Rogueish

I like my R&B soulless and robotic, so I usually prefer bangers to ballads, and I’ve certainly always skipped the ballads on Beyoncé albums (with the exception of the excellent “Irreplaceable”). So I’m surprised to discover that, although 4 is almost all ballads, I like it a great deal; more, I think, than any of Beyoncé’s previous albums (which have all had a couple of great singles and a lot of filler). I wonder if the recent trend to release what are effectively R&B ballads but placed at a remove by their soulless and robotic dance production (of which the high point is “Fight For This Love”), has allowed me now to appreciate these ballads without the distancing. Or perhaps these are just really, really good songs; this track certainly is.