BEYONCÉ: the discography rate ~ #49 ~ VOTING OPEN 4 BREAK MY SOUL

I got politely hit by a car while trying to figure out my 11 for this rate. That will teach me to look at the road instead of staring at my notes app while walking…

Never fear, they did not break my soul (or anything else for that matter). But if my 11 doesn’t win I will be taking it as a personal attack.

 

Surely your 11 now must be Don’t Hurt Yourself, Back Up, Smash Into You or Green Light?

Seriously though, glad you’re ok, sounds scary!

 

FINISHED!! Here are my averages. Highest and lowest scores include the bonus tracks. I didn't do the optional extras ddd.
Dangerously In Love - 7.429 (7.9 with bonus tracks)/1x10/1x1
B'Day - 9.5 (9.295 with bonus tracks)/6x10s/1x8
I Am...Sasha Fierce - 7.545 (6.95 with bonus tracks)/4x9.5s/1x4
4 - 9.67 (9.656 with bonus tracks)/7x10s/2x9s
BEYONCÉ - 9.536 (9.434 with bonus tracks)/6x10s/2x8.5s
Lemonade - 9.808/1x11, 5x10s/1x9
EVERYTHING IS LOVE - 9.4/3x10s/1x8.5
The Gift - 9.545/5x10s/4x9s
Extras (including Homecoming) - 9.15/5x10s/3x8s

Whew, a discography!! Her quality control since 4 has been insane and self-titled and Lemonade are truly as amazing as everyone says. Excited to see how this goes, and I hope my 11 does well.

 

Just finished rating "The Gift" and only three extras need scores (the most recent ones, since I rated them in a chronological order) before I'm done. Oh, and I have to pick an 11 too.

My favourite rediscoveries of the rate are "Welcome to Hollywood", "Hello", "Blue", "Sexy Lil' Thug" and "OTHERSIDE".

 

Scores sent and here are the averages (the ones in brackets are including bonus tracks):

Dangerously in Love - 7.535 (7.188)
B'Day - 8.025 (8.091)
I Am... Sasha Fierce - 8.273 (8.213)
4 - 8.583 (8.188)
BEYONCÉ - 7.482 (7.302)
Lemonade - 8.563 (8.500)
EVERYTHING IS LOVE - 5.694 (5.625)
Homecoming - 5.333
The Gift - 7.350 (7.181)
Extras (total) - 7.136
Extras - 7.156
Unreleased - 7.833
Optional extras - 6.212

(I didn't include my 11 when calculating the averages but instead assigned a 10 to that song)

Makes sense that "4" and "Lemonade" have my highest average scores, but I prefer the latter as an album. The rest is still relatively correct when it comes to how I would rank them (though I wouldn't put the self-titled and debut so close). Scores also confirming that "I Am... a Sasha Fierce Apologist". And kii at "B'Day" gaining a bit from its bonus tracks.

My lowest score is one 3 and this is the rate where I gave out the most sub-5 scores overall - probably around ten or a bit more, which actually isn't much given there's 190 songs in total. On the other hand, there's a whole lot of 8+ scores but I gave out only eleven perfect scores and they appear so random I'm going to be embarrassed after they are revealed. As for my 11, three songs were taken into consideration - two album tracks and one single. I ended up choosing it last-minute since I love them all equally (which means that any choice would be right/wrong).

Looking forward to this properly kicking off!

 

Now voting has closed what do we think will be first out? My bets are on Perfect Duet, Daddy or Bienvenue.

 

It has to be Daddy.

 

Going into this I didn't think I Am would end up not having any 10s from me but that's what happened in the end. Listening to it back after listening to 4 through Lemonade (hell, through The Gift) really puts into context how much of an outlier it is in her discography. I mean, Dangerously In Love is a mostly solid debit, if a bit nothingy in the end. Then B'Day is such a level up from that as a fantastic (mostly) bopfest with almost every song being very memorable. It all slaps. It makes I Am even weirder looking back. Like, why did anyone think that it was a good idea? The concept of the album is great though. And I say all of this knowing that it's possible some of the songs will grow on me, but I doubt it. And the fact that it's the only Beyoncé album I own (I got it years ago, with plans to dive into her discography that did not work out) and it's my least favorite other than Dangerously In Love...ddddd we love irony. It's a damn shame too because I can remember myself constantly picking up the platinum edition of Self-Titled as well as Lemonade when it came out and just never got either. Shame on younger me.
Anyway, my 11 contenders were the following:
Beautiful Liar
Love On Top
Blow
Partition
Blue
Don't Hurt Yourself
Daddy Lessons
Freedom
All Night
Formation
As I said in my averages post, I ended up going with a song on Lemonade, and it was one I hadn't heard before the rate, which is most of the album. But now I'm gonna start using my money to buy Beyoncé albums because I'm officially obsessed. I'm so happy I did this.

And Daddy better damn well be the first one out again.

 

Daddy has awful lyrics, but Perfect Duet has awful lyrics and Ed Sheeran, so it's obvious to me which should go first.

 

Yeah, I thought "Perfect Duet" was the obvious choice to leave first. Though that one was optional to rate so we'll see how it will be revealed.

After that, I can definitely see "Daddy" getting eliminated, along with totally unremarkable/boring songs such as "So Amazing", "Bienvenue", "Proud to Be an American", "Walk on Water" etc.

 

Eminem is here too. Just sayin'

 

Yes. Walk on Water was mentioned already though.

 

Okay but that was optional so if you subjected yourself to listening to it to rate it, you only have yourself to blame. I completely forgot it was here at all, but it will certainly be bottom 5 if it isn't last.
I'm expecting most of the optional songs to bomb out early, so it'll be interesting to see if that's the case.

 

So ideally, I think it would definitely be nice to have this rate wrapped up within the month so by the end of it, we have a whole new Beyoncé album to enjoy (can't believe I'm typing that!). As we have a lot of songs to get through, I'll be making lots of eliminations early on (probably starting Friday) so we can get to the good stuff quickly! Hope you are all excited for the mess!

 

Perfect Duet
Proud to Be An American
Walk On Water
We Will Rock You
Daddy
My First Time
Lost Yo Mind

A bottom 7. (The only seven songs I gave negative scores to dd)

 

The way none of these received a score higher than a 6 from me. And I think "Daddy" actually got the best score out of them oop. In fact, I scored "Daddy" higher than a fair share of male-led songs where Bey is just a feature, so yeah...
(and I assume your 'negative' scores refer to sub-5 ones, right?)

I'm scared to reveal all of my ideal lowest placing songs though ddd

 

Yeah, those all got 0-4s from me. I also have a couple of 5s, and then everything else got 6+ dd

 

Lost Yo Mind is actually quite great though?

 

For the sake of being extra, since my scoring scale consisted from decimal points (quarters), here's a breakdown of the amount of scores I gave out in this rate:

3-4 score range: 4

4-5 score range: 9

5-6 score range: 15

6-7 score range: 39

7-8 score range: 45

8-9 score range: 42

9-10* score range: 33

*includes my 11


I might do another 'songs we could've rated' spotlight tonight/tomorrow.

 

I don't think it's as bad as the other songs I listed, but it sounds so rough/low quality (at least the upload on the playlist does) that I had to deduct a few points, because it's just not very pleasant to listen to.