Beyonce in 2016 - 'Formation' and Lemonade

One thing that's very clear from watching the film is how completely and resolutely it does not give a fuck about the tastes and wants of a straight white male audience. So yeah, you can get over that she's not thrown you a couple of club bangers as part of your adjustment to this not being for you. And then you can adjust to it being wildly popular regardless. But to flip that into saying that there's not good songs on this just seems deranged.

"love drought" is incredible

Straight white dudes love club bangers?

yes

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i think sonically this album is really cool and unique. more all over the place than it really seems as you're listening to it. some of it ("don't hurt yourself, "6 inch", "daddy issues") sound sort of noirsh to me, but there are also some crystalline r&b songs and the little island influences. it's an interesting combo that works. i like how "pray you catch me," "sorry" & "love drought" sorta take their cues from the "jealous"/"no angel" sector of the last album. that said the songwriting isn't always there for me... i want "hold up" and "sorry" to do a little more than they do. they're nice songs but feel a bit underworked & not sure how often i'll come back to ones like the jack white collab or "freedom." as a piece of popular art it's pretty insanely compelling tho, and she really sells the shit out of it (i.e. that little dip into rap on "hold up", her vocals across the album in general)

Definitely curious to see how this works in concert, arrangement-wise.

Tim F. otm:
As an aside, it's interesting to observe that while Jay-Z's response to moving in arty circles is just to hamfistedly reference it in lyrics, Beyonce goes away and makes what is essentially a video installation for a gallery of digital media).

Can't wait to hear a live version of Sandcastles.

and ultimately I don't care if something's calculated if it makes me feel shit.

Sure, otm, and all art is calculated to the degree that someone makes the conscious decision to produce it and present it. Taylor has obviously made a specialty of intimate confessions with massive corporate packaging. The trick with this album is its sense of immediacy, like she just caught him and this is her processing it in real time. Which of course it's not, it's art, with elaborate trappings.

I just watched this. It was incredible. There's no direct sonic connection but throughout the whole thing the name that kept popping into my head was Tina Turner.

As an artistic statement, I think this is tremendous. Also on just one watchthrough, I feel like people are conflating forgiveness with reconciliation; the second half felt to me like a goodbye more than anything else.

My mom is visiting and watched part of the beginning with me. She asked me "So what do you think?" and I said "I think Jay-Z better run"

Ha!

I can't stop listening to All Night. Easily 25-30 times since last night.

One thing that's very clear from watching the film is how completely and resolutely it does not give a fuck about the tastes and wants of a straight white male audience.

it is interesting to hear this said when many of the collaborators this go-around are people that the, em, "passionate millennial males" are very into. still not an untrue observation tho!

i am still very confused about the "my girls" '''''''sample''''''', like the only lyrics she lifted were the two words "material things" yes? it's not like anco invented that phrase or even first used it in a song so ... ? what is the point?

http://pitchfork.com/news/65028-beyonce-producer-boots-explains-animal-collective-credit-on-6-inch/

Over on Genius, the track's co-producer Boots explained that the connection between Beyoncé's line ("She too smart to crave material things") and Animal Collective's ("I don't mean to seem like I care about material things") was initially "accidental." He compared the songwriting process to George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord," which was famously the subject of a lawsuit when the Beatle was accused of "subconsciously" lifting the melody from the Chiffons' "He's So Fine."

like Alfred said above, the Blurred Lines effect. no one wants to get sued. i thought Miguel giving a co-write credit to Billy Corgan on Leaves because it sounded like 1979 was hilarious, considering Corgan stole that song from the Frogs.

Copyright has a striking similarity / substantial part test under which one of the factors they balance is the more distinctive the infringed part is the smaller it has to be to infringe. There's cases before Blurred Lines (Coffey v Warner/ Chappell Music Ltd comes to mind) around a single lyric without regard to melody. So it's not out completely crazy to seek permission for 'they don't love you like i love you' and 'material things'. Also mens rea doesn't exist for copyright, so whether Beyonce knew of the original or sought to copy is irrelevant. It's not a particularly satisfying part of law.

The idea of Animal Collective deciding to take on a full battalion of Beyonce lawyers based on two words is hilarious. Then again stranger things have happened so you can't blame them for being cautious.

Was the collaborator list kept secret before this dropped by the way? I'm assuming so because if it been common knowledge that she was working with Jack White and Ezra Koenig and The Weeknd we would not have heard the end of it. When you consider all that, choosing to precede it with Formation was even more of a masterstroke.

imagining Lex's reaction to that pre-album press release.

Actually, 6 Inch is a mess from start to finish and this album feels very unnecessary.

― human and working on getting beer (longneck), Sunday, April 24, 2016 4:30 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...The fuck?

