0:00

This podcast is supported by American

0:02

Express and resi. You've had a

0:04

long day. But that

0:06

isn't going to stop you. Beyonce

0:08

place you've been dying to try has an opening

0:11

tonight, and your friend you've been dying

0:13

to see is free tonight. So

0:15

you go. The ambiance is

0:17

perfect. You split an appetizer. You

0:20

even get dessert. Definitely

0:22

worth the wait. When you're with Amex,

0:24

it's not if it's going to happen. But

0:26

when? American Express, don't

0:29

live life without it.

0:30

Wesley, what

0:32

would it be like if Renaissance was

0:35

a prescribed medication that had

0:37

its own commercial. You

0:39

know how S and L always does those parodies

0:41

of health commercials? Side

0:43

effects may include bolatos.

0:44

And it can back a heightened sense of liberation.

0:46

Ten

0:46

sick days. in a row. A replenished

0:48

and rejuvenated sense of aliveness, a

0:50

delight in humanity, a sense

0:51

that you are constantly approaching it if you like.

0:52

A desire to participate in an orgie. You may also

0:55

experience a sore throat from shouting lyrics the

0:57

top of your lungs if you have managed to learn them yet.

0:59

Glowing urine. Sorry,

1:01

what? Just

1:03

neon urine. That's okay. say

1:05

it.

1:08

I'm Wesley Morris, and I'm Jay Wortham.

1:10

We're two culture writers at The New York Times.

1:13

And this is still

1:16

processing. Beyonce

1:23

does all of her talking through

1:26

her music. Mhmm. And you

1:28

get a sense of where she's at in her life

1:30

based on how the music sounds. for

1:33

a long time to me it felt like she

1:35

wanted to just celebrate black

1:37

life and just everyday black life quotient

1:39

the way like a painter or a photographer might

1:41

and we get all just revel in

1:43

this glamour and beauty through

1:45

a very luxurious Beyonce lens. We've

1:48

been on a journey of

1:50

what seemed to be self reclamation with a self

1:52

titled album, and then we worked through her marital

1:55

problems on lemonade, and we

1:57

we go through homecoming, I

1:59

mean, to

1:59

take something as every day as a marching

2:02

band -- Mhmm. -- and do that for hours

2:04

-- Yeah. -- on a stage.

2:07

Then we get Renaissance.

2:11

Which is honestly just

2:13

a slip free bubble bath,

2:15

soapy, playtime.

2:19

Well, it just landed in a big old pile

2:21

a Grammy nomination. So there's that.

2:23

Well,

2:23

now I'm also starting to recognize

2:26

that

2:27

Renaissance is an arrival. of

2:30

Beyonce back

2:30

to herself. Mhmm. She doesn't really

2:32

care what would anybody else thinks about her.

2:35

Bay liberation. I'm crazy.

2:37

I'm swearing. I'm hilarious. I

2:39

mean, Darren, I just can't take the country

2:41

with damages because some cameras just turned

2:43

into terrorist. I mean, terrorist

2:46

is a

2:46

woman who is ready to have

2:48

a good Time and anyone who follows

2:50

her Instagram knows this to be true because for

2:52

Halloween. She

2:55

made her entire family dress up

2:57

like the Proud family. And we got it. It was

2:59

two characters. She

3:01

was two characters. Wait. She was both

3:04

Trudi Proud, the main truck of the family.

3:06

and sugar mama -- Mhmm. -- the grandmother

3:09

again, which I had to zoom

3:11

in to confirm that, yep, both were her.

3:13

And This is

3:16

someone who has

3:17

only ever used media

3:20

strategically

3:20

to assert herself

3:23

at the top of

3:24

a pyramid and a hierarchy and

3:27

to watch her

3:29

be at this moment in her life

3:32

is a revelation and it is as

3:34

joyful to receive it as it must

3:36

have been for her

3:37

to make it. The thing that's surprising to me

3:39

about that photo is

3:41

also what is surprising about

3:43

this album, which

3:45

is that

3:46

as funny as hell. Mhmm. I've

3:50

never left more at

3:52

a person

3:52

who I didn't think had a sense of humor.

3:55

We've never been able to see it.

