#2 on the 2022 Bacon Top 31 — Beyoncé

RENAISSANCE by Beyoncé

There are megastar pop stars, and then there is Beyoncé. Of the pile of the musicians you could claim are “on top of the world,” from Kendrick Lamar to Taylor Swift, Queen Bey is standing atop that pile with her flag firmly planted. She has won 28 Grammys from 88 nominations across her 25 year career, making her the most honored singer ever (across both of the outdated male and female categories). As a solo artist and as part of the groundbreaking Destiny’s Child, her albums have sold a combined 260,000,000 times worldwide. That is nearly enough sales so that every American, from your 100-year-old grandma to that newborn who was just born yesterday, could have their own Beyoncé record.

She’s achieved this level of fame and glory not by following the path of those who came before — Madonna, Janet Jackson — but rather, defining the path for those to follow. Beyond her pace-setting music, she is a vocal advocate for Black Lives Matter, going so far as to appear at the 2016 Super Bowl halftime show with back up dancers dressed up as Black Panther Party representatives. She has put her excessive cultural weight behind other groups as well, such as when she spoke out against those (including our 45th president) who would remove the rights of transgender youth throughout public schools.

RENAISSANCE, her seventh — and best — album, marries all of the above into a tour de force unlike no other. Simultaneously a “dazzling tribute to underground and under-appreciated Black culture” and “the sound of a once-in-a-generation superstar performing at her peak” (according to critics Kate Solomon from i and Vernon Ayiku from Exclaim! respectively), RENAISSANCE is the strong dose of dance-infused medicine our Covid-19 stricken society needed. This isn’t Lemonade part 2 (#6 in 2016) – there are no genre-hopping scorned lovers on this record. As Julianne Escobedo Shepherd from Pitchfork said:

“Renaissance is inherently about bodies undulating in the dark, under strobes; sexual agency; and the Black queer and trans women who are both politicized and the most endangered people among us.”

Despite oozing sex appeal throughout her career, this album is Beyoncé at her most carnal. Shepherd goes on to say “Beyoncé has never been this horny in public,” and I concur. Nor has Beyoncé ever been this vulgar. I have a staunch “no clean versions” policy in the music I listen to. My children have grown up in a house that revels in all language, from Macklemore to Run the Jewels to Lizzo. But all those are tame when placed next to RENAISSANCE, to the point that I gave pause a couple times when putting the album on. The album opens with a quickly repeated “Please, motherfuckers ain’t stopping mе.” “Might I suggest you don’t fuck with my sis” is heard prominently shortly thereafter. “We getting fucked up tonight. We gon’ fuck up the night” is the repeated chorus just a couple songs later. And we’ve only made it four songs into the 16-song, hour-long set. It’s gloriously raunchy.

At its heart, this is a dance album from the drop. Songs blend from one to the next, as if a DJ was eloquently spinning one hit after another together at the best dance night you’ve ever been to. But these aren’t existing songs — these are expertly assembled, sampled, historically-, culturally-, and musically-significant artists pulled together to represent a whole that is a million times greater than its individual parts. Grace Jones next to Skrillex, trans black television personality Ts Madison up against Right Said Fred — the whole album is a true marvel. What sounds like a glorified Girl Talk album on paper is something completely different. Just listen to “CUFF IT” blend into “ENERGY” and then bleed into the album’s first single, “BREAK MY SOUL”¹. Be sure to check out the video above — Beyoncé’s team pulled it together for when RENAISSANCE was certified platinum. The video is a quick-cut collection of TikTok and other fan-made videos of people of all shapes and sizes, genders and sexuality dancing to “BREAK MY SOUL,” and it’s so damn empowering, you’ll find yourself fighting back happy tears.

RENAISSANCE is a phenomenal record. If you’ve not heard it yet, I command you to do so. Nobody can deny the greatness of it. It’ll be surprising to my wife (and potentially others) that it’s not my #1 album this year, given how much we played it in our house. Any artist able to beat Queen Bey this year had to go to extraordinary lengths, and indeed, the artist at #1 did. You’ll read exactly how tomorrow. For now, put RENAISSANCE on repeat, crank the volume, and I’ll see you tomorrow, sweaty and exhausted.

