Beyoncé’s ‘Blackbird’ another step in the march
As with all great poetry, the images are simple but concrete, creating pictures in our minds that transcend the literal meaning of each word.
“Blackbird” could have gotten lost amid the chaos the Beatles produced on “The White Album” — “Helter Skelter,” “Yer Blues” and that montage of mayhem, “Revolution 9.”
The song stood out for its tender, elegiac quality, its melody evoking another time and place, as if the notes were snatched from the very air through which the blackbird yearned to soar.
Its enduring relevance was palpable when Paul Mccartney sang the song during a 2016 concert in Little Rock, Ark.
“Way back in the 1960s, there was a lot of troubles going on over civil rights, particularly in Little Rock,” he said at the time of the Little Rock concert. “We would notice this on the news back in England, so it’s a really important place for us, because this is, to me, where civil rights started.
“We would see what was going on and sympathize with the people going through those struggles, and it made me want to write a song that, if it ever got back to the people going through those struggles, it might just help them a little bit, and that’s this next one.”
During his appearance in Little Rock, he met Elizabeth Eckford and Thelma Mothershed Wair, two of the nine African American students who had enrolled in a formerly allwhite high school after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954.
“Incredible to meet two pioneers of the Civil Rights Movement and inspiration for ‘Blackbird,’ ” Mccartney said.
The song never had the popular appeal of two other anthems from the 1960s — Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come.” But in his gentle appeal for humanity, Mccartney captured the haunting, plaintive anguish of the abused and dispossessed. It was a quiet anthem, but an anthem nonetheless.
Beyoncé was born on Sept. 4, 1981, 13 years after Mccartney composed “Blackbird.” The song has survived, its timeless quality a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it reflects the genius of the man who wrote it, a curse because its message of love and harmony is no less necessary now than it was then.
She covers the song on her new album, “Cowboy Carter,” which has been getting rave reviews since it came out last month. The original “Blackbird” appeared in 1968, three years after the U.S. Senate passed the Voting Rights Act. But, as we know from the bitter fault lines that separate us today, legislation can change laws without changing hearts and minds.
Almost 60 years after the landmark civil rights legislation, racism remains a stubborn and nasty presence in our country. Beyoncé has seen it and experienced it. How could she not, having grown up in Texas, where farright extremists still venerate the Confederate flag?
That may be why she chose the song, and why she covers it with the same sensitivity that infused the spirit of the original — a sensitivity that is both heartbreaking and triumphant. The two versions show that love is the sturdiest bridge of all.
Separated by age and culture, Beyoncé and Mccartney were born thousands of miles apart, she in Houston, he in Liverpool, a gulf that narrowed for the same reason gulfs always narrow — a common humanity.
“When Beyoncé sings, ‘You were only waiting for this moment to arise,’ it feels like a significant moment,” Clare Thorp wrote for the BBC.
Tiara Kennedy, one of four black women who provide background vocals for “Blackbird,” was overcome when she heard it for the first time.
“It was crazy emotional hearing it,” she said.
It should be emotional for anyone who cares about civil rights — and the pain that ensues when civil rights are denied.
“You were only waiting for this moment to be free,” both Mccartney and Beyoncé sing in this beautiful ballad.
Through their music, the two have been marching in a long, weary struggle that continues to this day.