“Pray You Catch Me” by Beyoncé

"Pray You Catch Me" opens Lemonade, Beyoncé's sixth studio album, released in April 2016 through Parkwood Entertainment and Columbia. She cut it at Conway Studios in Los Angeles in September 2015. The writing was a three-way job with Kevin Garrett and James Blake, and she took the production reins alongside Garrett, with Jeremy McDonald also getting a production credit.

It's a hushed, downtempo ballad in no hurry at all, creeping along at 58 beats per minute and slipping between four and five beats to the bar. Garrett plays the piano, Blake the bass, and a full string section gathers behind them like weather rolling in. The first lines find her tasting a lie on someone's breath, and the gloom never lifts from there. Stuart White recorded and mixed it, and its video became part of Lemonade, the film HBO aired alongside the album.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.