by Farrah Goff
Farrah Goff originally wrote this analysis of Beyoncé’s groundbreaking video album, Lemonade, for Music 3022: History of Popular Song in America. The essay also integrates Goff’s work from her Independent Study in English examining Black Critical Theory.
In late April 2016, Beyoncé dropped the extensive video album Lemonade, which featured huge hits and focused heavily on feminine identity and pain. While the entire album speaks strongly to a woman’s identity in the face of adversity, “Sorry,” a song with an accompanying music video shot in black and white, specifically resonates with this theme.
Given that the music industry has for so long worked as a microcosm for the misogynistic principals present within society, both the music video composition and the lyrics of “Sorry” work in favor of the necessary “reclaiming” that needs to be accomplished by women in general. In the case of black women especially, there is a duality to the experience of oppression: feminism is not always inclusive of blackness, and racial equality is not always inclusive of feminism. “Sorry” responds to this problematic context by taking characteristics that are not typically associated with black femininity and, in doing so, claims them. Furthermore, the black woman in postcolonial America (an America founded on sexism and racism) is posed not only with this need to “reclaim” but also to renegotiate herself into spaces that have been previously denied her, which is what Beyoncé works to do in “Sorry.” However, for Beyoncé to engage in this necessary reclaiming, she herself must also engage in the same acts of marginalization to which she has been subjected.
Fundamentally, “Sorry” is a break-up song, albeit an empowering one. Throughout Lemonade as an extended work, Beyoncé promotes ideals of feminine empowerment. This is not a large step away from her previous works such as “Deja-Vu” and “Irreplaceable,” both of which are present on the earlier album, B-Day (Brooks). After the initial prelude, “Sorry” sounds very much like a song one would dance to; it is heavy with both base and drum beats. The opening lines “Sorry, I ain’t sorry” contradict the message that could be misconstrued from the title: this song is not an apology. Rather, it’s about the absence of one. The song takes listeners along the path of the scorned woman, the woman going out to the club, the woman who “ain’t thinking about you” (Beyoncé). In doing so, Beyoncé has given listeners a song to sing with their friends when their boyfriend is no longer texting them back–a song of independence. However, there are pieces of this dance-inducing break-up song that speak to deeper levels of the experiences of black women.
It is necessary to understand the specific medium Beyoncé chose on which to release “Sorry” and how this medium works to physically illustrate Beyoncé’s movement from “apartness” from other women to “togetherness” with them. “Sorry” was released as a chapter in a larger visual work, and the visual aspects of the music video are therefore important to the overall message of the song. This song specifically uses group dancers and wardrobe changes in order to show Beyoncé as not alone or apart from the women around her, but united and together. “Sorry” is filmed entirely in gray scale or black and white. This places importance on what is stark white, while also removing the significance colors could play, such as her yellow gown in the video “Hold Up” being used to symbolize her relationship with the sun. For one, the use of black and white videography further puts emphasis on the racial disparity of the “white” and the “black” or “other” (Spillers). For example, the actual style of filming in black and white allows for there to be no dispute about the clear differences in color, both racially and artistically.
Furthermore, the idea of joining or being a part of a community is visible through her various positions in the video. Beyoncé opens up on a scene of her elevated amongst the women surrounding her, who are dressed in traditional African outfits and white face paint. However, in subsequent scenes she is one of them, sitting directly beside them with her own face painted. This movement from apartness to togetherness suggests the idea of unity, but it can also be seen as a movement from conformity to acceptance. When Beyoncé is trying to conform to the white ideals of society she is apart from the other black women around her; when she dons the face paint and the traditional dress this represents her acceptance of aspects of her black identity and allows her to be united with the other women. Thus, this change can be viewed as an acceptance of her movement away from her attempt to conform to whiteness. Furthermore, it can be seen as an acceptance and even embracement of her blackness. With the upbeat background music playing and the lyrics singing, “me and my ladies sip my d’usse cup” (Beyoncé) this movement can be viewed as a celebration.
