The return of Beyoncé

Break My Soul is an undeniable smash – and her upcoming album will probably smash records. But the topic of her new single has been up for debate. Many fans have praised the song as an ‘end of grind culture’ as the pop sensation sings about ‘slowing down and making time for ourselves.’ On the other spectrum, some critics say whilst it may be a great song, Bey’s ‘anti-captialist’ anthem ‘isn’t what you think it is.’ In one article, the writer points out that Beyoncé’s net worth currently is around $500m but before that she grew up wealthy and isn’t an ‘icon for overcoming working-class oppression.’ 

An article for Elle, writer Natasha Bird points to the relentless grind culture that has dominated the last couple of decades and pushed millennials to breaking point. But the pandemic forced us indoors and commute-free and gave us time to focus on self-care and a bit of peace and quiet. 

“Government restrictions might have lifted, but we’ve begun self-imposing a different set of rules. We’re going back to the Linda Evangelista mantra of not doing things unless they feel truly worth our time.”

“We’re listening to Beyoncé now, and she’s telling us to quit our jobs,” the writer goes on to say. The new track “articulates everything we’ve been feeling; that work robbing us of our joy, stopping us from sleeping at night and generally squeezing the life out of us is something we don’t have to stand for. That the constant grind isn’t healthy and doesn’t allow for all the things we’ve remembered are important to us too, now that we’ve had a minute to take stock of them, ” she adds.

Beyoncé is “hardly the working poor”

However, Skylar Bake-Jordan writes in the Independent how he connected to the song. In 2019 he quit his job to pursue his full-time passion for writing. But he notes that he had help and privilege that many others simply do not have to achieve his goal. 

So “when heard through the ears of the working poor, “Break My Soul” sounds like just another middle-class platitude rather than an anthem for our times.” 

Skylar adds that Beyoncé is “hardly the working poor” noting she grew up in affluence, the daughter of a sales executive and a salon owner. “I didn’t grow up poor,” she once said. “I went to private school; we had a very nice house, cars, a housekeeper.”

Pointing to the current situation in the United States (where the writer is from) he says that wages have remained stagnant for forty years, more than half of Americans have less than $5,000 in savings and a recent survey revealed nearly two-thirds of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. The average monthly rent in the US exceeds the average monthly gross pay of minimum-wage workers. If you quit, you usually can’t claim unemployment insurance and you’re likely to lose your health insurance too. Put simply, the writer says most people can’t simply quit their jobs. 

“The Great Resignation must lead to a great resettlement of our exploitative and unjust economy, with the workers of America — and indeed the world — taking back control from the billionaires who have crushed us under the heel of their own greed.”

The writer concludes that we need to unite to strike and liberate all workers from the oppressive economy. By fighting and struggling together we will gain more than we could on our own, he writes.