Beyoncé has always believed in ‘Get Me Bodied’. The track—a blend of R&B and bounce—followed ‘Déjà Vu’ in the track order on B’Day (2006), meaning it was the second track. It was released as the album’s fifth single, and in 2011 she revived it for an anti-obesity campaign. Of that new version, ‘Move Your Body’, there are English and Spanish renditions.
‘Get Me Bodied’ isn’t the big novelty of the B’Day reissue, since that distinction should go to the single ‘Morning Dew’, actually an outtake from 2013. It is, however, the most revisited track, appearing in as many as five versions, all old except for the remix with Maluma.
‘Cuerpo (Tumbao)’ adapts ‘Move Your Body’ with a sample from Celia Cruz’s ‘La negra quiere tumbao’ and the Colombian vocals. Maluma has proudly shared his collaboration on social media, but when you listen to it the sense is WTF.
Tempo changes are fully justified in current pop. The problem is the constant sense of an over-the-top mash-up: Beyoncé’s vocals, which ultimately sit within an R&B-leaning track, go one way; Celia Cruz goes another; Maluma tries to be heard amid the sonic bustle and, in the end, the song suddenly shifts to dembow, as if madness weren’t enough.
In just over three minutes, many things happen in the song, though it’s not clear that all of them are perfectly cohesive. Curiously, Beyoncé’s Spanish is fairly decent, though not always intelligible at moments. Her line “Spanish is not good looking” at the end is a playful reference to Celia Cruz herself, but as a tribute we would call this totally ‘all over the place’: it makes you want to move your body, yes, but only to run away.
