Beyoncé just served us with another surprise song.
The superstar teased a new track, a power ballad called “Be Alive,” today in the latest trailer for King Richard—the film starring Will Smith as Richard Williams as he coaches and raises his young daughters, Venus and Serena. Smith introduced the preview on social media with the help of the real-life Williams sisters, who encouraged fans not to “miss out” on the film when it hits theaters and HBO Max on Nov. 19.
As the footage shows Smith’s Richard defying the odds to support his tennis prodigy children, Beyoncé’s brassy vocals start to float into the background. “I got a million miles on me / They want to see how far I go,” she sings in the opening lines. “Can’t nobody knock it if they tried,” she adds later. More inspirational lines come in the hook, backed by a full chorus: “It feels so good to be alive / That’s why I lift my head with pride.”
Take a listen in the clip below:
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The new drop is delightfully unexpected, but it makes sense considering Bey’s longtime friendship with Serena Williams. (She did tap the tennis champ for her “Sorry” music video, after all.) “She says she loves when I dance cos I dance like no one’s watching,” Williams told the Guardian of working with Beyoncé. “I’m like, ‘Oh, but that’s different cos there’s no cameras, there’s no one watching.’ But, yeah, that’s kind of what I was trying to do. It worked out good.”
While King Richard bills Smith as its lead, it also introduces up-and-comers Saniyya Sidney and Demi Singleton, who play young Venus and Serena respectively. Speaking to ELLE for our Young Hollywood feature, Sidney said of portraying the star athletes, “Both of us now know how to play just like them.” But Singleton corrected her: “No, no. We now know how to look like we play like them.”
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