The song isn’t about women, it’s about robots, and those sound effects allude to the sounds of a robot’s joints moving. It’s a clap track with sound effects and vocals. I mean, it barely holds together as a song. In fact, musically, it’s a really, really weird song for a hit of its size. Cuz all women obviously want to be married, right? Traditional gender roles, traditional heterosexuality, materialism, blahblahblah…īut this song isn’t about women.

This interpretation of the lyrics is behind the faddish dance that the song inspired: “single ladies” everywhere were flipping their left hands front to back, indicating where “the ring” should be put. “If you like it, then you shoulda put a ring on it” leads people to hear this as a sad then angry break-up song, the anthem of single women everywhere. Most people – from music journalists to my students – tend to hear this song as a really clichéd paean to marriage and traditional gender roles. Let’s look at “Single Ladies (put a ring on it)”. Sussing out the split personality thing would be interesting, but that’s not for another entry. Beyoncé is doing the same thing…or maybe, Sasha Fierce is doing the same thing. (See the “Strange Fruit” chapter in Blues Legacies and Black Feminism). Angela Davis argues that Billie Holiday mastered the technique of “working with and against” banal (indeed, second-hand) pop tunes, turning them into both musically and politically/intellectually substantive/enjoyable pieces.

It’s REALLY HARD to make delectable pop that also problematizes ideas in ways that are interesting to academics.

Beyoncé is an amazingly talented artist who plays around in very subtle and nuanced ways with “serious ideas” – all while singing some damn catchy hooks.

Snl beyonce single ladies