Well, 2014 is ending, and I have to say that it was an interesting year for music. There were plenty of new artists of the charts, with a variety of different sounds, something I will go into in my retrospective of 2014. However, many of the big hit makers managed to stick around, in spite of this shift, which brings us to Beyonce.
Song: "7/11"
Artist: Beyonce
Current Peak Position: #13
Current Position: #20
As a background to how I feel about Beyonce, I will start off by saying I do not dislike her as an artist. I'll admit that, over the course of her career, she has released several terrible songs, in her solo career ("Naughty Girls", "Diva", "Video Phone", "If I Were A Boy", "Single Ladies", "Drunk In Love", and "Check On It" off the top of my head) and with her group, Destiny's Child ("Bootylicious"). But she has still released many songs I enjoy, such as "Crazy In Love", "Irreplaceable", "Sweet Dreams", "Halo", "Survivor" and most of the 4 album. Hell, "Sweet Dreams" and "Crazy In Love" top my best lists for their respective years. Her output, as a whole, isn't terrible, but it is incredibly uneven. And this is not a lyrical problem for most of her bad songs (well, besides "If I Were A Boy").My main problem with most of these songs is in the production and instrumentation, easily the most uneven part of her output. Her hit songs show how much of a mixed bag the production is. Most of her best hits are are stellar in this area, especially with the horns on "Crazy In Love" and the bassline on "Sweet Dreams". But when her production is bad, it is absolutely awful. "Single Ladies" had interesting ideas in the production, with a number of interesting sounds being mixed with the percussion, but none of the elements felt like they fit together, and made the whole thing sound like a mess. I get why people would enjoy it for its ideas, but the song just gives me a headache. And that is far from the worst example. There's also "Diva" and "Video Phone", both produced by Bangladesh, a producer responsible for some of the worst beats I have ever listened to. Both of these songs have terrible, grating synth tones, playing irritating melodies, and overall sloppy mixing. "Diva" is worse, for also including grating backing vocals repeating the same lines over and over again. The production on these songs are atrocious, and make the songs borderline unlistenable.
And that brings us to her latest hit, "7/11", yet another Beyonce song with horrid production. Weirdly enough, the best part of the song, Beyonce's performance, also ends up being the worst part. Her performance makes the song slightly more tolerable, as she actually brings a lot of energy onto to track, and actually sounds like she is having fun, unlike some other artists (*cough* Future *cough*). Then again, that does not always equal quality, as this song shows. I've heard people complain about how Beyonce oversings. Personally, I normally don't have a problem with her vocals, and respect her as a highly talented singer. On this track however, her voice is covered in sloppy vocal effects. Now, I'm not against the use of auto-tune. While it can be lazily used to cover up a lack of vocal talent, it can be used to carry greater emotion to a song, like Kanye West did on 808s and Heartbreak, or help give the performer a greater personality, like T-Pain does. Here, they clearly went for the latter purpose, but the auto-tune just feels cheap, sloppy and plastered on. This grating, sloppy use of auto-tune is a problem I have with a number of artists (*cough* Young Thug *cough*), but with the energy Beyonce is bringing to this song, it manages to get particularly irritating, especially with how it mixed with the beat, in this annoying trend of constantly pausing after every syllable.
The Young Thug comparison continues with the actual beat, which is mostly generic. An uninteresting drum progression, set on top of an uninteresting synthline. At some points, the percussion devolves into a clattering mess, with the inclusion of extraneous noise. One of these sounds resembles a jackhammer going off in my ears and, considering what a haphazard disaster this song is, I would not be surprised if it is.
So, what about the lyrics? No seriously, what about them? There isn't a single line worth analyzing. Practically the entire song consists of nothing but forgettable dance instructions, and I can barely distinguish one part of the song from another. At several points, she just goes of repeating the same thing over the course of several lines, like a certain rapper did on one of the worst songs of the year. Thankfully, there isn't a line as stupid as "I feel like Fabo", but nothing is as interesting as that, either. The lyrics do nothing but describe what's happening in the music video. The music video admittedly looks like a lot of fun, but this song sounds like they made it last minute to just go with the video, instead of the other way around. I could easily excuse this if the song actually sounded good, which, if you've been reading this so far, you'd know is not the case.
This song charted too late for me to consider it for the worst list of 2014, but it is an early front runner for worst song of 2015 if it continues charting. I figured it would just drop out after peaking at #18, but it ended up rising. Thankfully, it seems to be dropping down the charts quickly. This song could have worked with Beyonce's intense performance, and the admittedly fun video, but in the end it is just a grating mess, with little, if anything, redeeming it.
Note: My review of "CoCo" is delayed indefinitely, until I post my year-end retrospectives.
Next Post: Top 15 Worst Hit Songs of 2014
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