10 Most Empowering Beyoncé Songs

3. ***Flawless

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktPTmEZO2EE The most abrasive track Beyoncé has ever dropped is also the most ear grabbing and demanding of your attention. It is a roll-call for every fan and hater who thinks they could live in her shoes no sweat, admonishing her followers for being followers and commanding their respect. She informs a life lived in the purposeful pursuit of shattering the imperfections we wrack our brains with daily, instead answering to the flawless entity you can be if you just believe. It's hard work, and the guest spot by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie goes deep on the inadequacy culture provides women and girls of any age fated to subservient roles, as to not upset the man in any given equation. This kind of math is thrown out the window as Bey's commanding snarl reworks these very conceptions out of any traditional male-female structure from marriage to the workplace. It is no longer the woman's job to be a woman, it is instead her destiny to inform that identity with a fully realised life independent of anybody else, no questions asked. The visual accompaniment is a panoply of violent skinhead imagery and graffiti-lined walls resembling a drug den informing the trap beats underpinning such a raucous track. In the center of all the aggressive male dominated chaos is Beyoncé in line with the manifesto which is the track's message, to play with the boys you must be as empowered as they are. Sure enough more girls begin to fill the ranks of the wild mosh pit, swirling both sexes into an indistinguishable tangle of equality. She shakes and rattles throwing her body at anything, unafraid of the consequences, just as the listener should be when assessing everything from validation to beauty. You can look in the mirror in the morning and know the image staring back at you is flawless, and it will have no irony or self deprecation attached, because you own it just as Beyoncé does.