“Heaven” by Beyoncé

In “Heaven,” pop icon Beyoncé employs her powerful vocals in an expression of grief, mourning – and acceptance. In the first verse, she laments the loss of a loved one:

I fought for you, the hardest
It made me, the strongest
So tell me your secrets
I just can’t stand to see you leaving

But as the song moves into the chorus, there is a growing sense that while we may struggle to accept what’s happening, we can also acknowledge that there are more powerful forces at work. “Heaven couldn’t wait for you,” Beyoncé sings repeatedly. She then closes with the final line, her voice softened with understanding: “So go on, go home.”

Beyoncé worked with the musician Boots to write and produce “Heaven,” which was released in 2013 on her fifth, self-titled studio album. She had recently suffered a miscarriage, and there was some speculation that the song drew on that experience. But dancer Ashley Everett, who co-starred in the music video, told Vibe that it was actually about “two best friends who want to do everything on our bucket list before we die.”

In the video, Beyoncé and Everett pop champagne, have babies and get matching tattoos. But the images close with Beyoncé visiting her friend’s grave and mourning. Then, “Heaven” ends with a final light-filled scene in which a woman’s voice recites the first part of the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish:

Padre nuestro,
que estás en el cielo
Santificado sea tu nombre
Venga tu reino
Hágase tu voluntad en la tierra como en el cielo

The words – “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done / On earth as it is in heaven” – not only tie into the song’s title, “Heaven,” but also reinforce the sense of acceptance implicit throughout. Five years later, Beyoncé referenced the song in a touching tribute to her friend, Kim Porter, after she died. “Heaven couldn’t wait for you,” she captioned one youthful image of Porter posted on social media.

You can watch the music video for Beyoncé’s “Heaven” below.