We Tell The Story Behind Kelly Rowland’s Emotional New Single “Dirty Laundry”
Kelly Rowland "Dirty Laundry" Republic Records
Out of all the new music being talked about in Pop music these days, we could not let another week go by without talking about Kelly Rowland’s new emotional single, “Dirty Laundry”. The R&B ballad produced by The-Dream is without a doubt probably one of the hardest songs Kelly ever had to write and record, and to release it as a single is nothing short of absolutely brave. There is nothing about “Dirty Laundry” that screams radio hit in the traditional sense. One of her biggest hits as a solo artist was a steamy sexual song called “Motivation”, which featured a guest verse from Rap superstar, Lil Wayne. On this song however, even though the word ‘Dirty’ is in the title, there is nothing even remotely suggestive about it. On this song we get to see a side of Kelly that we haven’t ever really gotten to see before. In the lyrics she confirms things that Destiny’s Child fans have always suspected, as well as revealing personal struggles that few even knew of.
The record candidly documents the time in Rowland’s life after the release of her debut album Simply Deep. (October 2002) Rowland speaks of her envy of her former bandmate Beyoncé Knowles’ solo success also from around that same time. Beyonce’s debut solo album, Dangerously In Love was released shortly after Kelly’s in June of 2003. These albums were following Destiny’s Child’s massively successful album, Survivor which went on to sell over four million copies. When Kelly’s album was released it had notable success, being certified gold, but fell short of previous Destiny’s Child numbers. When Beyonce’s “Crazy In Love” was released in May of 2003, it eclipsed Kelly’s efforts and pushed Dangerously In Love to match Destiny’s Child numbers, as it sold 4 million copies. “Dirty Laundry addresses all this very explicitly. The lyrics are as follows,
“When my sister on stage, killing it like a motherf****r, I was in a rage, feeling it like a motherf****r. Went our separate ways but I was happy she was killin’ it. Bittersweet she was up, I was down. No lie, I feel good for her but what do I do now? Post-Survivor, she on fire. Who wanna hear my bulls***”.
The contrast of success between Kelly and Beyonce at the time, caused many questions to be raised by DC fans, with many being lead to believe that there was a lot of favoritism being shown to Beyonce over Kelly at the time not only from their label Columbia, but their shared management at the time as well. This is perfectly understandable because both Kelly and Beyonce were being managed by Matthew Knowles, Beyonce’s father. Kelly would eventually part ways with Knowles as manager after her second solo album, Ms. Kelly (June 2007) only sold 270 thousand copies in the United States.
As Kelly speaks out about living in Beyonce’s shadow during the time of the promotion of Simply Deep, it was probably one of the loneliest times in her life, not because of her solo career, but an abusive relationship from that time that was revealed in the song.
Rowland sings “I was battered, he hitting the window like it was me, until it shattered. He pulled me out and said, ‘Don’t nobody love you but me, not your mama, not your daddy, and especially not Bey.'” With lyrics like those it makes us all wonder who could be the one responsible for such violence. This is why Rowland’s ex fiancé Roy Williams took to Twitter to clarify via a tweet to clarify rumors that he might have been responsible for the abuse Rowland suffered.
“So Kelly has a new song. Called #DirtyLaundry..& whatever she’s saying in it ppl think it’s me. #wow #imnottheonlypersonshedated #wasntme” Regardless of who was responsible for the abuse, everything about the song is understandably very emotional for Rowland. She talked about recording the personal track in a recent interview with Billboard Magazine. According to the Billboard it took Rowland “nearly a dozen takes to lay down her vocals without crying” and that during the recent album listening sessions for her current label, Republic Records, she”had to leave the room before the song was played.”
This is all the more reason why it was incredibly brave of her to make it her current single for Republic. It is from her forthcoming album, Talk A Good Game, which hits stores on June 18th! Take a listen to the song below and hear what everyone is talking about.
Kelly Rowland
“Dirty Laundry”(Explicit) (It Says Audio is Blocked But Plays Normally)
From Talk A Good Game
Republic Records
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“Crazy In Love”
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