Right on Time for Summer, Beyonce Releases First Single from Long-Awaited Album, ‘Renaissance’

Summer 2022 is here and it’s Beyonce’s for the taking.

The international icon just dropped “Break My Soul,” the first single off of her upcoming new album, Renaissance, late Monday night, and it is already setting the tone to be the song of the season — if not the year.

Hitting 2.5 million views on YouTube within 15 hours of its release, “Break My Soul” is an exciting, nostalgic, and revolutionary ode to 80’s New Orleans bounce and 1990s house music, sampling hits “Show Me Love,” by Robin S. and “Explode,” by Big Freedia.

According to Vulture, the track was originally scheduled to drop Tuesday at midnight but was released a few hours earlier after leaks started circulating online.

The single starts with calls to action by Freedia, (“Release ya anger / release ya mind… release the stress / Release the love / forget the rest”) and effortlessly flows into Beyonce’s own rebellious chant (“You won’t break my soul”), backed by the melodies from “Show Me Love.”

From there, “Break My Soul” shows itself to be an anthem of self-love, perseverance, and of course, rebirth — rebirth, perhaps, from personal struggles along with the added social justice protests and the COVID-19 pandemic from the past few years.

Regardless of the reason, Bey made it clear: “Ima let down my hair ‘cause I lost my mind, Bey is back and I’m sleeping real good at night.”

She’s reminding listeners that love and validation are not found in others, but in one’s self, and she’s making them dance while she’s at it.

Beyonce cleverly uses house music, a genre historically known for its freedom of expression (and from oppression), as a vessel to help free ourselves from our ego or personal roadblocks.

“Break My Soul” is the sixth track of the new album, expected to drop July 29, and was produced with the help of Terius Nash, aka The-Dream, and Christopher “Tricky” Stewart, both of who also produced Bey’s Grammy award-winning, “Single Ladies. BlaqNmilD and Jay-Z are also credited on the album’s production team, and with Bey herself noted as a producer, one can only imagine what’s in store for the rest of Renaissance and the next era of Queen Bey’s reign.