(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Entertainment industry icon and liberal activist Beyonce has decided to remove lyrics deemed offensive from her latest album Renaissance after facing activist backlash, Yahoo! reported.
Her song in question–which she co-wrote with the artist Drake–is titled Heat, and has been labelled “ableist” because she uses the word “spazzin.”
To spaz is apparently a derogatory term for spastic diplegia, a form of cerebral palsy that causes the muscles of the person to contract spasmodically and without any controlled pattern.
Some on Twitter took issue with Beyonce’s use of the word, suggesting that we should raise awareness for those with disabilities.
So @Beyonce used the word ‘spaz’ in her new song Heated. Feels like a slap in the face to me, the disabled community & the progress we tried to make with Lizzo. Guess I’ll just keep telling the whole industry to ‘do better’ until ableist slurs disappear from music 💔
— Hannah Diviney (@hannah_diviney) July 30, 2022
“So Beyonce used the word ‘spaz’ in her new song Heated. Feels like a slap in the face to me, the disabled community & the progress we tried to make with Lizzo,” she wrote, referring to Lizzo’s previous use of the same word in a lyric.
“Guess I’ll just keep telling the whole industry to ‘do better’ until ableist slurs disappear from music.”
A representative for Beyonce confirmed that the famed singer has agreed to change the lyric.
“The word, not used intentionally in a harmful way, will be replaced,” the representative said.
Of course Beyonce’s music is also full of sexual content, but that has been largely ignored by the media. In any case, the album has sold poorly as the sway of yesteryear’s superstarts wanes.
Her last album Lemonade, released in 2016, sold 650,000 copies in its first week. Renaissance is predicted to end up somewhere between 275,000 and 315,000–at least a 50% decline.
