I Am... Sasha Fierce - Composition

Composition

"I really wanted people to get to know what I love and to introduce them to different types of music. I started out, obviously, in Destiny's Child singing R&B, and I still love it. So I had to make sure I still had those grooves on the album."

—Beyoncé Knowles speaking of the content of the album.

In an interview for Billboard magazine, Knowles described I Am... Sasha Fierce as a double album. She said, "One side has songs that are more mainstream and another has my more traditional R&B songs for my fans who've been there the whole time. Some of it sounds like Barbra Streisand, Karen Carpenter and The Beatles around the 1970s." In another interview with MTV News, Knowles said: "Half the record, I Am..., is about who I am underneath all the makeup, underneath the lights and underneath all the exciting star drama. And Sasha Fierce is the fun, more sensual, more aggressive, more outspoken side and more glamorous side that comes out when I'm working and when I'm onstage. The double album allows me to take more risks and really step out of myself, or shall I say, step more into myself, and reveal a side of me that only people who know me see." Music writer Andy Kellman of Allmusic viewed its first disc as, "essentially a small set of adult contemporary ballads. Acoustic guitars, pianos, strings, contemplative soul searching, and grand sweeping gestures fill it out, with more roots in '70s soft rock than soul."

The second disc, Sasha Fierce, contains consistent electro influences, which are displayed in songs like "Radio" and "Sweet Dreams". Kellman said in his review that "Diva" resembles B'Day's "Freakum Dress" or "Ring the Alarm" in terms of audacity. Despite being on the Sasha Fierce disc, "Ego", "Why Don't You Love Me" and "Scared of Lonely" were noted to be a meeting ground between the album's halves. According to Jennifer Vineyard of MTV News, they resemble Sasha Fierce musically, but thematically and lyrically, they are vulnerable like Knowles on the I Am... disc. The album formally introduces Knowles' alter ego Sasha Fierce. She revealed that Sasha was born during the making of her 2003 hit single "Crazy in Love". In an interview with Emmet Sullivan of People magazine, Knowles affirmed that her alter ego is strictly for the stage, with the editor describing Sasha Fierce as the singer's sensual, aggressive alter ego.