“She doesn’t have the range” is a beautiful neg that comes from a Little Britain sketch parodying Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey. In it, Bassey discusses who has and who doesn’t have the range. “Sheryl Crow?” an interviewer asks. “She doesn’t have the range,” Bassey replies. “Paul McCartney?” “She doesn’t have the range.” “Shirley Bassey?” “She doesn’t have the range. I’m sorry, Shirley; I love her to bits, but she doesn’t have the range.” “But that’s you.” ” I don’t care. I don’t have the range.”
For pop-star fandoms, “She doesn’t have the range” is a perfect musical neg to deploy against rival sects. Your fave is a good performer, maybe even great, but, well, she doesn’t have the range.
It’s been around for a while. But yesterday, a Beyoncé stan account (@KingBeyonceStan) undertook the kind of bravura run of tweets that will take “She doesn’t have the range” out of the world of fandom and British sketch shows and into the phrasing of Twitter normies everywhere.
The phrase is already ascending into the upper tiers of memedom.
