Songoftheday 3/5/24 - I look and stare so deep in your eyes, I touch on you more and more every time...

 

 

"Crazy In Love" - Beyonce featuring Jay-Z

from the album Dangerously In Love (2003)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (eight weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 24

 

Today's song is from Beyonce, who had led Destiny's Child through three albums, three line-up changes, and four #1 hits on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 before embarking on a side solo career in 2002. Her first appearance as just "Beyonce" came with her starring turn in the franchise comedy Austin Powers: Goldmember, where she contributed the song "Work It Out", which was stuntingly promoted as a single from the soundtrack. It missed the Hot 100 and R&B charts completely in America, but did manage to climb to #11 on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart. Surprisingly though, the single did much better overseas, where it reached the top ten in Norway (#3) and the United Kingdom (#7), and made the top-40 in Ireland (#12), Denmark (#14), Australia (#21), Sweden (#23), the Netherlands (#26), New Zealand (#36), and Belgium (#40 Wallonia). 

But solo fame wouldn't take long, and it would come with the man that she would eventually marry, rapper Jay-Z. They collaborated on the lead single from his Blueprint 2 album, "Bonnie & Clyde '03", which became his biggest success on the pop chart so far, and her first, reaching #4 on the Hot 100 and #5 on the R&B chart. In March of 2003, a tentative "leaked" answer record to rapper 50 Cent's "In Da Club" got scattered urban radio airplay, enough to rise to #67 on Billboard's R&B chart. 

In the spring of 2003, Beyonce released her "true" first single from her debut solo album Dangerously In Love, and again it was a collaboration with Jay-Z. "Crazy In Love". The song was written by Beyonce and Jay with producer Rich Harrison, using a prominent sample of the opening of "Are You My Girl (Tell Me So)" by the Chi-Lites, which went to #8 on the R&B chart and #72 on the Hot 100, and gave member Eugene Record writing credit. The record starts with the horn fanfare (which thankfully Bey trusted Harrison on) with Jay-Z serving as hype man for his woman, before she comes in with enough sass to blow the doors down. It's more a force of energy than a song, but that doesn't diminish the musicality of the record. Everything fits, including Jay-Z's verse, proving that not overthinking things can still produce great results. Beyonce shows wild passion in her words but control in her vocals, letting it out at just the right moments. The music video establishes the pair as the power couple that wants to be the power couple...

"Crazy In Love" spent two months at #1 on Billboard's Hot 100 starting in July of 2003, while taking three weeks at the top of their R&B Singles chart. On the radio, the song led the Mainstream Top-40 chart for a week as well as the Mainstream R&B airplay list for three and the dance/R&B-oriented Rhythmic format for a week. It also made the older-skewing station lists like Adult Top-40 at #29 and Adult R&B at #26. The dance remixes of the track, led by the house music reworks from Junior Vazquez and Maurice Joshua, helped "Crazy In Love" top the Dance Airplay radio chart for seven weeks and the Dance Club Play list for a week. Internationally, the single was big, topping the charts in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Croatia, and reaching the top ten in Spain (#2), the Netherlands (#2), Australia (#2), Canada (#2 Sales), New Zealand (#2), Switzerland (#3), Greece (#3), Hungary (#3), Sweden (#4), Romania (#4), Italy (#5), Denmark (#5), Norway (#5), Belgium (#5 Flanders/#10 Wallonia), Germany (#6), Austria (#6), and Poland (#9 Radio), and peaked at #21 in France. The Dangerously In Love album, released in June of that year, debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 spending two years on the list, going on to sell over six million copies. At the Grammys in 2004, "Crazy In Love" won the awards for Best R&B Song and Best Rap/Sung Collaboration, and was nominated for Record Of The Year, losing to British modern rock band Coldplay for "Clocks". The Dangerously In Love album also won for Best Contemporary R&B Album, and two album tracks also won, "Dangerously In Love 2" for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance and her duet with Luther Vandross on "The Closer I Get to You" would nab Best Duo/Group R&B Vocal Performance (both would be minor R&B hits in 2004).

Both Beyonce and the album (as well as Jay-Z) will be back to the series.

(10/10)

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Beyonce went on Letterman to perform the song...

 

 Here's Beyonce and Jay-Z in concert in New York City...

Next up on her tour behind her I Am album in 2010...

Here we have her in Glastonbury England in 2011...

Lastly, in 2014, Beyonce reprised the song in a completely new version for the movie Fifty Shades Of Grey...

Up tomorrow: An American Idol breaks free.