What I’m Listening to This Week

“Hold Up” from the visual album, Lemonade (2016)
By: Beyoncé

I woke up this morning — hadn’t thought about Lemonade in about a year. Walking my cat, sifting through this retrograde and eclipse season — seeking balance upon this Libra Moon.

Just uttering the chorus to myself:

Hold up, they don’t love you
Like I love you;
Slow down, they don’t love you
Like I love you.

I know there’s a lot I can share and write on right now — Bad Bunny, King Kendrick Lamar, Ibeyi; Ozomatli and A$AP Rocky all released new music this week.

But I like to sit with Beyoncé, my fellow Libra Rising — the two of us just doing our best to come across as reasonable and accommodating. And, in the end, isn’t this what she’s professing? Uplifting herself — the artist — to some unnamed, undeserving sinvergüenza? This art: a music video, a song, a visual album that reverberated across the Earth for months, elections, and a generation.

It’s sad to miss, you know. I heard that Lizzo’s next album excludes about 100 songs she didn’t want published.

And considering the emotional depth of her new single, “Special,” shared only on the April 16, 2022 episode of Saturday Night Live:

I assume that many of those leftover songs explored places restricted usually to private pages.

But doesn’t Bey balance carefully upon that knife’s edge? Between oversharing and giving you just enough to feel alive? This song expounds on what others call an Iceberg: with just a few choice words, she outlines betrayal, anger, rhythm, shame, forgiveness, weariness, devotion, adoration.

It’s a light refrain; clear, direct:

Hold up, they don’t love you
Like I love you

Was someone singing it into my ear all night? That’s why I sit and breathe. Let it flow through and fuel me. And take princely, radiant bows before my fellow actors like I got my swag on, I look into the mirror say wassup.