3:56

I mean, For a particular type

3:59

of celebrity, it

4:00

can be really rough and raw out there

4:03

for women

4:03

and particularly black women. So funny

4:05

is a privilege. And funny is a luxury,

4:07

and funny

4:08

is nice. Yes. Yes. Yes. Always going to be

4:10

received

4:10

in the way that you've intended it.

4:12

We're talking about this album. When did it come

4:15

out?

4:15

on who even knows who even

4:18

knows at this point. It could've it could've

4:20

come out five years ago or yesterday for

4:22

all the, you know, I don't know,

4:24

the omnipotence that it has.

4:26

I left

4:26

so much listening to this

4:29

album. I mean, part of it What's

4:31

the sheer audacity of it? It should

4:33

cost a billion to look that good. Pure

4:35

honey, which is the gayest

4:37

of the House songs on this record. My

4:39

Avis song. Like, right before you get

4:41

to the chorus, she says, York

4:45

I'm too fucking busy. check

4:48

my teeth. And then that

4:50

sort of jungle y house situation

4:52

comes in. And what

4:55

I love about that is this

4:57

appropriation

4:57

or identification with

5:01

black

5:02

male gayness

5:05

I

5:05

just feel like these songs

5:07

are are they're not even for me.

5:09

They're just me. It's

5:12

how I wanna feel. It's how I

5:14

feel like I feel a lot of the time,

5:17

but

5:18

I don't have the capacity, the

5:20

talent, the imagination to

5:23

put it this way. But I used to go

5:25

to night clubs all the time and there would be dudes

5:27

in there who were this. And

5:30

I'm like, I wanna be that guy. Mhmm.

5:32

But I can't be so I'm just gonna

5:34

sit here and lean against this wall and

5:36

watch this

5:37

happen all over this dance for.

5:40

I

5:40

also just feel like there's

5:43

a song on this album called Cozy.

5:46

There's to remind her. And

5:48

the my favorite thing about this song is

5:50

at about fifteen seconds in. She's like,

5:53

fuck it. Fuck it. I

5:58

think that this alignment

5:59

with a kind of gay

6:03

ferocity, flamboyance, confidence,

6:06

and just her own

6:08

versions of those same qualities. The

6:10

tension between those two things is

6:12

the source of a lot of the pleasure on

6:14

this album and the comedy of it. Right?

6:17

And the way that alien superstar goes

6:19

into into cuff it, It

6:21

starts off, you know, I feel like falling

6:23

in love. I feel like falling in

6:25

love. Okay. We have

6:27

been here before Biat says, this nothing

6:29

new. Okay. She feels she's always been, like, fallen

6:31

love. And then she says, I'm

6:34

in the mood to fuck something up.

6:36

That's right. And

6:41

I'm like, wait, what? I

6:44

wanna

6:44

fuck something up. I mean, being

6:46

in love and being open to falling in

6:48

love is

6:49

the equivalent of fucking something

6:51

up everything about the world right now

6:53

is telling us to harden to calcify --

6:55

Yeah. -- to not trust, to withdraw, to

6:57

isolate, and

6:59

the

6:59

strongest thing that we can do right

7:02

now to live in hope, and

7:04

to

7:04

not live in fear is to be open to

7:06

falling in love. And that is fucking

7:08

things

7:08

up. Don't even waste your

7:10

time trying to compete. no

7:13

one else in this world can

7:15

think like me.

7:16

So this way of expressing herself

7:18

does remind me of the

7:22

drag balls from the eighties and nineties.

7:24

And here she is

7:26

insinuating herself into it,

7:29

giving herself her own her own

7:31

house, so to speak. Is

7:33

it the house of Beyonce? Is it the house

7:35

of Sasha Fears? I mean,

7:37

yes. And so

7:38

now she's seeing

7:40

herself as the mother of

7:42

-- Yeah. -- a house. A house

7:44

mother. Yeah. A house mother category.

7:47

sexy bitch. on the

7:49

ball.

