffer. “You ever love somebody so much you can barely breathe when [you are] with [them]” (Eminem, 33), emphasizes and how he is so in love with

The other song is “Beautiful” by Christina Aguilera because I like how she is trying to say the world that we are beautiful either inside or outside and we have to love ourselves for who we are. We need to have acceptance, not to the people, but us.

The most prevalent issue observed in the lyrics and music videos was gender and sexuality. This was in issue that was present and reoccurring in all of the top songs but occurred in different ways. This was no surprise though because we live “In a culture where sex and gender are centrally important” (2015; 73). The issue arises in the genre of music because of the way gender and sexuality is presented. In the top song “Die a Happy Man’ by Thomas Rhett, objectification was presented in both the lyrics and the music video. In the lyrics he says “Baby that red dress brings me to my knees, Oh but black dress makes it hard to break” and goes on to say “You’re a saint, you’re a Goddess, the cutest, the hottest, a master piece” (lyrics). It seems that his goal is to complement her, but he is objectifying her by judging her femininity (2015; 203). He also does this in the music video by having the girl in a bikini the whole time. Not only was the women objectified, but Thomas exposed a stereotypical relationship consequence. In modern society men tend to make a stereotype that they have to give up everything to be with a woman. Thomas did this in his lyrics when he talks about how he could “never get to see the Northern lights” or “never get to build my mansion in Georgia or drive a sports car up the coast of California” (lyrics). The second song was “Strip It Down” by Luke Bryan. In this song Luke definitely introduces gender roles in both the lyrics and the video. The song

Based off the lyrics, the song is all about how Beyonce truly feels deep down inside. The message behind

Beyonce uses pathos, the first of the three appeals in her song by using very descriptive phrases. When she states, “I’d listen to her, `cause I know how it hurts,” Beyonce is telling her audience that she understands what it is like to be hurt, and that if she were a boy, she would treat her women better because she could understand where she was coming from. This tugs at the listener’s heart because you can see that she has been emotionally hurt from a past relationship. Also, many people can relate to what she is disclosing. It is human nature for people to get emotionally damaged in a relationship and therefore her feelings are empathized. She also uses syntax by the way she orders her words by telling a story. If the song was not in story form, it would not produce the great impact that it does.

The researchers conducted their study by taking samples of songs released from 2000-2010. These songs selected for this sample were based off a three base-line criteria. “First the song needed at least one rapper lyric, then there needed to be a narrative to or about a woman with no relation to that rapper, and finally it needed to contained terms and emotions associated with philogyny such as love, like, adoration, fondness, and admiration” (Tyree & Jones, 2015, pp. 63). Thirty-eight songs ended up being chosen for this study and the artists who rapped in them fit in these “classic rap categories” which include gangsta, materialistic, positive, and pop. Once these songs were chosen, a textual analysis was conducted to analyze these rap lyrics.

With the ascent of “work” by Barbadian pop queen Rihanna was able to collect 14th song to take the number one spot on Billboard’s Top 100 list, breaking her tie with Michael Jackson for the third-most number one singles (Thomas). Through countless successes as a solo female artist, she holds 8.5 billion views on YouTube and had sold over 215 million digital tracks worldwide (Roc Nation). Before releasing the album title ‘Anti” under the Westbury Road Entertainment (Owned by Rihanna) and Roc Nation Record, the leading single “Work” was released on streaming service provided by Tidal on January 27, 2016. According to Nielsen Music, "Work" had sold over 126,000 downloads and the eighth studio “Anti” album generated 4.7 million streams (Caulfield, Gary). To a new listener, Rihanna’s “Work” full of slangs with offbeat and repeats the lyrics simultaneously (Billboard). Some criticized that she spoke gibberish but Rihanna’s “work” vocal quality is known to be a unique with a distinctive tone. It’s a chilled song that makes you want to be in tropical, soaked with touches of the Caribbean flow. One of the remarkable facts is that the song Work is a dance hall/ reggae pop genre originating from Jamaica. (Billboard) The lyrics were written by Jahron Braithwaite (PartyNextDoor) a Jamaican native, Rihanna and Drake. It was also produced by a Jamaican Canadian named known as Matthew Samuels (Boi-1da), Allen Ritter and Sevn Thomas. Allowing her to be a widely_____. Inspired and sampled by

While on her previous albums, Beyoncé was trying to empower all women, on Lemonade, Beyoncé speaks directly to black women. “As Jacqui Germain astutely noted on feministing.com, ‘Beyonce using the specific cultural marker of ‘Becky,’ [a social trope for white womanhood] in Lemonade is less a question of who’s excluding whom and why, and more so just us watching Beyonce be the ... multi-layered Black woman’” (Thompson, C., 2016). It was through this album that Beyoncé changed how the public thought of her. She was no longer afraid to not fully share what she wanted to say about current culture, and finally talked straight to black women to raise them up. It was also through this album that Beyoncé changed her image. Before her sixth album, Beyoncé definitely had feminist songs, but with Lemonade, she used rage to share her message, a message telling women that even after getting married, a man may not always be right for

I chose this song because it is a song that I have never heard before but also because I have so much respect and love for Beyoncé. She is such a powerful singer and I couldn’t think of anyone more talented to sing this song with power behind it.

As I always listen to variety of music all over the world, so I have many favorite songs that always dancing in my mind. However I will include these five special, meaningful songs in my mix tape.