Hoda Kotb shares her 3 favorite songs from Beyoncé's new album
Happy Beyoncé release day to all who celebrate. TODAY's Hoda Kotb certainly does.
"Cowboy Carter," the second installment of Beyoncé's "Renaissance" project, released March 29 and the TODAY anchor has it "blasting," according to her co-anchor Savannah Guthrie.
"Let me set the scene for you. I’m coming up the stairs today to come into work. All I hear is Beyoncé blasting from Hoda’s office. How many times have you listened to this record?" Savannah said on TODAY March 29 while Hoda laughed.
"A thousand," Hoda replied matter of factly.
She then praised the album and listed some of her favorite tunes so far.
"This one’s got something for everyone," she said. "I love this. There’s a song called 'Ya Ya' that’s a total bop and fun."
It's "a beautiful record," Hoda said. "It’s gonna be fun."
Hoda said more about her favorite songs in separate Instagram posts Friday with screenshots of each song on a streaming platform
"More!!!!" she said about "Ya Ya."
"Played 100x. OBSESSED!!!!!! @beyonce you are beyond!!!! Oh my," she wrote about "Blackbiird," a cover of the Beatles song.
"I cant!!! @beyonce @mileycyrus ! Crank this up and think of your bestie," Hoda added about their duet, "II Most Wanted."
Each song tells a different story.
In "Ya Ya," Beyoncé calls in each instrument to open the track and spells out the original spelling of her name. It sounds like a revolutionary song, calling for "a new America," name dropping activist Fannie Lou Hamer and criticizing overtime as the only way some people can make ends meet.
"I just pray that we don't crash, keep my Bible on the dash, we gotta keep the faith," she then sings.
In "Blackbiird," Beyoncé preserves the meaning behind the song originally written and sung by English rock band The Beatles in 1968, the peak of the civil rights movement in the U.S.
Beatle Paul McCartney told GQ in 2018 that he followed the movement, and it inspired him to write a song to honor Black women. John Lennon also contributed.
"I just thought it'd be really good if I could write something that, if it ever reached any of the people going through those problems, it might give them a little bit of hope," he said. "So, I wrote 'Blackbird' and in England, a bird is a girl. So, I was thinking of a Black girl going through this, like, now's your time to arise, set yourself free and take these broken wings."
In "II Most Wanted," Beyoncé and Cyrus sing about bonding with loved ones and aging together through the throes of life.
They use the idea of "riding shotgun," an idiom for sitting in the front passenger seat, to describe the position they take in the other person's life. Essentially, each will have a front row seat to the other's experiences.
“I don’t know what you’re doing tonight but I’ll be your shotgun ‘til the day I die,” they sing together.
“II MOST WANTED must be studied!! The way Miley Cyrus and Beyoncé’s voices collided and seamlessly intertwined,” a fan tweeted.
“I could literally cry listening to this,” another chimed in.
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
