Beyonce - 4

with the drums!

Great review of this by Rich in The Voice:

Really, 4 is about joy, and that may prove too much for people who expect our R&B stars to be tortured at least some of the time, who expect life's lemons to produce sourness instead of lemonade. Few know the details of Beyoncé's private life, and sadness is relative, but the perception that Beyoncé has had it easy, and thus doesn't carry the scars to make her authentically soulful, is not an unpopular one. Mary J. Blige, as good of a Bey counterpoint as any, once griped, "There's no school for organic," in reference to Bey's supposedly smooth path and its effect. But if happiness is at the root of Beyoncé's soul, 4 could be just as much her truth as My Life was Mary's.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-06-29/music/beyonce-s-odes-to-joy/

excellent from rich as ever :)

I'm still worried about Tricky. He just seemed to disappear ...

(Is there a Beyonce/Tricky connection that I'm missing - eg. production/collaboration at some point?)

you may have heard "single ladies"

lol not that tricky

oh lol

Tricky's from the West Country, maybe he was just hanging around backstage? It's not beyond the realms of possibility that Beyonce is just a Tricky fan and invited him on?

Either that or he's her stalker.

i was wondering why anyone other than i would care about that xp

Pretty sure Beyonce and Jay-Z have repped for worse and more unlikely albums than Maxinquaye.

it's funny that there are people to whom "tricky" automatically means terius's mate

i'd be surprised if beyoncé wasn't a maxinquaye fan, apart from it being a really famous canonical album and all, she's been hanging around with diplo and switch and frank ocean of late

when she said 'tricky' i thought she was gonna bring on tricky stewart. but then i saw it was the bristol tricky. he looked kinda scared/surprised. how did anyone think tricky would fit with baby boy? def a weird moment.

i wouldnt be surprised if solange gave beyonce trickys album. cant imagine diplo playing that much. or frank ocean.

i assume beyoncé discovered it herself tbh

gwynnie imo

this should really be a poll

He did look ... surprised to be there.

Reckon Beyonce found it when flicking through her 100 Best Albums issue of Q and bought it at the same time as Moseley Shoals and the first Kula Shaker album.

really bugging me that not only does she mispronounce "algebur" on the record but also singing live? i mean shouldn't someone tell her?

also british ppl dont know what 'you showed your ass' means

the drive home safely line was kinda funny too

tho i spose 'walk home safely/camp out safely/dont get muddy' doesnt really sound very beyonce-like

re: algebur, maybe she just has a problem saying that word. or she was doing her version of cmon/shmon.

It was the end of the festival, people were literally driving home immediately after.

'algebra' doesn't sound that bad. maybe that's just how she wants to say it.

if no one told her about bidet, they're prob not gonna tell her about algebur

"dont know much about history.... dont know much about..."

ok "Schoolin' Life" not being on the album is just ridiculous. i wonder how many of these supposed 72 songs recorded for 4 will end up out there over the next year or so as bonus tracks or deluxe reissues or collabs or whatever.

yea i do like schoolin' life

If the deluxe album costs more than the standard album and the bonus tracks are all essential, how could you NOT make the call to put at least one of the best tracks from the recording sessions on it?

true

This is going to be the case on every major pop album ever from now on, might as well get used to it.

it started a while ago right?

yeah and iirc at least one or two of B's singles from her last album were off the deluxe edition - i don't feel particularly optimistic about any of these songs catching on with radio but "schoolin' life" prob has the best chance?

it's really a perfect song, there's nothing i don't like about it

I like "schoolin life" a whole lot but there are a couple observations, and I call them that because they aren't rlly criticisms but might come off that way, which is that the song is very melodically affecting but not very melodically distinct; when I start singing it in my head it starts to become the verses of "you shook me all night long" (esp the part with the line about "american thighs") or whitneys "$100 bill"

I'm also fairly sure that we have a bias towards certain prince esque aesthetic maneuvers that make dreams cartoony imitations appealing simply because they are fresh in our current context - a "good kind" of revivalism. I think that part of why I do like this so much is that its being done on a huge stage with a big pop artist, so it feels like these moves "matter". context feeds into why I like this a lot, basically

I do look skeptically at any artist who isn't Prince boasting that h/she's got seventy-two tracks in the can: more like less than a quarter of that number, the rest of which are songs requiring more mixing or fragments of choruses and bridges.

yeah, i really do kind of agree with you on the 100 bill/schoolin life connection; they're odd but true cognates
that GROWL she delivers with AH HAD MUH FIRST KISS BAH TH AGE UH THIRTEEN UNGH absolutely kills me

the song is very melodically affecting but not very melodically distinct

totally agree

it doesn't make me love it any less but it's right that it's a bonus track

on the subject of which, nicki minaj seems intent on releasing all her own bonus tracks as singles

ok so many great moments on this album

"boy your lips taste like a night of champagne"

a NIGHT! not just a glass. and then getting so love drunk on kissing you "again and again and again and again"

"all up in the kitchen in my heels" - the rhythm of the word totters exactly like the housewife she's playing at

"damn i think i love that boy! (aside, sotto voce) do anything for that boy..."

i think - i like schoolin' life, but i don't love it. for me it is slightly too pigeon-holed and not QUITE fulfilling enough in terms of the melody. that's just me.

all round otm d-40 post

i think also you have to ask where would you put 'schoolin life' on the album for it to work as a whole as well as it currently does... tracing back from that, and taking into account bey already said was one of her fave cuts before the regular edition even came out, (not even in an obvious "buy the deluxe as well!" kinda way it seemed to me) the decision to leave it as a bonus grows more and more appreciable imo

like it's a striking song, i'm pretty sure it would have been among the cornerstones of a blundering panicky exec's tracklist selection

i watched this beyonce concert on MHD recently.

it was very strange, she is a weird performer. like she doesn't even feel like she's playing a real show for real human people, it's like she's still making all her hair flailing tigress type weird facial expression and it even seems like she has canned facial expressions for everything.

like maybe she should only play in arenas, this was a small room in vegas and it just didn't work, like i dunno she doesn't really scan for me, like even celine or someone like bette midler kinda CONNECT with you even over TV, beyonce seems like a cipher.

likes she's talented in the basic sense, she can dance and sing and everything but i don't think she's a really compelling performer outside of videos where all her hyperactive weird faces and poses can sort of be used and presented in a certain way.

very "dead" emotionally i think (as a performer)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNvfIDbotHY

I'm not sure Schoolin Life would be any more sore thumb than Party.

^exactly what i was thinking

"party" sticks out because it sucks, not because it's uptempo

Also it's sonically completely different to the rest of the album. Schoolin Life at least fits the retro 80s reel.

Beyonce Stan Calls Target
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyAFd_QuXhc
Because some people are beyond help.

Also it's sonically completely different to the rest of the album. Schoolin Life at least fits the retro 80s reel.

― Matt DC, Thursday, June 30, 2011 2:02 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think Party fits an 80s retro feel to a large degree, and i think it is sonically more similar to the rest of the album than Schoolin Life is.

xpost Beesus?

to me, most of the album sounds like Beyonce just got home from a long night and said "peace, i'm gonna go to the basement and record." and Party sounds like she went upstairs after a while and took a break with the crew.

if Schoolin Life were on there, it would sound like she went into her time machine and took a break in another galaxy.