Surprise! Beyoncé’s back! Although, by her typical, stringent privacy standards, when it comes to releasing new music, announcing her album with six weeks’ notice, as she did last Thursday, is basically the equivalent of her going round her fans’ houses and telling them to have their Tidal accounts primed and ready.
And so, in many ways, it comes as a blessed relief that Beyoncé is giving us a bit more warning this time round. There’s a slow-cooked, underrated joy to the anticipation that gathers in the weeks leading up to a release — and her first single, the eminently danceable Break My Soul, is proof of what effect just one song can have to get things started (lyrics telling us to “Release your job/Release the time” mark Bey out as a new leader of The Great Resignation, according to a very excitable Twitter).
