I remember Toby looking at me and going, “We just wrote a smash.” I thought he was crazy. We recorded it that day it was so simple. So we were walking through Times Square, and I said, “I wish I were a boy,” and he’s like, “Why would you say that? That’s very weird to me.” I said, “That pizza smells really good, and I’m trying not to eat carbs, and I wish I were a boy so I didn’t care.” That’s how the song started, and he was like, “What else would you do if you were a boy?” And I was going through a really hard breakup with my first real love, so I said, “I’d be a better man than my ex-boyfriend!” And he asked, “How would you sing it?” So I’m just singing in Times Square into his recording thing, and we went back to the studio, and he had a guitar part. Our communication was very interesting – he’s European. Whenever I said anything interesting, he would take out a little tape recorder and start recording me just talking.

Toby and I had written about 11 songs together over a week or two. The song started because I had the title. She went on to explain the song’s background, and how she and Gad came up with the idea. It was not my initial intention, but it’s opened so many doors, it’s amazing. This was my first cut ever I’ve never written for anybody else. It’s an amazing compliment, but I was like, “That’s great, but it’s going to be on my album!” And it can be on my album, too, I just didn’t realize how it worked. I had always written for myself and was trying to get signed and do the whole artist thing as well. I love singing ballads because I feel like the music and the emotion in the story is told so much better.īC Jean, who co-wrote the song with Toby Gad, told Hartford Courant about her reaction when she got a phone call saying that Beyoncé would be recording her song.Īt first I was confused, because I never thought of myself as writing songs for other people. The woman in the song has been taken for granted but at the same time she doesn’t.

She explores what it would be like if she did all the things he did to her every day.

'If I were a boy' is a commentary on the double standards that that often exist between men and women and a story of role reversal. I feel like at this point, I wanted people to hear songs with stronger lyrics and songs that made you feel. 'If I Were A Boy' is the first song from Beyonces third studio album I Am.Sasha Fierce. It’s difficult to grow and to break out and do new things because people have strong expectations. You can hear with ‘If I Were A Boy,’ it’s not a traditional R&B song. When discussing all the different elements and styles of music she incorporated in I Am…Sasha Fierce, Beyoncé said of this track:

Lyrics beyonce if i were a boy