While Beyoncé's eponymous new album is perhaps the biggest and one of the most critically acclaimed of the year, that hasn't stopped the star and her latest project from being swamped with criticism. Most recently, NewsBusters writer Matthew Philbin slammed the singer for using audio from the 1968 Challenger disaster in her new song, "XO."
The audio from the immediate wake of the space shuttle disaster only lasts for several seconds, as Philbin writes, the track opening with a clip of NASA Public Affairs Officer Steve Nesbitt saying just moments after the explosion, "...flight controllers here looking very carefully at the situation. Obviously a major malfunction."
On Jan. 28, 1986, the Challenger infamously exploded mid-air just 73 seconds into its flight during mission STS-51-L, killing the seven astronauts on board as a nation watched in horror on live television. Philbin argues that "XO" and its accompanying music video, featuring the diva having a magical night at Coney Island's amusement park, has nothing to do with the tragedy and thus effectively minimizes it in a song seemingly about love and sex.
The use of the audio has, however, been simultaneously acknowledged as problematic yet praised by the New York Post’s Hardeep Phull, who wrote in his review of the album: "Starting with a sample of the audio from the 1986 Challenger Space Shuttle disaster sounds tasteless, but with ‘XO,’ Beyoncé is trying to create light from darkness, and she does it pretty well.”
"Phull was too kind. Whatever Beyoncé was trying to do, mining a tragedy in service to a pop confection (Phull called the song “a buoyant celebration of love and life”) doesn’t just sound tasteless. It trivializes the deaths of seven brave men and women," Philbin writes.
What do you think of Beyoncé using Challenger space shuttle diaster audio in her song "XO?" Share your thoughts below!