Another important visual is the image of Beyoncé and Serena Williams within a plantation. Beyoncé reclines in a throne-like chair while Serena Williams enters the otherwise empty plantation home and approaches Beyoncé. As the song progresses, Beyoncé and Serena Williams interact with one another, although Beyoncé never leaves her throne. The plantation home stands as a symbol of the systematic oppression of black people during slavery. Furthermore, the position of both women inside the manor even as they stand as symbols of strength depicts the idea that they are still forced to exist within the confines of the systematic oppression of society (Johnson). Even as Beyoncé sings lines such as “middle fingers up, tell him boy bye” a line that quite literally demonstrates her standing up to the man in her life, and aggressively at that, she is still held to the structures of a racially and sexually oppressive society.
One of the most poignant lines elucidates the feminine experience by ironically using a reference to male anatomy. “Suck on my balls,” Beyoncé enunciates quite clearly. It is a simple, almost juvenile proclamation, but an effective one. It is the proclamation of a woman who has “had enough.” However, this line works beyond this initial declaration; it is both an act of claiming and re-gendering. The line can be merely interpreted as the colloquial phrase, but on second examination it is a way of claiming a series of traits that are often associated with the masculine. In this declaration, Beyoncé is quite literally assigning herself a different gender. Through this re-gendering, Beyoncé is then able to go “wilding” and “grinding” but not before (Beyoncé). By taking possession of the masculine, Beyoncé engages in behaviors that are typically socially accepted of the male gender such as blatantly bragging about going out with friends or working hard. In fact, she is defying the expectations that are placed on her gender following a devastating break up, as women are typically expected to break down and mourn their loss. In comparison, there is a stereotype of the unaffected man, which Beyoncé takes on in this case.
In the same vein, it is only after Beyoncé has engaged in the re-gendering of her own self that the male partner, the cheater and perpetrator of the violence against her, begins to take on the traits typically associated with feminine identity. “Now you want to say you’re sorry” is the line Beyoncé uses to torment her man. She has claimed the dominant position in the dissolving relationship, and, in this role reversal, the cheating partner is taking on the traits previously associated with her, the woman. “You” in this role reversal is now the one who has to apologize, whereas the now re-gendered Beyoncé “ain’t sorry.” This same logic applies to the following line, “now you want to call me crying.” Again, emphasizing the gender reversal that has occurred under this re-gendering, it would be socially acceptable for the partner to call her in tears, as he has taken on this feminine identity so typically associated with the ease of emotional expression.
Beyoncé, however, by engaging in this active re-gendering, is actually perpetuating conditions that enable violence against women and feminine gender identity. Beyoncé drives her point home with the line “now, I’m the one that’s lying,” in a final demonstration of her role reversal from the partner who was cheated on to that of the cheating partner. However, by needing to first take possession of the masculine gender in order to engage in these behaviors, Beyoncé perpetuates societal oppression.
After Beyoncé re-genders herself, she also directly brings in the “other woman” of her song, “Becky with the good hair.” The idea of “good hair” also suggests that there is such a thing as “bad hair.” While this could just be a personal comment, a voicing of her own simple judgment of her hair in comparison to “Becky’s,” it seems Beyoncé is once again alluding to a much deeper form of policing of women’s bodies: the policing of black women’s hair. In the music video she demonstrates her resistance to this policing by sporting her hair in different styles of braiding ranging from a head of cornrows to two thick braids and loose bangs, but the style goes beyond that. Black hair— more specifically black women’s hair—is often seen as a sort of statement (Louis). Whatever choice a black woman makes, she is incapable of simply possessing hair (Louis). If a black woman decides to relax her hair she’s seen as conforming (Louis). If she decides to leave her hair as is, she is making a statement (Louis). In the end there’s no winning, and this sort of preoccupation with existing as a black woman and merely possessing hair is not lost on Beyoncé, so much so that the final lyrics of a song of women’s vindication and reclaiming are dedicated to this concept of “good hair.”
