Jane Dark Sugarhigh blog on Beyonce's "Irreplaceable" restoring "melodic range to pop"

who are these by?

surely this is also about performance as much as actual melody - if yr aesthetic is to emphasise the big chord changes and so on you'll sing them with a lot more gusto than if you want to play it ice-cold. i suspect a lot of melody gets hidden beneath how various r&b ice queens choose to play it. people who know about music theory beyond grade 5 feel free to correct me.

The cool thing about r&b right now -- and the reason why a lot of it has been really interesting over the past decade or so -- is that it's poised right between those two things. It's borrowed that repeating-groove aspect back from hip-hop, as well as hip-hop's advancement into synthetic and electronic sounds. But the connection to singing ballads and gospel keeps the other foot in the singing-songs-with-chord-changes turf. It has the opportunity to do whatever it wants, really, and so it's not surprising that some of the big smashes of the past years have been expensive combinations of those camps -- Timbaland/Timberlake "Cry Me a River"/"My Love" stuff is suspended just about exactly halfway between chord-changing ballad and static hip-hop (or really it's kinda fully both, not a difference-splitting but a way of having both entirely).

Okay, a song like She Loves You is fluid melodically in the way that something like Losing My Religion isn't.

if we're talking fluidity, i don't think 'irreplaceable' is at all fluid - it seems awkward, gulpy, which of course is entirely fitting thematically - it's this which undercuts the "female empowerment" of the lyrics. 'we belong together' is totally fluid though.

Jesus Christ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CGL4Wjg_0k

wtf, "Crazy in Love" was mediocre and "Irrepaceable" is FANTASTIC. I don't think there's some great mystery at work here, it just has a really good melody.

It would have made more sense actually had he drawn attention to Ne-Yo's involvement - having also penned "So Sick" and "Unfaithful" he's the posterboy for Respectable Ballads in the 06, so he works as a figurehead for one end of the dialectic in a way that Beyonce doesn't really.

Perhaps where Joshua's article falls short is that by setting up this process as a pendulum swing he's simplyfing the dialectic. To some extent Beyonce's problem to date has been finding ways to make ballads which don't abandon the qualities which her uptempo singles formerly possessed in spades. "Irreplaceable" actually works because it's less "full of big chord changes, key changes, chromatic developments" than most of her previous ballads, so it retains some of the tension and tautness of, say, "Say My Name" or "Baby Boy". I'd have to listen to it again but I was under the impression that "Irreplaceable" doesn't even have a big key change, although the middle-eight packs an equivalent punch.

This is not to say that it isn't notable that the biggest single from Beyonce's new album is a ballad-of-sorts - but I think one reason it's big is that it's a ballad that people who have only liked Beyonce's uptempo work can click with.

Well, right, that's what I'm saying: it doesn't have any great significance, it's just a really good song. Those do tend to come along every once in a while, and sometimes the temptation to read too much into them is overwhelming. Hell, I've been known in moments of argumentativeness to claim that it will singlehandedly save the album format.

RANDOM SIDENOTE: I know an inexplicably large number of women who completely hate this song and, by extension, any man who enjoys it. I've heard multiple suggestions that guys "only like it because of the video" (haven't seen it yet, but judging by tone of the song, I wouldn't exactly expect a Pussycat Dolls-style skank-o-rama -- am I way off base here?); one woman I work with actually said she "lost respect for [me]", and I got the feeling she was only half joking. Beyonce for Mariah of the oughties?

02/02/07
http://www.starpulse.com/news/index.php/2007/02/02/beyonce_still_irreplaceable_on_top_of_th

"Beyonce Knowles' Irreplaceable has notched up a ninth week at the top of the US singles chart.

The hit, which first hit number one in early December, has kept Fall Out Boy's This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race at number two and Nelly Furtado's Say It Right at number three for a second successive week.

The highest debut on the new Billboard chart belongs to Brit Lily Allen, whose Smile enters the countdown at number 83."

Basically all this song has shown me is that Beyonce sometimes says some stupid shit when she gets mad; "Ring The Alarm" is a much more coherent take in terms of narrative sense as well as being much more successful in making me identify with the protagonist. Also, the transition into the chorus of "Irreplaceable" is a big pile of unimaginative shit.

still, in spite of or because of all that, a 100 percent pop classic. (which "ring the alarm" is not quite, despite being a better song.)

this isn't what she says at all. she mentions the car because it's an insult-to-injury thing, like he's slept with another girl in HER BED.

