How the songwriting of “Tyrant” captures the way scorned women become Hangmen Analysis
I’ve been listening to “Tyrant,” which is my favorite song from Cowboy Carter, on repeat since the Xmas performance. I usually listen to B’s music over and over and take mental notes about things like structure, instrumental and lyrical motifs, and just how she builds on her own ideas to tell a story. When you realize how much depth there is to her art, so much other music falls short in comparison. But there was always just so much in “Tyrant” that I only bothered to analyze it recently, and shit just clicked.
So here it is: the song is written (structurally and lyrically) as well as sung (by Beyoncé, Reyna, and Dolly) to capture the cycle of how romantically scorned women become Hangmen themselves and create Hangmen out of the women their actions harm.
First, the structure: “Tyrant” is a story within a story. The main portion is bookended by a speaker (played by Reyna) imploring the Hangman to tell her how she became what she is (“How did you turn your heart to stone?”); the speaker asks because she wants to become like the Hangman herself (“I hated you once, I envy you now…). The bulk of the story, however, is placed between this intro/outro, and it narrates the devastation that the Hangman causes as well as the fallout. In other words, it’s a non-linear narrative (and the non-linear element is super important) showing us how, exactly, the Hangman turned her own heart to stone, and how the speaker from the song’s intro is transformed as well.
This is an outline of the song’s major sections:
Intro
Prechorus A (“Oh she got that woah there…”)
Chorus (“She’s a tyrant…”)
Verse (“Send me some shots…”)
Chorus (“Tyrant every time I ride it…”)
Bridge (“How did you get used to the haunting?…”)
Prechorus B-1 (“Oh, she got that woah there…”)
Prechorus B-2 (“Diggadon’t, diggadon’t…”)
Chorus (“Tyrant every time I ride it)
Outro
Second is the singers and their characters: we start with Dolly, whose presence resonates because she once told a different version of the same tale in “Jolene.” But each of the sections above is either led/sung solo by Reyna, led/sung solo by Beyoncé, or is a harmony between them. Reyna takes lead during the intro/outro and harmonizes with B starting from the second prechorus until the end. Beyoncé sings everything else solo. What’s important to note is that Reyna and Beyoncé both sing, at different points in the song, as the Hangman and as the woman betrayed. That is, both of them play both characters in the same song. Reyna plays the harmed woman in the intro/outro, but she harmonizes as one of the Hangmen at the end. Beyoncé plays the harmed woman in the prechorus and bridge, but she sings from the Hangman’s voice everywhere else (and a little bit in the prechorus too). So how do we make sense of these changes in perspective?
The whole song, I think, is about the rebirth of women from one archetype (victim of betrayal) to another (Hangman). What happens between Beyoncé and Reyna’s characters is just one spin around the circle of a Hangman’s victim becoming a Hangman herself and “setting a match” to another woman’s life. The closer you look, the more you see how the song’s non-linearity captures the repetition of these events.
So that’s the background. Let’s break it down.
Reyna (her character, that is) is the victim of Beyoncé’s Hangman in the intro. We know because she addresses the Hangman directly. When the beat drops and Beyoncé starts the prechorus, she narrates the Hangman’s arrival in town, but she switches between her once and future roles as victim and victimizer: “You can hear her body howl” and “I feel her eyein’ me like owls” is Beyoncé (her character) just before some even earlier Hangman has caused her anguish; “Don’t pay me in gold” and “Back outside, I’m on the road” is Beyoncé right before she does the same to Reyna, at a later point in time. But the shifts in perspective and time aren’t actually shifts at all: they signify the cycle that Beyoncé is both part and perpetuator of.
Every instance of the chorus is sung from the perspective of a Hangman as she spells destruction for other women. In the chorus, the Hangman is in the act of sex with another woman’s man, riding him, a tyrant over the man’s body and, later on, dictating who his woman will become as a result of the betrayal. The chorus captures the moment when the cycle is begun again.
The verse after the chorus is also sung squarely from the perspective of a Hangman. At this point, the speaker, having lived through her betrayal and transformed into the woman who traumatized her, has come to embrace and revel in her ascent as an agent of pain: “That’s so sexy and I know it, and I ain’t afraid to show it/Baby, I’m goated, baby, I’m glowin’/Hey, hey, on the run, run/Tap me on the shoulder when you reload the gun.” What’s missing, though, is the moment of transformation. When does the woman from the prechorus, who heard the Hangman’s body howling and who was being watched like owls, become a Hangman herself?
The chorus repeats and then segues into the bridge. This, to me, is the most important moment in the song, because it’s here that we hear Beyoncé make the same exhortation of her Hangman that Reyna makes to Beyoncé in the intro. “Hangman,” she sings, “teach me how not to cry.” This line captures the moment when Beyoncé shifts identities, when her own heart turns to stone. And she sings it over and over, three times, the repetition an echo of how woman after woman has died and been reborn at the hands of their Hangmen.
At this point, we, the listeners, have heard the full story. We know how it goes, even if we’ve had to add the pieces together across time. The prechorus starts again, the Hangman come to town, but as Beyoncé sings, Reyna joins her, taking the top of the harmony, the pitch of her voice above Beyoncé’s suggesting the rise of a new Hangman. What happened to Beyoncé, we can surmise, has happened to Reyna, and the two continue to harmonize through the last chorus and the outro. Reyna’s voice added to the mix here tells us that the woman in the intro who begged the Hangman “just tell me how” has learned what she needed to, joined the ranks of Hangmen, and has found her own twisted but undeniable sense of empowerment from it.
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u/ozzyboy227 1d ago
This break down is amazing! I’ve been talking about this song in a very similar way! Would love to see your thoughts on the other songs!
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u/happy_Ad1357 1d ago
I loved this analysis, it helps me finally put the pieces together of a song I didn’t fully understand. I agree with the other commenter you should post more analysis. River dance is a song that intrigues me a lot too.
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u/Beginning_Fig_6074 1d ago
This is soo interesting how we all have different interpretations! I took the song as another on the album to have multiple meanings, one being towards the US considering the american theme. It seemed like she was talking to the culture and how its become so desensitized, and how our history has been attempted to wash and erase so easily. and her wanting to know how she could feel less pain in the same way that some others are so cold and careless about it all. Love these discussions
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u/High-Concentrate-956 1d ago
I just had the worst interactions in a meeting with my boss and their boss and this is just giving me life right now! (All the life that just got sucked out of my body by said meeting 🤣). I love this analysis and I love this sub!
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u/KawaiiCoupon 1d ago
Me reading this: “who is Reyna and when is she singing?” 😭
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u/xnxpxe 1d ago
Reyna Roberts? She has the very distinctive high pitched backing vocals in the intro and at the end of the song. She’s a country singer in her own right and was one of the four featured on Blackbird.
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u/KawaiiCoupon 1d ago
Omg! How come it doesn’t say she’s featured??? I do know who that is now that I see her full name. I’m a mess lol.
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