BEYONCÉ:
What does the song title "Cranes in the Sky" mean?
SOLANGE:
"Cranes in the Sky" is actually a song that I wrote eight years ago.
It's the only song on the album that I wrote independently of the record, and
it was a really rough time. I know you remember that time. I was just coming
out of my relationship with Julez's father. We were junior high school
sweethearts, and so much of your identity in junior high is built on who you're
with. You see the world through the lens of how you identify and have been
identified at that time. So I really had to take a look at myself, outside of
being a mother and a wife, and internalize all of these emotions that I had
been feeling through that transition. I was working through a lot of challenges
at every angle of my life, and a lot of self-doubt, a lot of pity-partying. And
I think every woman in her twenties has been there—where it feels like no
matter what you are doing to fight through the thing that is holding you back,
nothing can fill that void. I used to write and record a lot in Miami during
that time, when there was a real estate boom in America, and developers were
developing all of this new property. There was a new condo going up every ten
feet. You recorded a lot there as well, and I think we experienced Miami as a
place of refuge and peace. We weren't out there wilin' out and partying. I
remember looking up and seeing all of these cranes in the sky. They were so
heavy and such an eyesore, and not what I identified with peace and refuge. I
remember thinking of it as an analogy for my transition—this idea of building
up, up, up that was going on in our country at the time, all of this excessive
building, and not really dealing with what was in front of us. And we all know
how that ended. That crashed and burned. It was a catastrophe. And that line
came to me because it felt so indicative of what was going on in my life as
well. And, eight years later, it's really interesting that now, here we are
again, not seeing what's happening in our country, not wanting to put into
perspective all of these ugly things that are staring us in the face.
Listen
Solange
explains how she received an early sketch of the song’s instrumental from
producer Raphael Saadiq after recording her 2008 debut Sol-Angel And The Hadley
St. Dreams. “I immediately had this really strong reaction,” she explains,
before playing an acapella of the track’s opening bars. Later, she explains how
how the song title came about (from seeing actual ‘cranes in the sky’ above her
in Miami from the city’s real estate developments) and recording the song’s
early vocal drafts in Jamaica in a house infested with cockroaches.
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