However, Beyoncé is engaging in the tendencies of society to pit women against fellow women. Out of all the closing lines of this piece, she chooses to close with a repetition of the line “you better call Becky with the good hair.” In doing so, Beyoncé’s lyrical decision has dragged the attention of the piece away from the real subject of her anger, the cheating partner, and placed it on the accomplice in the violence, “Becky,” the woman with whom Beyoncé was cheated on. “Becky” has therefore become Beyoncé’s victim in the narrative of “Sorry” because the final rage or anger at the end of the song is directed specifically at her.
This placement of blame is not out of the ordinary for Beyoncé, as a similar sentiment has been seen in other works of hers such as “Ring The Alarm” off of her album, B Day (Brooks). In “Ring The Alarm” Beyoncé sings another song of empowering the scorned woman; however, there is repeated emphasis on the lyrics “ring the alarm, I’ll be damned if I see another chick on your arm” (Beyoncé). This demonstrates that while the relationship is flawed, the Beyoncé of “Ring the Alarm” regards her man engaging romantically with another women as the final straw (Brooks). This perpetuates harmful beliefs among women about ideas of competition for ownership of partners, so much so that another women is a threat to a romantic relationship (Brooks).
Similarly, instead of the explicitly named woman in “Sorry” becoming an ally in Beyoncé’s piece about her mistreatment at the hands of a man, Beyoncé makes “Becky” a guilty party by association. By mentioning in anger both the cheating partner and the woman with whom the cheating has occurred, it implies a certain amount of ownership in the wrongdoing, when in fact “Becky” made no such promises or commitments to Beyoncé, and therefore cannot really be accused as a guilty party. Rather, this movement of blame from the man to the woman is again a shift of attention from the person who actually committed the cheating.
Moving beyond the musical lyrics, Beyoncé implements a voice-over technique during which the word “apathy” flashes on the screen in the very opening of the music video. Beyoncé speaks the opening lines while the sounds of Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” play in the background (Johnson). She asks the question “so what are you going to say at my funeral now that you killed me” while this tinkling melody greets listeners. This opener is not only a direct question; it also suggests many faceted layers to the following song. On one level, the line suggests a metaphoric death after the loss of an unfaithful husband. Simply put, the line translates almost directly to an interrogation of the cheating partner: how do you explain yourself? However, the line is also suggestive of violence. More specifically, the line states, “you killed me,” an active action of ending someone else’s life. The scene in which this line is uttered is suggestive of the middle passage: African American women in traditional outfits and face paint are in an enclosed space, lining the walls of a vehicle as it moves through an unidentifiable space. The imagery here could be used to draw parallels between this act of “killing” in the terms of a romantic relationship to the cultural and political death felt by the abducted African persons prior to their entrance to the middle passage (Spillers). Effectively a loss of personhood, this death of “me” speaks to the loss of self one may feel after betrayal in a relationship but also to the stripping of African American female gender identity upon their entrance into the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Spillers 68).
The themes of agency and identity are further discussed in Beyoncé’s following line: “here lies the body of the love of my life, whose heart I broke without a gun to my head.” “I,” in this case, refers to the cheating husband. In this, as a broken-hearted lover, Beyoncé has been reduced to only a body. On top of this, she has been reduced to a body only in terms and possession of the cheating partner, the person who has caused her harm. However, the line goes on to identify that this “body” possesses a broken heart, which implies that there is a difference between the body itself and the person who inhabited it, both of which were at the mercy of the cheating partner (Spillers).
This idea is also reminiscent of the Atlantic Slave Trade, in the sense that both the body and the identity of the captured African people were stripped of their autonomy, and thus were unable to claim autonomy or agency from the ones capturing them (Spillers 67). Therefore, the cheating lover and the scorned spouse are placed in a similar power dynamic as the one that was felt between the slave trader and their captive bodies. Beyoncé is once again drawing parallels between women who have suffered at the hands of their male romantic partners and the abducted people affected by the African slave trade. Possibly she does this in order to place emphasis on the depth and length of the experience of lacking autonomy as a black woman. Another possibility is that it gives more power to the weight of the loss felt by a person who has been betrayed by someone they love. Regardless, both of these situations are demonstrative of crimes and violations against a person on two levels: the body and the soul.
