Did Beyonce Steal “if I Were a Boy”?

I know when I first heard this rumour, like any good Beyoncé fan, I was shocked and appalled that someone could say such nasty things about her! But I looked into it, and it is more complicated than you’d think.

First of all, the song was written mostly by an up-and-coming singer-songwriter named BC Jean, who recorded “If I Were A Boy” a few months before Beyoncé did, as a demo which ended up being rejected by her recording company. Now, since it was a demo and not released as a record, technically Beyoncé’s version is not a cover. Jean and her co-writer Toby Gad sold Beyoncé the rights to record the song. But then why the controversy?

Two things: There were claims that Beyoncé said she had written it, and there were also claims that BC Jean never new about Beyoncé’s recording until after it had been released. Neither of these reports are verifiable. The latter seems terribly unlikely to me, but the former is more than possible: I’d say it’s very likely.

Don’t think I’m slandering Beyoncé — she is a goddess — but even goddesses make mistakes. The reason it’s not an unreasonable mistake is this: recording artists like Beyoncé do not get royalties from plays on the radio unless they have songwriter credits for the song. So, oftentimes record labels will list the recording artist as a songwriter so that she can get more money. In fact, on the entire album I Am… Sasha Fierce, “If I Were A Boy” is the only song for which Beyoncé herself does not get songwriting credits. Therefore it’s not unreasonable of Beyoncé to have said she wrote it — she probably expected to have gotten writing credits for every song on the album. The only problem was that the writing of that song had nothing to do with the production of her album, so it would have been impossible for her producers to include her as a songwriter for that track.

So there you have it: No, Beyoncé is no thief. It was just a simple misunderstanding. I do recommend listening to the version recorded by BC Jean — it’s quite different from Beyoncé’s, but they’re both very good.