^{1. This is the first downfall I’ve seen when it comes to YouTube Music – each of these three videos has a disclaimer at the beginning regarding the dangers of flashing lights for some people. It’s a few-seconds pause at the beginning of the song, thereby preventing the listener from going seamlessly between the tracks of this album. This is a fairly significant downside, given how this album is meant to be heard as one can’t stop, won’t stop, non-stop beat.↩}

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3. This Is a Photograph by Kevin Morby
4. Lucifer On the Sofa by Spoon
5. Palomino by First Aid Kit
6. We've Been Going About This All Wrong by Sharon Van Etten
7. SOS by SZA
8. Wet Leg by Wet Leg
9. Chloë and the Next 20th Century by Father John Misty
10. Big Time by Angel Olsen
11. Ants From Up There by Black Country, New Road
12. Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To the Sky by Porridge Radio
13. I Walked with You a Ways by Plains
14. The Last Goodbye by Odesza
15. A Light for Attracting Attention by The Smile
16. Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers by Kendrick Lamar
17. Inside Problems by Andrew Bird
18. Laurel Hell by Mitski
19. Full Moon Project by Phosphorescent
20. Skinty Fia by Fontaines D.C.
21. I Love You Jennifer B by Jockstrap
22. Too Much to Ask by Cheekface
23. Dripfield by Goose
24. Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You by Big Thief
25. And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow by Weyes Blood
26. NOT TiGHT by DOMi & JD BECK
27. Preacher’s Daughter by Ethel Cain
28. Live at KEXP, vol. 10 by Various Artists
29. All You Need Is Time by Daisy the Great
30. Cool It Down by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
31. CAPRISONGS by FKA twigs

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#22 on the 2016 Bacon Top 31

This Unruly Mess I’ve Made by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

These guys really know what they’re doing. They’re insanely popular, and they’ve built it all up themselves. But if you listen to the music created by lyricist / rapper Macklemore and his music-producing cohort Ryan Lewis, it becomes clear they’re just fumbling through it all like everybody else. The brutal honesty of Macklemore’s lyrics on this new record, the duo’s second full-length collaboration, step well beyond the refreshingly lucid lyrics of their debut, The Heist.

Next to chart-topping songs like “Downtown,” (which is insanely raunchy — when was the last time you heard a song with the word “scrotum” in it?), and “Dance Off” (which video is shown above, featuring none other than Idris “‘Stringer’ Bell” Elba), Mack sings about the inner turmoil of being an imposter for his success, of being white and finding it difficult to fight for #blacklivesmatter, of being a dead-beat father who’s never around. The album’s truths are at once arresting and refreshing.

But then it comes to the global acceptance of them. Nothing brings out my own insecurity about being a white American male more than listening to Macklemore do his thing. I feel guilty listening to him with my son, especially when we get to the song “White Privilege II” and the spoken-word passage of the mom clearly talking to Macklemore and saying

“You’re the only hip-hop that I let my kids listen to
’Cause you get it, all that negative stuff it isn’t cool”

Because it causes my son to ask questions, questions that are hard for me to answer, that make me uneasy in my “whiteness.” And while it’s not true that Macklemore & Ryan Lewis is the only hip-hop I let my son listen to, all of his points hit a nerve (as it’s supposed to).

And that’s where Mack’s lyrics shine — in that moment where you stop, and you think, and you examine your own world and decide “am I doing everything I can in this fucked up world of ours?” and realize you most certainly are not, and you start to edge yourself towards being that ultimately unattainable “better person.” And you keep on trying, thanks in small part to Macklemore & Ryan Lewis.

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23. LNZNDRF by LNZNDRF
24. Puberty 2 by Mitski
25. Light Upon the Lake by Whitney
26. A Corpse Wired for Sound by Merchandise
27. Away by Okkervil River
28. case/lang/veirs by case/lang/veirs
29. Love Letter for Fire by Sam Beam & Jesca Hoop
30. Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future by Underworld
31. Preoccupations by Preoccupations

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis — Downtown

Say what you want about Macklemore. You either love him or you hate him. But there’s no denying that he and Ryan Lewis know how to create a hit song. I’ve now listened to the song above, “Downtown,” twice, and already that chorus (sung by Foxy Shazam’s Eric Nally) is on constant repeat in my head.