7:51

Throughout the course of her

7:53

career, Beyonce has historically

7:55

styled herself as a type of mother In

7:57

twenty seventeen, when she was pregnant

7:59

with the

7:59

twins,

8:00

there were these incredible images of her as

8:02

the virgin mother. I mean, she was really

8:05

showing up in a lot of public spaces

8:07

with that those signifiers and

8:10

those signifiers on her as the virgin

8:12

mother Mary She is doing

8:14

a version of what

8:16

black men have been doing

8:18

in my life. for

8:22

a long time, which is

8:24

taking these

8:27

ideas of of womanhood

8:29

and femininity and glamor

8:31

and making them

8:34

work for them -- Mhmm. -- but, you know, you

8:36

know, of of luxury and richness.

8:42

One of the beautiful things about the dragon ball is,

8:44

these these were poor black people who didn't have

8:46

anything like what they were seeing

8:48

on TV when they watched Dynasty. And

8:55

what would it mean for

8:57

a cis, gender, heterosexual

9:00

woman to reestablish herself

9:02

alongside these people

9:04

with the sound of this house music.

9:06

Like, what would it look like?

9:09

for Beyonce to have

9:11

introduced Vogue to America

9:13

and not Madonna? I

9:15

mean,

9:15

there's a lot of space for

9:18

true gender expansiveness

9:20

and queerness on this

9:22

album. It's

9:23

not just gay

9:25

men.

9:25

which would have been a very easy thing to do,

9:28

and it would have been incredible. But Beyoncé

9:30

said, no, I want all

9:32

of my people to come along and she's

9:34

got mauve Renee on pure honey,

9:36

you know, TS Madison, legendary

9:38

Chicago producer, honey Desjardins.

9:40

Yes.

9:40

why But I

9:42

think there's a way in which

9:45

there

9:45

is something can't be about Beyonce

9:47

on this album. I have very

9:49

complicated feelings, Jay, about about

9:52

what camp is and when we call

9:54

something camp. Mhmm. But camp

9:56

in many ways to me is an accident.

9:58

you don't have any control over it. It's sort

10:00

of beyond your control.

10:02

Either of a person or a work of

10:04

art that their

10:05

extraness is something they can't

10:08

even help. or their offness is something

10:10

that can't be helped. I think in camp,

10:12

you're going for something and you miss it.

10:15

Or you're going for it and you you end up

10:17

someplace you didn't even think you were capable of arriving

10:19

at. I think

10:20

also I think it's

10:22

a way for her

10:24

to understand herself in

10:26

relationship to the queerness in her family. And she calls

10:28

out her uncle Johnny who shapes her

10:30

shapes her understanding a black culture and

10:32

black music.

10:33

The bad is part of the ending he did.

10:38

Uncle Johnny made me this dress,

10:41

these cheap spendex, it looks

10:43

a mess. Ugh, Johnny made

10:45

my dress that cheap spendex, she

10:47

looks a mess. It's funny because

10:48

you

10:49

know, it's not her

10:51

dinging the dress that he made her.

10:54

It's perhaps looking back and being

10:56

like, I love this dress, but it was a mess

10:58

and how dare you uncle Johnny, and maybe

11:00

he said it, and maybe it's a way that they talk

11:02

about the stress. Yeah. Yeah.

11:04

It's a willingness to be at the

11:06

center of a joke that you get

11:08

to participate in as well. And doesn't

11:10

often do that.

11:11

Well, Jay, it's interesting that you

11:13

say that because I actually do think this is

11:15

a great work of trash, which is

11:18

like an uninhibited

11:20

conflation of like,

11:23

sexual freedom, kind

11:25

of, lewdness. I

11:26

wonder if we need another word

11:29

for black

11:30

trash than trash? Because this is

11:32

so part of I mean,

11:33

it's not satire, but it lives

11:36

along the spectrum of satire

11:38

camp and trash this is something we've

11:40

kinda always done. It's like we're

11:42

gonna take the bare minimum

11:45

and make the most glittery,

11:47

like, spectacle out of it. It's

11:49

very much just like collagreens a

11:51

pot liquor. It's a type of upcycling.

11:54

that has a lot more humor in it and a

11:56

lot more candor in it and a lot

11:58

more I'm

11:59

thinking about the

11:59

entrances that contestants make

12:02

on RuPaul's drag race. Tamisha,

12:04

I'm on that old

12:07

bed.

