Beyonce - 4

waht this album is awesome, totally her best

ok maybe i have to listen more closely, i thought for sure there was no way this was coming close to b'day

which are the killers apart from "1+1" and "love on top" ?

even "love on top" i felt was being overrated around here

"i miss you," "rather die young," "end of time," "I care"

and I love "party" though it has been pretty divisive here

this vs. b'day is totally up to personal taste, but I'd say it's definitely better than I Am... Sasha Fierce at the very least

Yeah, I think this might be her best too. Pretty much equal with B'Day im current o.

4 >>>> Born This Way and I say that as someone who does like the latter

4 is definitely the best big-name pop album of this year so far

it's so different from b'day that a straight comparison isn't that helpful, they both aim for totally different things, and they both succeed

yeah otm

I kinda think that 1+1 might be the overrated one here, maybe it's that arpeggio cycling through the whole song that makes it feel more rudimentary than it actually is. It's still good but... I thought it was amazing, then went and listened to Purple Rain, and it hasn't felt anywhere near as amazing since.

I think this album is the best showcase of her voice. I think b'day might be the stronger album but I think I may be more personally attached to this one.

this is a thoroughly enjoyable album, i just have bugger all to say about it

besides me and my BOOF and my BOOF BOOF riding of course

detect a pointedness about lex calling this the best pop alb of the year rather than r&b

whatever the fulsome merits of the record part of me is a little disappointed she has seceded from the rigmarole and played the grown woman card this early

this isn't really grown in any particular way, symbolic or otherwise, than the last couple records were, is it?

nice album, still figuring out exactly how i feel about it but definitely will never like it as much as B'Day

detect a pointedness about lex calling this the best pop alb of the year rather than r&b

none intended! pop as in big pop star really.

i think the first disc of sasha fierce played the grown woman card pretty heavily, but where i think 4 differs is in how B's clearly aiming for a rawer, less glossy effect - most noticeable in the vocals and the sparser arrangements.

First disc of Sasha Fierce is stuck in between the two stools of grown woman and teen ballad, there's too much slush in there. First half of 4 feels more grown woman because of the instrumentation, partly, it all feels like it's been written and recorded with a massive money-spinning enormotour in mind.

It's also part of the reason why Party sticks out like a sore thumb, it totally breaks the flow of what's gone before. There's a reason why the big balladosaurus is stuck near the end as well.

i think 4 could lose both "party" and "i was here" quite easily - would be even better for the flow of the album too

this isn't really grown in any particular way, symbolic or otherwise, than the last couple records were, is it?

― some dude, Thursday, 16 June 2011 11:43 (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

ah he's spotted the balloon, he's got his pin, here he comes

nah seriously though i agree it is couched fairly superficially - it just seems less fussy i suppose, a simpler statement

interesting that mdc invokes the "massive money-spinning enormotour" cos i get this vibe from this album's ballads so much less than i did with any of her previous. was strongly wondering where a hit would come from in fact

I like how "Rather Die Young" faintly evokes Massive Attack's "Protection."

I'd rather get rid of "Best Thing I Never Had" than "Party"

I miss crunchy albums tracks like "Suga Mama," but on the other hand she's never sung ballads as well as "I Miss You."

interesting that mdc invokes the "massive money-spinning enormotour" cos i get this vibe from this album's ballads so much less than i did with any of her previous

I'm kind of mentally editing out 'Irreplaceable' in all this. I dunno, it's something to do with the instrumentation, big drums, guitars, trumpets, it's mostly all very live-sounding in a way that, say, 'Scared Of Lonely' or 'Hello' or 'Halo' aren't.

I'm not sure where the hit is either, but it'll still shift a load as an album in its own right I think.

it just seems less fussy i suppose, a simpler statement

I think this is spot on. I think it makes the album quite relatable despite its constant bignesss. Almost in a Fantasia-esque manner, though their voices are very different obv.

I like "Best Thing I Never Had" more each time I listen to it.

more i hear this as a whole the less disposable i find even my least fave cuts, it's a deceptively well-balanced album imo

within the album's context would make a case for every track in fact, the whole would suffer without 'best thing's girlish petulance or 'party's... well, whatever pleasantly inane thing 'party' brings

or 'party's... well, whatever pleasantly inane thing 'party' brings

valiant attempt right there.

I'm kind of mentally editing out 'Irreplaceable' in all this. I dunno, it's something to do with the instrumentation, big drums, guitars, trumpets, it's mostly all very live-sounding in a way that, say, 'Scared Of Lonely' or 'Hello' or 'Halo' aren't.

I'm not sure where the hit is either, but it'll still shift a load as an album in its own right I think.