It’s been three years since M&RL released their platinum-selling, independently released, mega-hit album The Heist. On August 5th they released their first new recording since that album, “Growing Up,” which is one of their more touchy-feely songs, all about Macklemore’s soon-to-be-born child. (Macklemore and his wife had a baby girl, Sloane, back in May, after “Growing Up” was written and recorded.)

And now here’s sure to be the first hit from their new as-yet-unnamed new album. There’s a lot I don’t care for in “Downtown.” Macklemore is definitely pushing the envelope of his good-boy image with some of the lyrics within (nobody needs to hear about his or anybody’s scrotum, for instance). But the production, that chorus, the prog-rock way the song bounces from one stanza to the next (is this a new genre of music, Prog Hip Hop?) — I love it. It blends old school hip hop (yes that’s Kool Moe Dee, Melle Mel and Grandmaster Caz you see there), over-the-top orchestration (a la Queen, or more recently, fun.), a touch of Seattle (Hi Junior!) and a little West Side Story. Filmed in Spokane, “Downtown” gets me moving in my seat. As soon as it finishes I want to start it over again.

I can’t wait to see what the rest of the album has to offer, whenever it comes out.

Most likely you’ve already watched this video by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis that was posted yesterday, but in the off chance you haven’t seen it: watch and be amazed as you find yourself reaching for the mouse as soon as it ends to hit “replay.”

This song, “Can’t Hold Us” featuring Ray Dalton on the chorus, is off of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’s fantastic album The Heist, which was #8 on last year’s Musical Bacon Calendar.

#8 on the 2012 Musical Bacon Calendar

The Heist by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

Hip hop is not my forte. I find it quite difficult to write about hip hop, because while I’ve enjoyed various hip hop and rap acts over the years, I don’t have the history needed to draw the lines of connection between new and old artists. So please forgive me if my review of the awesome album at #8, The Heist, by Seattle’s own Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, is little more than “I LOVE THIS ALBUM.”

My love of Macklemore started back in early 2011, with the death of beloved Mariners sportscaster Dave Niehaus. Macklemore wrote a touching tribute to Niehaus that literally brought a tear to my eye. He even got to perform the song in tribute to Niehaus on the grass at Safeco back on April 8, 2011. It’s a touching song for a good man, and it won me over to what Macklemore was trying to accomplish.

Fast forward to this past October, when Macklemore and Lewis released The Heist, which features “My Oh My” — the Niehaus song — and 17 other fantastic songs. The music that Ryan Lewis puts together to flow up and down behind Macklemore’s intelligent rhymes is sublime, at once leading the song and taking a back seat at the same time.

If you’ve liked hip hop in the past, you’ll find it hard to not like this album. The album alternates between comical songs, like “Thrift Store” above, and music-with-a-cause, like “My Oh My” and the popular “Same Love,” a rare pro-homosexuality and gay marriage song from the hip hop community. It does have it’s moments of base, teenage humor mixed in with the soapbox songs, making it difficult to recommend the album for everybody. But overall, this is an immensely likable album.

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9. Heaven by The Walkmen
10. State Hospital EP by Frightened Rabbit
11. A Thing Called Divine Fits by Divine Fits
12. Some Nights by fun.
13. Tramp by Sharon van Etten
14. Fear Fun by Father John Misty
15. Love This Giant by David Byrne and St. Vincent
16. To The Treetops! by Team Me
17. The Master: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Jonny Greenwood
18. There’s No Leaving Now by The Tallest Man On Earth
19. Transcendental Youth by The Mountain Goats
20. A Church That Fits Our Needs by Lost In The Trees
21. Hospitality by Hospitality
22. Free Dimensional by Diamond Rings
23. History Speaks by Deep Sea Diver
24. A Different Ship by Here We Go Magic
25. Negotiations by the Helio Sequence
26. Moms by Menomena
27. The Sound of the Life of the Mind by Ben Folds Five
28. Shields by Grizzly Bear
29. Every Child A Daughter, Every Moon A Sun by The Wooden Sky
30. Fragrant World by Yeasayer
31. Reign of Terror by Sleigh Bells

What is the Bacon Calendar?

2011 Musical Bacon Calendar
2010 Musical Bacon Calendar
2009 Musical Bacon Calendar