Album Review: Beyoncé
There some mornings where I do not have time to check the
news (aka Pitchfork) after I’ve finished with all of my desperate househusband
chores, therefore I do not get to the news until after I’ve arrived at my day
job. Friday, December 13th was one of those mornings.
So by, like, 8:15, the internet was collectively shitting
itself and melting down over the fact that eight hours earlier, Beyoncé surprised
everybody by releasing a new album via iTunes. It was Pitchfork’s top story all
day, and some poor bastard at Buzzfeed had probably stayed up all night making a list full of .gifs relating to the album.
And so it is. An incredibly successful and well-known,
household name of a pop star unceremoniously released her long awaited and much
delayed fifth solo LP.
2013 certainly has been a big year for music, hasn’t it?
It’s marked the well-calculated return of a veteran like David Bowie, as well
as the contractually obligated comeback of Justin Timberlake. The arrival of Beyoncé lies somewhere between Kanye West’s “no
pre-order” strategy for Yeezus, and
the “Oh, hey, our new album is coming out in a few hours,” plan adopted by My
Bloody Valentine’s 22 years in the making m
b v.
I’ll be the first to admit that I am not extremely
well-versed in the canon of Beyoncé, although whether you like her or not, you
have to admire her ability to have risen from the de facto frontwoman role of
her former R&B girl group, to the absolute idol she has become today. I mean
people REALLY love Beyoncé. Also I should note that women, SPECIFICALLY, love Beyoncé
and look up to her not as another woman,
or even a celebrity/artist, but as some kind otherworldly presence.
Queen Bey, they call her.
One of the first things worth noting about Beyoncé is that it’s pretty god damn sexy. It’s not
nearly as raunchy/blush-inducing as R. Kelly’s latest endeavor—Beyoncé is far too classy for that, and her metaphors
are much more clever than comparing a woman’s vagina to a cookie—she prefers to
compare her own “bathing suit area” to a waterfall.
“Soul not for
sale…probably won’t make no money off this—oh well,” she improvises off the
cuff early on in the record—an interesting statement that one can take numerous
ways. One is that the surprise reveal of Beyoncé
is a more than a bit of a gamble for
an artist of her caliber—also, lyrically, this record it may alienate listeners
that aren’t comfortable listening to a record where a bulk of the material is
about having sex with Jay Z. Saying that her soul is not for sale, however, leads
me to believe that with the arrival of her fifth album, Beyoncé has risen above the standard “pop star” label,
and that with this record, she wants to be taken seriously as an artist.
Now seems like a good time to note that she certainly did
make money off of this. I think something like 430,000 copies of this were
downloaded within the first day alone—and by Monday, worldwide, she had moved
828,773 copies. That is just shy of a platinum album within a few days.
I would stop short of saying that Beyoncé is a “personal”
album, but what I would say that it’s incredibly self-aware. It’s a glimpse
into her world—as a performer, as a mother, as a wife, and possibly as a
regular person. But really, is Beyoncé a
regular person? She seems to transcend a label like that—I know that even Beyoncé
has do mundane shit like go to the
grocery store, but I’m sure for her, it’s an incredibly glamorous experience.
The record opens with dialogue of Beyoncé answer a question asked of her—“What is your
aspiration in life?” Her answer is simply, “to be happy.” Later, on the album’s
second track, “Haunted,” you hear a recording of an incredibly young Beyoncé winning some kind of talent contest, her name
being pronounced incorrectly by the announcer. “I love Houston,” she says,
before the recording begins to decay into the track. Her past as a child
performer is revisited again with the introduction (and ending) to “Flawless,” a
song that also (thankfully) makes use of a mysterious, fantastic, and bizarre track that was shared in the spring called “Bow Down/I Been On,” produced by
Hit Boy. And after using an expert of a
speech on feminism by speaker Chimamanda Nogzi Adichie, turns into a ready-made
anthem for women: “I look so good
tonight, God Damn! God Damn!”
Structurally, the album kind of maxes out its potential and
energy with “Flawless,” so I mean it nearly makes it to the end of the 14-track
run. Beyoncé saves the slower, ballady
tracks until the very end—my favorite song on the album, the surprisingly
haunting “Heaven,” (a song I may be reading a little too much into the lyrics on it, but then again maybe not) and then
closing with an ode to her daughter Blue Ivy, aptly titled “Blue,” a song
wherein its namesake arrives within the final seconds to lay it down, the way
only a baby that has yet to grasp the English language can do.