12:07

I'm thinking about the way you

12:09

enter into a room and you

12:11

want that up and down appraisal. And whether

12:13

or not you've made an outfit out

12:15

of sandwich baggies, gift

12:18

bags as one challenge once asked someone

12:20

to do, or couture laughing

12:23

together and maybe

12:25

skewing the culture, but

12:27

finding another of culture within it.

12:29

Right?

12:29

Mhmm. Green means

12:32

money. I have on my feathers because we

12:34

have to have a peacock that means you rich.

12:36

She's one old fashioned

12:36

fancy I think for me the

12:38

thing about

12:40

trash and Renaissance

12:41

is

12:43

the punchline is

12:45

never us in Renaissance. Oh,

12:48

absolutely. Yes. No. No. No.

12:50

So how does trash work then

12:52

in Renaissance, in your

12:54

mind? Trash

12:55

to me is about

12:57

America.

12:57

It's about showing the

13:00

aspects of us that we'd rather not

13:03

see that are

13:03

true and vibrant and real

13:06

about us. And

13:08

sometimes that manages to

13:10

enter places that involve racism

13:13

and sexism and misogyny. But

13:15

a lot of the times, it's just the celebration

13:17

of the body. And

13:19

I just wanna be extra clear about

13:21

this. Trash

13:23

is a wonderful

13:25

there thing.

13:25

I'm hearing that. And

13:27

with

13:28

respect to Renaissance, I think

13:30

the exact graphicness

13:33

of its sexuality

13:35

It's not just merely its

13:38

queerness, that's the specificity

13:40

of it, like the way on a song

13:42

like move, There's just

13:45

this. I don't

13:47

care. I'm gonna do what I want. You're

13:49

gonna bow down and Listen to me.

13:59

It isn't about

13:59

going high. This album is

14:02

this album is existing in the gutter.

14:04

Yeah. But maybe we should call it glimmer. I don't

14:06

know. Like, I wanted to remember. I

14:08

want a different word. because

14:10

there's just so much glamour in

14:12

it. But there's a possibility for

14:14

risk and offness in

14:16

some way. Think something like cozy.

14:19

Right?

14:32

The

14:32

way that this very glamorous person

14:34

is aligning with this other person who's

14:36

just like, Let me tell you how it

14:38

really is. I'm

14:40

black to come in and do all this

14:42

barking ferocity that,

14:44

you know, Beyonce can't

14:47

do. I

14:47

agree with all of that.

14:50

I'm still getting so

14:52

hung up on the on the word.

14:54

On the word trash

14:56

Beyonce of its

14:58

primary association in

15:00

American

15:00

pop culture. I mean, to your point

15:02

about Beyonce allowing

15:05

some of the gremlins to come out and some

15:07

of the

15:07

Gremlins is a great work of

15:10

trash. It's gremlins.

15:10

And the truth is of of

15:12

the film Gremlins about I

15:14

think blackness in America as a demonic

15:17

monstrosity and so a

15:19

very cute cuddly thing and what happens when it

15:21

gets wet what happens when it eats

15:23

after midnight, essentially, what happens

15:25

when it allows itself to be unruly.

15:27

How Beyoncé works in this album

15:29

is to let some of that

15:31

gremlessness come out

15:34

through the growls that she does when

15:36

she's saying move, when she's saying

15:38

no, For her, it's coming through in a

15:40

tone, it's coming through in a

15:42

texture. There are all these little

15:44

creaks and cracks where that

15:46

underbelly comes through, but is

15:48

so controlled that she's never gonna

15:50

let herself and she's too

15:52

protective of us to let us

15:54

be construed. as

15:56

grotesque.

15:57

And it's not an album

15:59

that has

16:01

gone on tour yet. Mhmm. So

16:03

it does for this kind of privacy,

16:05

and you can put it on and

16:07

allow yourself to get wet. I

16:09

mean, it is it is the thing

16:11

you're putting on after midnight on

16:14

allowing yourself to get wet around and let

16:16

the gremlin come out.

16:18

So I'm with you. I'm here for your

16:20

definition of trash and I'm coming around to it and I

16:22

believe you. So thank you for getting you there.

