The song helped kickstart Beyoncé's solo career and helped make her name common throughout every household in the world, and is widely regarded as one of the most iconic solo debut songs of all time.
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The song featured on various year, decade and even century (so far) end charts, including publications such as Entertainment Weekly, NME, Rolling Stone (both year end at #3 and century so far, at #1), The Observer, The Daily Telegraph, Pitchfork and VH1, plus many more. The song was extremely successful internationally and is regarded as an iconic song in various countries.
The song gained so much attention and airplay that it reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 based on heavy rotation alone. The song was released digitally to the iTunes Store in the UK, with other countries receiving various different formats of the song, including maxi single, digital EP, CD and DVD as a music video. The song was released on May 18, and serviced to US radio the same day. She said she felt the people "Needed to an element of hip hop for people to relate to it more", and therefore found Jays's verse the perfect final addition to the song. Those tweaks included adding an element of hip hop, through her then boyfriend, now husband Jay-Z, by getting him to record his verse at the last minute, just days before the release on May 18.
She revealed that it was meant to be Naughty Girl instead, however she felt that it was missing something, and that with some tweaks, Crazy in Love would be a better fit for the role of lead single. Speaking in an interview, Beyoncé revealed that Crazy in Love was not meant to be the lead single for the album. After that Beyoncé had filled up the middle eight, she came up with the catchphrase – "Uh-oh, uh-oh, you know" – alongside Harrison.Īmerican rapper Jay-Z became involved late in the song's production. Around 3 a.m., he came to the studio and recorded a rap verse, which he improvised in about ten minutes. The recording of "Crazy in Love" took place nearly three months following the meeting of Beyoncé with Harrison. The bridge was written by Beyoncé, who was inspired by looking at herself in the mirror as she was not wearing matching clothes and her hair was untidy, she kept saying, "I'm looking so crazy right now." Harrison sang back to her and said, "That's the hook." It also inspired the title of the song. 120 minutes later, Harrison had written the verses and the hook, leaving the bridge for Beyoncé. However she came round to the idea and gave the songwriter two hours to pen the song, whilst she disappeared for a break. When Harrison first played the beat to Beyoncé, the Texan singer initially had doubts as it seemed too retro, no one used horn riffs in the 21st century. So it was just something that I held on to until I got the call from B." People don't really get it and you'll leave them with a foul taste in their mouth.
He explained to MTV News: "I hadn't really shopped it much, because sometimes you don't want to come out of the bag before it's right. He knew he could do something special with it, and was reluctant to leak it to the wrong artist. Harrison had treasured the Chi-lites sample long before he met Beyoncé. Grammy-winning producer Rich Harrison played all the instruments on this song, including the sequencers and the congas. The album was delayed several times to capitalise on the success of Nelly's single "Dilemma" which featured former Destiny's Child member Kelly Rowland, which allowed Beyoncé to record more songs for the album, including Crazy in Love. In mid-to-late 2002, Beyoncé had already started recording for her debut solo studio album that would become Dangerously in Love, which was originally planned to be released in October of 2002.