Also, if this is an "empowerment song", why is she so hell-bent on picking up another meaningless boytoy whom she can disdain into cheating on her?

well it's not a straight-up empowerment song, is it? it's an expression of all the confusion/pride/conflict one feels when a relationship ends, and this totally includes meaningless casual sex as revenge on yr ex.

Finally, exactly what is the point of telling someone "don't think you are irreplaceable" as you're kicking them out? Isn't it kind of obvious at that point that you think they're replaceable?

well, no, not at all, not if you’ve been left no other option than to kick them out after you discovered that they were being unfaithful! beyonce is underlining, to him, that she’s not simply doing this to save her pride, but she really will get over him just like that. (of course, she’s lying to herself, which is what makes the song so effective.)

Basically all this song has shown me is that Beyonce sometimes says some stupid shit when she gets mad; "Ring The Alarm" is a much more coherent take in terms of narrative sense as well as being much more successful in making me identify with the protagonist.

this is true, and it’s exactly why ‘irreplaceable’ is the more emotionally affecting song (though ‘ring the alarm’ is fabulous’ as well). incoherent stupid shit when you’ve just been emotionally shattered? EXACTLY.

'telling me / i ain't going to find another man like you'
man clearly does not think he's irreplacaeble! presumably he thinks she'll come crawling back, but she's never going to do that, she's too strong, she never needed him anyway, he was just some man, etc etc etc.

keep trying to formulate response along the lines of - the fact that it's a ballad in the first place creates this fundamental disjoint between the words and the music, the independent-woman braggadocio fronting which comes out of beyoncé's mouth (inc the inevitable focus on the economics of it all) at complete odds with not just her overtly emotional delivery but also with the sappy acoustic guitar and predictable ballad chord changes. it hasn't come out right though.

also: she has built up very effectively, that exact image many, many times before! it's virtually her default persona. so we know what beyoncé sounds like when she's being empowering, we know she's very good at it, and we know that this is not it.

It really makes me wonder, though: I think Beyonce puts in a really great performance on the song, she knows how to sing it - and then she goes around acting like she can't see any of the subtlety, and I start to think 'maybe she has to believe in its literal truth to sing it as well as she does...' so that, I don't know, every performance is at the emotional point before you realise you're lying to yourself, or something.

yes to recognisable signifiers of ballad form affecting perception etc.

unless the song is about pride rather than enpowerment. perhaps you might say they are the same thing. but i'm not sure about that.

?

or maybe she is STILL lying to herself, and still in denial!

or: sometimes, even after you've admitted to yourself that you're lying to yourself, and have come to terms with that...you're still not going to give the other party the pleasure of seeing it, so you carry on with your public face at all times.

precisely! especially as it's the kind of song where you hope by repeating its words to yourself enough times, you will eventually believe them. any public concession to their untruth would SHATTER YR FRAGILE EMOTIONAL WORLD, etc.

it's virtually her default persona
but you can't mesh it with the buckwild crazy needy mad-eyes persona (cf deja vu etc), or the service-your-man one (cf cater 2 u, naughty girl, etc).

lex you sound like you're implying it's based in real life, watch it. :(

every time Beyonce opens her mouth to talk about this song, I think she gets dumber

but you can't mesh it with the buckwild crazy needy mad-eyes persona (cf deja vu etc), or the service-your-man one (cf cater 2 u, naughty girl, etc).

indeed, though for whatever reason submissive/needy solo beyoncé hasn't stuck as a persona in the way that shark-eyed businesswoman DC beyoncé did. i guess until now she's backed it up with some pretty no-nonsense beats.

every time Beyonce opens her mouth to talk about this song, I think she gets dumber

no, dan's completely wrong, we have established exactly why it would be a bad idea for beyoncé (or any pop star doing a similar song) to openly talk about how it's a lie! it doesn't matter what she says in interviews, anyway.

xpost

She then didn't add a "Why you frontin' wigga?" style html mark-up box.

Fair enough, but that doesn't really answer my question. I didn't ask how they are similiar, (and half of that is based on circumstance, rather than anything within the songs. the circle-of-fifths thing may be a good point, but my knowledge of music theory is rather rudimentary) I asked how one is a ripoff of the other. I don't see any reason to assume that Beyonce was consciously or even subconsciously setting out to make a song that sounds like "Unpretty".

I did not use the word "ripoff" to imply intent on the part of Beyonce. I used the word "ripoff" to imply similarity, chronology and how I view the relative quality of both (I am not a fan of "Unpretty" but I would rather listen to that any day over "Irreplaceable", despite Beyonce being a much better singer than anyone in TLC).