16:24

I'm also just trying to bring in the way in

16:26

which the ways in which Beyonce is hyper,

16:28

hyper, hyper conscious. and hyper

16:30

hyper hyper hyper vigilant

16:32

about how

16:33

her music and what she's

16:36

saying in her music gets used. you someone

16:38

who's been very rigid

16:40

historically about the

16:41

images of her that are in the media. If images

16:44

have made it into the media where she doesn't

16:46

look good, She's asked to have them taken

16:48

down. I mean, she's someone who has controlled

16:50

every aspect of her personal life and

16:52

her public life as much as anybody can.

16:55

And in this album, to feel her just release

16:57

that -- Yep. -- and have a lot

16:59

of fun with

17:00

it. Yep. Yep. Would you

17:02

be more comfortable

17:05

if we called this camp instead.

17:08

Yes. But we need another

17:10

word too. Right? The language isn't camp

17:12

is not expensive enough what we're talking about. It's somewhere between

17:14

those two things. Between

17:16

trash

17:16

and camp. Tramp. This is

17:18

straight tramp. Tramp. It is tramp.

17:20

It's tramp. Beyonce,

17:22

neither trash nor

17:25

camp -- Mhmm. -- or baby both

17:27

trash and camp. Yeah.

17:29

Tramp.

17:42

This episode

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18:15

Hi. It's Melissa Clark from New York Times

18:18

Cooking, and I'm in the kitchen with some of our team. I

18:20

wanna know when everyone's making for thanksgiving

18:22

this year from our recipes. Nikita Richardson,

18:24

what are you gonna make? I'm

18:25

making potatoes, the cheesy,

18:27

hazelback potato potato burrito, featuring layers

18:29

upon layers of thinly cut potatoes, a

18:32

five star recipe, which is

18:34

very easy, but it's a real

18:36

show stop. Gen

18:36

Aviv Co. What about you? Absolutely gonna

18:39

make miso gravy smothered green beans.

18:41

You coat the green beans in the gravy

18:43

that has this deep savory

18:45

mommy flavor just a little bit of me. So --

18:47

Sounds fantastic. -- Van Veenland, give

18:49

us your

18:49

take. I've tried every single one of

18:51

Genevieve's pies for this year, and let me tell you

18:53

that caramel apple so delicious. Look

18:55

at candy bar. I had a bite. It's got this

18:57

short red light crust, so you'll have to

18:59

roll out pie dough.

19:01

So no turkey. Well,

19:03

I'm gonna do a turkey. Probably, you're a

19:05

dry brine, duane, Melissa. Keep that simple. Yeah.

19:07

A lot of dust. Well, there you have it folks.

19:09

No matter what kind of thanksgiving you're cooking, you can

19:12

recipes you need at NYT cooking dot

19:14

com slash thanksgiving.

19:28

Beyonce turned forty

19:30

Maybe

19:30

last year? Yeah. Yeah. She did. And

19:33

I

19:33

was thinking about

19:34

what other great artists did

19:36

when they turned forty.

19:38

Bob Dylan

19:39

turns forty,

19:41

finds Jesus, makes

19:44

three great albums

19:46

about his new Christian self.

19:48

Aretha

19:49

turns forty and, like, discovers the

19:51

eighties and, like, fun. Like,

19:54

the

19:54

album she records when she's forty

19:56

has jumped to it. Just like jumped into

19:58

the eighties double dutch

19:59

style. Great.

20:01

And what I'm

20:03

hearing on Renaissance?

20:05

is

20:06

not caring in a way.

20:08

I mean, not caring about what people think

20:11

about you. Mhmm. Not caring

20:13

about having

20:14

to speak for a

20:16

bunch of

20:16

people, not caring about the

20:19

expectations, but

20:21

also She is I

20:23

said, we've been talking. Never been funnier.

20:26

And what that

20:26

sounds like to me

20:29

is

20:29

the a

20:30

song called America has

20:33

a

20:33

problem.

20:34

America America has a problem.

20:37

It's worth mentioning that in the weeks before

20:40

Renaissance came

20:42

out, track lists were released.

20:44

Yes. And people were like Beyoncé's finally

20:46

gonna talk about Floyd and Breonna

20:48

Taylor, and she's gonna, you

20:50

know, say something about police

20:52

brutality. Like, she hasn't already things

20:54

about police brutality through her music and

20:56

imagery and songs. But okay. So when

20:58

the song comes out No.