― Matt DC, Thursday, 16 June 2011 12:07 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah i'm kind of feeling you, it doesn't seem orientated towards radio (even heart fm ballad radio if u know what i mean) so much as it is to i dunno, like big gloria estefan roadshows

or the live circuit in general, to put less of a point on it

i really like "best thing i never had"

simpler and more direct is key - i mean even down to the ballads' titles, "i care", "i miss you", just these direct statements that leave no room to hide

Best Thing I Ever Had feels like the big radio hit to me, it's about as MOR as you can get.

i originally misread tim as saying more reliable than relatable and i kinda feel there's something in that

simpler and more direct is key - i mean even down to the ballads' titles, "i care", "i miss you", just these direct statements that leave no room to hide

Spot on.

i originally misread tim as saying more reliable than relatable and i kinda feel there's something in that

I think there is! This is a beyonce you could trust to hold shit down for you.

heard "Best" on the radio for the first time the other day and it sounded OK but i dunno, feels almost like an attempt to repeat "Irreplaceable" in some ways

possibly one reason for that greater trust is a looser (but not completely lost) grip on the specificities of her halo/if i were a boy /irreplaceable ballads - like more platitudinous in the comforting real way that people actually use platitudes every day sort of thing

a sense of protection that comes from the fierceness of simplicity as well i guess

yeah it's more attuned to actual emotions rather than the stuff surrounding those emotions

right, yeah

xp yes i think 'best' is purely familiar-sounding enough to do okay but would be a bit of a bad look in terms of the brand - incongruously juvenile at this point

when i was listening to this on loop to write about it, it actually began to seem like a challenge beyoncé had set herself - we all know how ballads were not her forte at the start of her career, almost entirely because she just couldn't allow herself to be vulnerable or emotional. so by making everything so simple and direct as a strategy, it's like she's forcing herself into that position.

I think it's more likely to be that ballads went from an afterthought to a focal point - and got better songwriting support in as a result.

have been thinking about how she's always been kind of into aggressive production, how she was really the first R&B star working heavily with Swizz Beatz and "Diva" was kind of earlier in the R&B "A Milli" bites/singers kinda rapping thing -- even "Crazy In Love" was kind of brash and loud in the Ashanti Era. "Run The World" was obviously constructed in that lineage but didn't really work the same way, so all the other stuff with a different sound feels more central to the album this time.

xpost I think the general notion of what ballads are meant to be has also changed a lot in the past 10 years or so. I'm not even sure if we would have called tunes like "I Care" and "Rather Die Young" ballads back then, they're so much more propulsive than the post-babyface/warren orthodoxy.

i think the thing w/ this album is that for a major pop album it feels kinda slight from a storyline perspective, but as a group of songs it's pretty strong -- i get charmed by a new song almost every time i listen to it

also the second half is way better -- "start over" is a particularly good song in the style of tedder-esque galloping ballads, "love on top" hasn't bowled me over or anything but it's definitely a very fun throwback, "countdown" has awesome production (i'm assuming bangladesh) and is a one of beyonce's better aggressive songs & then i think "end of time" might be the best song on here after "1+1"

"countdown" sounds like something that could've been on the last ciara album except i'm not sure she could've pulled it off vocally

the horns in "end of time" are so gloria estefan/amazing

http://course1.winona.edu/pjohnson/images/sealchess.jpg

right: lex
left: spectre of showing weakness thru being open with emotion
centre: just another album review

besides me and my BOOF and my BOOF BOOF riding of course

Haven't decided whether the best moment on the album is this or "me and my BOOF and my BOOF LIP LOCKING".

Have we mentioned the female empowerment angle yet how the vocal loop on "End of Time" is a better "Pon De Floor" interpolation than anything on "Girls"?

this isn't really grown in any particular way, symbolic or otherwise, than the last couple records were, is it?

― some dude, Thursday, 16 June 2011 11:43 (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

ah he's spotted the balloon, he's got his pin, here he comes

nah seriously though i agree it is couched fairly superficially - it just seems less fussy i suppose, a simpler statement

― r|t|c, Thursday, June 16, 2011 7:02 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

haha i didn't really mean it in that way -- like it didn't even occur to me that that could be the main lens people are looking at the album through, all the "omg beyonce is turning 30" talk aside.

but then in a weird way it seems like every album is about 'newfound maturity' for these pop stars that started out really young -- every Usher or Justin or Christina album is all hey i'm not a teenager anymore/hey i'm enjoying a sexually active lifestyle y'all/hey i'm married now/hey i've got a kid now/hey i'm divorced now/etc.

she's spotted the condom, she's got her pin, here she comes

xxp yeah totes, though i feel like that comes back to what i first said - 'end of time' doesnt quite manage it by itself but i think it's maybe the one disquietingly tantalising glimpse of how she might have come back to dominate in a better less compromised way than 'girls'

the supposed fela kuti inspired album i guess (but then i could never really imagine that - perhaps that's the point)