Twenty years is a long time in pop music. Artists come and go, songs don’t always travel well with the passage of time, and audiences find new artists to admire. Beyoncé’s B’Day album, however, has aged differently. Listening to the 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition, what stands out is how much of the Beyoncé we know now was already there.
The Houston-born singer released B’Day on her 25th birthday in 2006, three years after Dangerously in Love. The difference between her albums was already evident. In B’Day, you can hear the freedom in her songs and her raw, at times unpolished, sound.
Beyoncé starts “Déjà Vu” asking for the track to be turned up and has bass and drums opening the song. “Get Me Bodied” has all the usual ingredients we have come to expect from Beyoncé. “Suga Mama,” “Upgrade U,” “Ring the Alarm,” and “Freakum Dress” follow, giving very little breathing space. That seems to be the whole point.
The majority of the energy of B’Day is Beyoncé’s voice. The drums are loud and intense, but her voice matches them. Furthermore, she changes her tone and how she sings depending on the song. She sometimes sounds angry, sometimes playful, sometimes confident, and sometimes calm. This is why each song feels different even though the album as a whole is an energetic one.
B’Day showed that Beyoncé is able to express different sides of her personality. That continued throughout her career; the topics just got bigger—family, relationships, identity, betrayal—as on Lemonade and Renaissance. B’Day, then, was an early sign of who Beyoncé would become. It showcased her ability to experiment with music.
The 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition has 31 tracks, which gives its listeners the complete picture. It includes the original songs and previously unreleased material. This gives an insight into why Beyoncé chose the songs that made the original cut and also a deeper look into her music during the early days of her career.
Although this anniversary edition is much longer, almost two hours of music, it shows its listeners what Beyoncé was experimenting with. This in turn gives a deeper understanding of the original B’Day album. Another factor is the Spanish-language tracks. When B’Day was reissued in 2007, Beyoncé was dabbling with Spanish music, which is likely why she felt it was important to include them.
It can, however, be argued that the anniversary edition did not need to be so long. One argument is that by doing this, the album loses focus. On the other hand, the anniversary edition is not supposed to give a better version of the original B’Day, but to give fans a bigger picture of the influences surrounding the album at that time.
This is an interesting factor because it almost contradicts the usual nostalgia angle when releasing anniversary albums. People inevitably have an emotional connection to songs, which is what record companies bank on when releasing anniversary albums. However, B’Day doesn’t need the nostalgia factor to be enjoyed by its listeners.
Songs like “Déjà Vu,” “Get Me Bodied,” and “Irreplaceable” can still be appreciated and enjoyed simply because of the music itself and not because Beyoncé became more successful. When B’Day was released in 2006, Beyoncé was already extremely famous because of Destiny’s Child and her first solo album. However, she was yet to become the Beyoncé we all know today. She was still developing her musical identity and style.
The album is not perfect, but perhaps that is what gives it its energy and character. It is the unpolished, raw feel that makes the album enjoyable. The listener gets to hear Beyoncé sound messy, angry, flirty, among other things, while the album keeps its personality.
In contrast to new releases that are analyzed for their meaning and cultural messages, in B’Day the music itself is the focus. Looking back at B’Day is also interesting because it is very much Beyoncé when she was still in the early stages of her career, growing as an artist.
She had not fully discovered what she could do with her music and was still experimenting. It is easy to look at B’Day and conclude that Beyoncé’s huge success was guaranteed. It was not. Nobody knew exactly how she would develop her music or just how successful she would become.
The 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition gives its listeners a chance to hear B’Day again. Despite it being twenty years old, the music is just as enjoyable and exciting now as it was then. B’Day reminds us not only of who Beyoncé was but of who she was becoming.