20:59

That holding

21:00

all do when I want want to.

21:03

Okay. I know you said his red red red song

21:05

me. Now it's coming here, papa. Rather

21:08

than

21:08

talking about violence

21:10

in this country, Beyonce is like, this

21:12

booty gonna do what it won't do. I mean,

21:14

there were many tweets that were like,

21:16

we

21:16

thought this song

21:18

was going to be about George

21:19

Floyd. Instead, it says this booty is gonna

21:21

do what I want to. And in

21:24

my mind, a song that's

21:26

about the booty doing whatever it wants

21:28

to do is a

21:30

song in resistance to beliefs

21:32

brutality because the whole point is we

21:34

don't get

21:34

to do what we want

21:37

to do.

21:43

No. No. But

21:46

I I do think that there's

21:49

something about the positioning of herself and

21:51

her body on this album that's really striking

21:53

and fascinating. A number of times, she talks

21:55

about being in her

21:57

body, out of her body. I mean, there's a

21:59

visorality

21:59

there

21:59

to to the way

22:02

she's using her voice on this

22:04

album that is extremely embodied. I

22:06

mean, only Beyoncé can turn

22:08

a growl into a physical

22:10

form. You know,

22:17

a lot of people don't know this about

22:19

me. I was not always

22:21

a Beyonce admirer

22:22

or appreciator. It took

22:24

me a long time to get on

22:26

to the Beyonce train. And I

22:28

think it's because when she was reaching her

22:30

first crescendo, I was at a

22:32

moment of my own body

22:35

journey where I really felt

22:37

a lot

22:38

of pressure and oppression and

22:41

suffocation by

22:43

images

22:43

and popular culture of what ideal body types

22:45

we're gonna look like. I felt

22:47

like everything about my body was wrong sized

22:49

and to be accepted and acceptable, to

22:51

be desirable and lovable.

22:54

needed to look like these images in

22:56

Word Up Magazine, which I bought every week or what

22:58

was on MTV? Word Up.

23:00

Word Up. Yeah. Posters

23:02

all across my walls. And so it was hard for

23:04

me to get on board with Beyoncé because all

23:06

I saw was her body. All

23:08

I saw was the way that she used

23:10

her body in music and in posters

23:13

in the world. Okay.

23:15

But now

23:16

as a

23:17

Beyonce scholar,

23:18

unofficially,

23:21

what changed?

23:22

two things

23:23

happen. One is

23:24

I started to go on my own journey

23:26

of self acceptance and my own journey

23:28

of self love. Mhmm.

23:30

And maybe Beyonce did too

23:33

because the way she was showing up in her

23:35

body started to feel different. She's

23:37

embracing her body. She's

23:39

embracing the curve. She's letting it

23:41

change shape. You know, in all these

23:43

new ways. I mean, the when she listen.

23:45

When she comes out homecoming,

23:48

that's

23:48

dumb. I have watched more times and

23:50

I would like to admit publicly.

23:53

But there's something about

23:55

seeing a woman fully embrace

23:58

who they are and delight

24:00

in their body

24:02

and especially the way it's coming

24:04

out on this album, y'all were on this

24:05

journey together whether you knew it or

24:08

not. She

24:08

brought us along for her journey, and I

24:11

appreciate that. But I think a lot

24:13

about a song called

24:13

Church Girl because

24:18

it's the one where Beyonce have talked

24:20

so explicitly about her body

24:21

and releasing it and letting

24:24

go of it.

24:25

So

24:28

there's this side idea

24:30

of Church

24:31

Church. Mhmm. If you

24:33

grew up in around or adjacent

24:35

to a church and happen to be a queer

24:38

person, You're probably familiar with

24:39

Church Church -- Mhmm. -- and a feeling

24:41

of seeking belonging. I don't even like the

24:43

city. I don't even like the city. Charlesboro

24:45

is gonna lose paper.

24:47

that not even edit. And, you know,

24:50

the way the club is analogous to the church

24:52

for some of us. Different forms of release.

