Beyoncé’s ‘Halo’ Is Similar to 1 Elvis Presley Song
One of the best songs of Beyoncé‘s career is “Halo.” The ballad has some lyrical similarities to a famous song by Elvis Presley. Interestingly, both tunes are part of a fascinating trend in popular music.
Why Beyoncé’s ‘Halo’ is reminiscent of Elvis Presley’s ‘Burning Love’
While Beyoncé has given us some of the most lyrically unique tracks in the canon of popular music, “Halo” is a straightforward love song. The thrust of the tune is the way that it compares love to a religious experience. In “Halo,” Beyoncé’s lover is compared to an angel, the biblical prophet Joshua bringing down the walls of Jericho, and the theological concept of salvation. That’s some heavy imagery for a pop hit!
Beyoncé was not the first singer to speak of love in pseudo-Christian terms. Two of the best songs of the 1980s — Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” — did the same thing. One of the earliest hit songs to do that was Elvis’ “Burning Love.” While Beyoncé mostly used spiritual imagery to emphasize how great her lover was, Elvis instead used spiritual imagery to make sex sound heavenly. He starts the song by exclaiming, “Lord Almighty!” before singing about his soul and comparing his lover’s kisses to “the sweet song of a choir.”
How Beyoncé and Elvis Presley tackled the same subject in very different ways
What makes “Halo” so different from “Burning Love” is its tone. “Halo” is completely sincere and reverent. On the other hand, “Burning Love” is a little bit campy. It shows off the sense of humor that makes a lot of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll‘s music so charming.
“Halo” also incorporates a lot of elements of Christian music. The vocals sound like a choir of angels. Meanwhile, “Burning Love” doesn’t sound religious. It sounds like many country/rock/pop/soul hybrid songs that Elvis released during his comeback period. It’ll be interesting to see which sound connects with audiences as the years wear on.
How ‘Halo’ was written in 3 hours
During a 2014 interview with Billboard, songwriter Ryan Tedder discussed the origin of “Halo.” It had nothing to do with Elvis. “I was playing a pickup game right before a show in Michigan, and I tore my Achilles heel,” he recalled. “It was the most intense pain I ever experienced in my life. I passed out. So, I ended up going home for two weeks.
“My wife forbade me from writing or doing any work whatsoever,” he added. “[Songwriter] Evan Bogart and I were super close friends. He was having his explosion as a songwriter, and I texted him and said, ‘My wife’s gone for three hours, will you come over? Let’s write one song.’
“Beyoncé had contacted me because of a song on our first album called ‘Come Home,'” he remembered. “So he came over, and I said, ‘Dude, Beyoncé wants me to do a song. Let’s do a song in three hours.’ I had this idea for a patch of this weird choir of angels thing, started playing it and within three hours, we had ‘Halo.'”
“Burning Love” didn’t inspire “Halo” — they’re just part of the same tradition in popular music.
