Even Beyoncé isn’t immune to the outrage cycle. Although her latest album, the critically acclaimed Renaissance, is less than a week old, Beyoncé is already making changes to two of her songs after being called out on social media.
The singer took issue with Kelis for interpolating a portion of her 2003 hit “Milkshake” into “Energy” without warning her. (Kelis is not a credited author of the song.) “I heard about this the same way everyone else did,” Kelis said in an Instagram comment. As of Wednesday, the interpolation had been removed.
The song “Heated” originally included lyrics with the same slur that landed Lizzo in hot water on Twitter just a few weeks ago. On Monday, just three days after the album’s release, it was reported that Beyoncé would be changing the word. As of Wednesday, the song’s lyrics have been changed from “sp***in’ on that ass” to “blastin’ on that ass” on YouTube, Apple Music and Spotify (although the lyrics written on Spotify they still have the old version).
Kelis’ situation is specific and probably more about her feud with Pharrell than her relationship with Beyoncé. But the insult to “Heated” is part of a long tradition in the industry of retroactively editing songs. It’s almost a right of passage: an artist writes a lyric that ages badly and is eventually modified or removed altogether. In the past, this process could take years and the original versions would be preserved on physical albums or downloads of previous songs. The changed lyrics would only be evident on reissues or when the song was played in concerts. In the age of Twitter and Spotify, that response is as immediate as the reaction.
Once a track is changed and re-released to streamers, that’s the only version that will be in circulation beyond TikTok snippets and a handful of CDs and vinyl copies. Kanye West took advantage of this flexibility in 2016 with his updates to The Life of Pablo. Beyoncé, one of the smartest artists in the industry, knows that the faster she makes edits, the less likely anyone will remember it was changed in the first place.
The edits also prompted Monica Lewinsky to suggest her name be removed from Beyoncé’s 2013 song “Partition.” The Beyhive has been less receptive to the change.
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