24:54

And different

24:54

forms of religion, different forms

24:56

of connecting with something greater than yourself

24:59

and and understanding

25:02

nightlife and understanding the

25:04

club and understanding The

25:06

club is a spiritual place, a place where

25:09

a lot of city things happen in the corners,

25:11

and that's what you go for. You go to be near

25:13

it. If you're me, you wanna be

25:15

in this corners and

25:18

the space is created

25:20

for that. I will never

25:22

not live for that. I will be eighty

25:24

years old and one of my career babies will

25:26

be wheeling me in. Yeah. But I will have

25:28

on, like, a little tiara. And

25:30

to create this space, where you

25:32

have the glamour and then you have

25:35

everything else right

25:36

below it. Mhmm. Mhmm.

25:38

That is the important part of

25:40

the club. Yes. For me, for

25:41

someone who grew up in the church,

25:44

but not through their parents or through

25:46

their family of origin structure, I

25:49

listened to a song like Church Girl and I'm

25:51

immediately transported back

25:53

into a place of both

25:55

spirituality and secular

25:57

pleasure. Mhmm. when as

25:58

soon as I get in this

25:59

party, I'm gonna let

26:01

go of this body.

26:03

I'm gonna

26:03

love on me. Nobody

26:05

can judge me. I'm free.

26:17

That part

26:17

of the song when she starts singing, Born

26:19

Free, and it's so

26:22

fluttery and it's so

26:24

bird

26:25

like. Mhmm. Mhmm.

26:28

And you can feel like the wings batting in

26:30

the way She's

26:30

she says me. Yeah.

26:39

The

26:39

word itself lies away. Like, you

26:41

feel this aviation in it.

26:44

And it made me really emotional the

26:46

first time I heard it. And

26:48

that song is drawing from a song

26:50

called Centurately Well

26:51

No. The Clark sisters. And the Clark sisters?

26:54

Yes.

26:58

So,

27:02

center thy will in my mind is

27:04

a song that is asking

27:07

to to release to the unknown

27:10

and to bring that into the

27:12

song that's about releasing your

27:14

body, the song that's talking about

27:16

being born free. If

27:17

you can bring that into your

27:20

body, you will find peace, you will find

27:22

love, you will find community, perhaps

27:24

what Beyonce is saying is

27:26

in an album that's entirely

27:29

about queerness, we

27:31

were

27:31

made this

27:33

way.

27:33

And being queer is divine. It is

27:36

I mean, we know that. But, like, to have

27:38

someone out of our community, to

27:40

say that, to have someone who is loved

27:43

by churchgoers church pastors alike,

27:45

Beyonce of the church, to

27:47

have someone be saying, blackness

27:49

is inherently queer, blackness is inherently

27:51

outside of white normativity white institutions, so

27:54

I'm not knocking on any doors trying to get

27:56

in. Mhmm. Don't get me wrong. You know I

27:58

show up every year for the marches. I go

28:00

to dyed March,

28:01

I go to the row marches. I go to all these things. I want I

28:04

want I understand the importance

28:06

of legal protection. And

28:08

I also understand the reality that

28:10

those things were never met for us. We're

28:12

always the ones who get the shortest

28:14

end of that stick.

28:15

Mhmm. And

28:17

that's not my career

28:19

politics. So in

28:21

terms of how Beyonce is maybe thinking

28:23

about how she wants

28:24

to use her platform in this moment in

28:26

time to talk about queerness and AllyShip.

28:29

I

28:29

do think it actually exists in those handful

28:32

of seconds where she just turns

28:34

into a tiny sparrow.

28:36

and sings her version of freedom --

28:37

Mhmm. -- which is that

28:41

queerness

28:41

is just inherently godly,

28:43

whatever that word

28:44

means to you.

28:49

That's our

28:52

show. Still

28:53

processing is produced by Elisa

28:55

Dudley with Christina Joseph and

28:57

Hans Butteau. We are edited by

28:59

Sarah Sarison and Sasha Weiss.

29:01

The show is mixed by Lozano

29:03

and recorded by Maddie Massiello.

29:05

Digital

29:05

production by Mihima Chablani. Our

29:08

photo editor is Esla Atar.

29:10

and our theme music is by kindness. It's

29:12

called Always Start from the album Motherness.

29:15

We

29:15

will be back next

29:16

week. Work in cozy,

29:19

comfortable with who we are until

29:23

then. We don't

29:23

hang up the night.