The theme of agency is questioned in the opening voice over as well. In the line, “whose heart I broke without a gun to my head,” the “my” refers to the cheating partner (Beyoncé). The idea that is brought to life with these words is that there was an active choice involved. Someone broke someone else’s heart in an act of violence against that was committed willingly and without any exterior threat. This demonstrates that the person who committed the violence had autonomy in his decision and chose to commit it anyway, whereas the victim who the violence was committed against was without such power. The theme of autonomy–or lack thereof–allows for the application of blame, which is where this song really takes root. The application of blame justifies Beyoncé’s subsequent behaviors depicted in the piece. Therein, Beyoncé grounds her newly claimed independence on the basis of a previous lack of agency at the hands of a partner who abused their power.
The need to regain agency also becomes clear as the song develops. Beyoncé sings, “Suicide before you see this tear fall down my eyes,” the meaning painfully clear: “I would rather die by my own hand than allow you to see the pain you have caused me.” Although this can be initially heard as a figure of speech with the inclusion of a heavy hyperbole, the theme of agency is again present. This theme agency is not merely present in Beyoncé’s break-up anthem, but also in historical events. The woman willing to die rather than submit to the will of the man is a story as old as the African Slave Trade itself. In fact, one such instance from the Atlantic Slave trade is the story of a young African girl who was tortured to death rather than submit to her captor, Captain John Kimber (Hartman). When autonomy is lost, women have done whatever was in their power to reclaim it, even if that means death. Once again, Beyoncé’s lyricism gestures to the dual nature of black feminism: not only does she as a woman need to gain her agency after the pain of her failed relationship, but she also does not forget the roots of the black women before her, the ones who were willing to die on their own terms rather than submit to the men around them.
Without any close analysis, “Sorry” is an enjoyable break up song, a song of empowerment and reclamation in the wake of betrayal. On its most simplistic level, it is about going out with one’s girlfriends when one’s husband has violated one’s marriage. However, this song engages in a conversation with themes that run much deeper than those of the cheating husband. This song engages in conversations about autonomy, agency, and the loss of such at the hands of men. It raises discussions of gender identity and codified identity politics, ranging from accepted feminine behavior to black hair politics. “Sorry” does not stand by itself. it stands as a work built upon the history that stood before it. It does not shy away from referencing images that may seem too dark for pop culture, such as the previously mentioned imagery of the Atlantic Slave Trade. The choice to engage with this history is important because the black woman’s experience cannot be isolated from these discussions and history. Neither can “Sorry.” Rather, it chooses to actively engage in these exact discussions and Beyoncé “ain’t sorry” for doing so.
Works Cited
Beyoncé. “Hold Up.” YouTube, uploaded by beyonceVEVO, 4 September 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeonBmeFR8o
Beyoncé. “Sorry.” YouTube, uploaded by beyonceVEVO, 22 June 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxsmWxxouIM
Beyoncé. “Formation.” YouTube, 9 December 2016, uploaded by beyonceVEVO, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDZJPJV__bQ
Brooks, Daphne A. “’All That You Can’t Leave Behind’: Black Female Soul Singing and the Politics of Surrogation in the Age of Catastrophe.” Meridians, Vol. 8, No. 1, 2007, pp. 180-204. JStor, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40338916
Hartman, Saidiya V. Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.
Johnson, Cherise. “Beyoncé Gave Serena Williams Pointers For ‘Sorry’ Video.” HipHopDX, 10 May 2016, https://hiphopdx.com/news/id.38750/title.beyonce-gave-serena-williams-pointers-for-sorry-video#
Louis, Catherine Saint. “Black Hair, Still Tangled in Politics.” The New York Times, 26 Aug. 2009, p. E1, www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/fashion/27SKIN.html
Martin, Gary. “‘Ashes to ashes’ – the meaning and origin of this phrase.” Phrasefinder, 2017, https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/ashes-to-ashes.html
Spillers, Hortense J. “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book.” Diacritics, vol. 17, no. 2, 1987, pp. 64-81. JStor, http://www.jstor.org/stable/464747
Published February 6, 2018
Photo credit: “DSC04120” by thekrisharris is licensed under CC BY 2.0