There’s some conflicting messages within Beyoncé—in the opening track, “Pretty
Hurts,” she sings, “Perfection is a
disease of a nation…it’s the soul that needs a surgery,” leading one to
believe that they should accept who they are, no matter who they are, or what
they look like. On the first part of “Haunted,” she says that she doesn’t trust
record labels, and how all the “..shit I
do is boring,” before she begins talking about all of the regular-ass
people working a 9 to 5 “just to stay
alive.”
This is before all of the hot sex, though, on the album, and
so by the time that hits, there’s a little bit of an “Oh look at my great life
with my incredibly successful rapper husband WHO BETTER NOT CHEAT ON ME OR I
WILL FUCK HIS ASS UP. See, ladies, I’m just like you only not really.” Speaking
of which, Jigga makes his probably contractually bound appearance early
on—“Drunk in Love” serves as possibly a document of how little Blue Ivy came to
be—“your breasteses is my breakfast,”
he raps, attempting to sound slightly more awake and alert here than he has on
anything else he’s been involved with in 2013.
Beyoncé is far from a “concept album,” but it is an
album that is tied together loosely by similar ideas—the general take away
seems to be that everyday pressures even get to famous people, and that famous
talented people have to deal with the same bullshit regular people do. Except
that famous people are still famous, so their existence is slightly better than
that of you or me. Writing it out like that makes it seem a little mean
spirited, or that I’m selling the album short.
I don’t think it’s meant to be mean spirited, and I don’t
think I’m selling Beyoncé short. I’m truly uncertain as to how I am
supposed to feel about this record. Because the internet, I went into it
thinking that it was going to change my life; that this album was different, or
special, in some way, and that my jaw would drop to the floor the second it
started.
That was not the case.
I will say, however, that I did listen to “Heaven” four
times in a row, completely failing to hold back tears while writing an earlier
part of this essay in a Dunn Brothers coffee shop, and that even the mere
thought that song will reduce me to a gigantic, sobbing mess.
It seems worth noting that since this is coming within the
tail end of 2013, Pitchfork has already started phoning it in with their “End
of 2013” lists, so they won’t get around to writing a review of it until the
first full week of January. Another relatively popular “indie” music website,
Consequence of Sound, gave it four out of five stars, and within their review, mentioned
that the song “Flawless,” was like “Yeezus,
only listenable.” This coming from a website that picked Yeezus as their favorite record of the year.
Comparing this album to Yeezus
seems unfair, like comparing apples to a fruit that nobody has ever heard of
before. The marketing behind that record was that there WAS no marketing. The
packaging for the record is that there IS no packaging, just a red sticker
sealing up a jewel case. The music is supposed to speak for itself, and oh how
it does—it’s unlike anything Kanye West has ever done before, and unlike
anything he’ll ever do again. It captures a moment in time, and the trickle-down
effect of influence and imitation can already be seen.
Beyoncé, however,
while a slight risk, still also manages to play it somewhat safe, or at least
to me, doesn’t seem all that risky. It’s not exactly a groundbreaking record,
musically speaking—I mean, sure, the release strategy could be considered that,
and I haven’t even mentioned the accompanying “Visual” component to the
record—videos shot for each of the record’s 14 tracks. There are some neat
production techniques, some more successful than others, but a track like
“Pretty Hurts” is straight up radio-ready—big synth arrangements, huge
refrain—and that’s a sound that returns towards the end of the record, on the
track “XO” (a song, as it turns out, is one of two singles released from the
record.)
This album is certainly an album. It exists. The verdict was
in almost immediately—people love it. The hype machine and hyperbole behind it
is as big, or bigger, than expected. And it’s because of this that I want to
like it more than I find myself able to. I don’t dislike Beyoncé, and listening to it certainly wasn’t a chore, but it also
wasn’t rewarding. It’s an album that may win her some new fans for those that
admire the artistic endeavor, and it may also estrange some more casual
listeners that aren’t ready for a leap forward such as this.
Comments
Post a Comment