How To Make The Whole World Sing: “Irreplaceable”

In the winter of 2007, I was riding the F train home to my apartment in Brooklyn. There were only four or five other passengers in my car, one of whom was a chubby teenage girl sitting a few feet away from me, nodding along to the music on her iPod. My head was buried in a magazine, thinking subway thoughts when, suddenly, the girl burst out in a loud, slightly atonal refrain:

“To the left, to the left…”

I rolled my eyes in her direction. She began peacocking her head from side to side while sliding her butt back and forth on our bench, waving both of her hands in the air and snapping along to a tinny beat seeping out of her earbuds, barely audible above the clatter of the train wheels.

“To the left, to the left…”

I went back to my magazine, thinking about how New York makes the most private moments public and, occasionally, communal. The girl began singing incoherent lyrics to a melody that benefited greatly from her obvious enthusiasm and was granted immunity to her lack of pitch control. I began surreptitiously watching her again in the reflection of the opposite window: She was now pointing her finger at an imaginary antagonist across from her, pursing her lips and shaking her head as she launched into what had to be the chorus of the song, its lyrics suddenly coming out clear as daylight:

You must not know ‘bout me, you must not know ‘bout me
I could have another you in a minute
Matter fact he’ll be here in a minute
You must not know ‘bout me, you must not know ‘bout me
I could have another you by tomorrow
So don’t you ever for a second get to thinking
You’re irreplaceable

I knew it had to be a Beyonce song. Despite my claims of being a certified participant in the music industry, I was, at the time, only aware of Beyonce in the same vague manner as anyone not subscribed to MTV: She was out there, like the weather, mostly pleasant and completely unavoidable. Regardless, it had become impossible to not notice her omniscient media presence and incredible musical consistency, the way she fit Tin Pan Alley melodies into hip hop phrasing that switched from rapid-fire to behind-the-beat-trippy at the snap of a garter strap. In fact, Beyonce had been dominating the charts for so long that it was difficult to remember a time when it was remotely unacceptable for “Independent Women” to be “Soldier(s)” while appearing “Bootylicious.” Beyonce wasn’t just an artist; she was a social revolution.

And the girl on the subway was part of it, at least in body and spirit: The song might have been good, but her a cappella version was beginning to grate on me. I tried to concentrate on the magazine. I had spent the day in Manhattan looking for work, trying to line up another month’s worth of income to be fed into the constant stream of outgoing expenditures that accompany freelance existence in any metropolis. I had chosen the lightly-populated subway car near the rear of the train in search of some peace and quiet. My feet hurt. I respected, even applauded, the girl’s right to burst into song wherever she pleased but… did it have to be right next to me, today?

Finally, I let my magazine plop into my lap and turned to face her with a particular mix of incredulity and empathy designed to broker some sort of passive-aggressive compromise. I was surprised to find her looking towards me now, singing straight into my eyes:

You must not know ‘bout me, you must not know ‘bout me…

She was still moving her head side to side, pointing this way and that, even looking into her ample cleavage suggestively before fixing me again with a sultry stare and a twisted smile. I was immediately disarmed, embarrassed and unable to return her gaze for more than a second or two. In that moment, it really didn’t matter that I was probably 15 years older than her, that I was married, that I had an adult life and the responsibilities that came with it, that I knew a thing or two about music… She had Beyonce on her side, and I was at her mercy.

Ironically, a full year passed before I actually heard Beyonce’s version of “Irreplaceable” in my car while driving south through Virginia on I-81. My marriage had ended a few months before along with my New York residency. I was on the return leg of one last trip to my former apartment in Brooklyn to collect my dog and some belongings for relocation to my new home in my father’s Nashville basement. The girl on the subway had long ago been relegated to that little memory file that all former New Yorkers reserve for strange occurrences that happen only in New York but, as I was scanning through local radio stations for something listenable, she came back to me in a flash:

To the left, to the left…

The song played on, and I heard myself mumbling along, somehow tracing out a melody that I had only heard once. I began to bob my head, eliciting a frightened look from my dog in the passenger seat. As the gray colonial landscape whizzed by, the song moved effortlessly into its first pre-chorus:

Standing in the front yard telling me how I’m such a fool
Talkin’ ‘bout how I’ll never ever find a man like you

The first chorus hit me like a tidal wave. My eyes began to sting and the highway got blurry. I thought about the girl on the train. I thought about my wife. About the future, the chilling and barren clarity of things. About how many people must have had this exact same moment with this song. It was the first time I had felt connected to anything in awhile. I pressed the gas pedal a little harder and sang:

You must not know ‘bout me, you must not know ‘bout me…