Favorite song is "love drought" which is funny cuz it only had 2 other writers while ever other record is brimming w them

Incredible album and Johnny fever's complaints about "daddy lessons" are going to age like eggs on the radiator

Not sure I like it more than the s/t but I identify w al's take and I don't think it's a remotely static move, feels like a bold step forward and I think a smart one

Who cares about Radio Singles (I mean, I do, sentimentally, but) Lana del Rey sold hella copies of an album w no radio records, this is the way the fractured silo'd viral Internet has destroyed Traditional radio music

A lack of radio singles* is far from the biggest commercial problem when you consider the record is being released exclusively on Tidal.

*Whatever that means, I really don't understand behaviours of US radio, there are four or five songs here that would get heavy UK rotation.

My favourite vocal moment so far is the bit on Love Drought when her voice just whoops upward.

idg the "no radio singles" angle, i know we live in an age when ppl interpret "radio single" as "as formulaic as possible" but "hold up", "6 inch" and "freedom" all seem like big radio singles in terms of hooks, mood etc. already heard "freedom" on radio 1.

watching the film after listening to the album, the spoken word interludes obviously leapt out - some really incredible imagery ("i plugged my menses with pages from the holy bible"!!!!!!!) at the start but i felt like they lost their impact as the film went on. also, having listened to the album first, i'm not sure the film did justice to all the songs...a lot of striking visual moments (posses of women looking like elite covens, i like bey taking #blackgirlmagic to its logical conclusion) but the only one i remember working as a ~music video~ was "hold up" (nb only one watch and i have a bad memory)

strictly autobiographical obsession is v boring in this case. i know she's underlining it for us (must be the influence of hanging out with taylor swift) but every single bit of speculation i've read about her marriage reveals some p depressing things about how ppl seem to think a) relationships b) creating art actually work

who remembers the country version of "grown woman"! https://soundcloud.com/beyoncehd-1/beyonc-grown-woman-country-mi

...The fuck?

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Monday, April 25, 2016 8:11 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Meaning the Walk On By sample is very distracting and the song would have done just fine and much better without it. I'll retract that the album "feels very unnecessary" and rephrase it as "the media/autobiographic points overshadow the actual music, which feels comparatively small and uninteresting."

on first listens it seems like there are some outright mediocre songs/moments on here in a way that there weren't on the previous album. quality control seems looser.

does it seem weird that the NYT and other outlets are referring to this album as "long-awaited"? maybe i'm just getting older and time is moving faster and faster, but it doesn't really seem like all that long ago that the last one just suddenly appeared. i guess to be precise it was two years and five months ago. but that's not an unusually long time to wait for a new album from a major recording artist, is it?

is there any way to watch the film (or whatever it is) w/o having a HBO subscription?

As an aside, it's interesting to observe that while Jay-Z's response to moving in arty circles is just to hamfistedly reference it in lyrics, Beyonce goes away and makes what is essentially a video installation for a gallery of digital media).

this just seems symptomatic of jay-z being totally out of inspiration and ideas, and beyonce... having plenty of inspiration and ideas.

Yeah that was my point.

i'm not hearing where the quality of songcraft supposedly dips..."pray you catch me" is more of a mood intro than a song, "forward" is trash that doesn't even count as a beyoncé song and i've deleted it already but everything else is either super-immediate or if it's not, has really engrossing details/moments that make it a compelling listen even if i'm not belting out the hooks yet

strictly autobiographical obsession is v boring in this case. i know she's underlining it for us (must be the influence of hanging out with taylor swift) but every single bit of speculation i've read about her marriage reveals some p depressing things about how ppl seem to think a) relationships b) creating art actually work

― cher guevara (lex pretend), Monday, April 25, 2016 8:48 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'd love to hear you expand on this, lex. Especially the part about "how art works", which, I think, is partly what's bothering me about the reception of this thing.

Anyway, I finally watched the film and feel like it blew the songs up into the dimensions that the album needs in order for it to work, more or less. However, parts of this is down to the film using fragments of the songs instead of full versions - i.e. I prefer Freedom without the Kendrick verse for some reason - and also the spoken word thing which worked better than I had imagined it would.

All Night felt way more of a reconciliation than I had thought it would though, thanks to the loving imagery of Jay and Blue Ivy, and that kind of threw me off. After seeing the film this weirdly feels more like a love letter to Jay (and, even more weirdly, patriarchy in general) than an attempt to break free.

strictly autobiographical obsession is v boring in this case. i know she's underlining it for us (must be the influence of hanging out with taylor swift) but every single bit of speculation i've read about her marriage reveals some p depressing things about how ppl seem to think a) relationships b) creating art actually work

yeah this. Most artists record stuff because it sounds cool, not because it's intrinsically meaningful.

Beyoncé seems to be very into MEANING though.

geez I've already seen a few people on FB call this her Blood on the Tracks or Shoot Out the Lights! Apart from not knowing a thing about Beyonce-Jay (and who cares anyway), Lemonade doesn't work like those two albums; it's a convenient way to elide the politics and concentrate on autobiography.

Not sure if politics and autobiography can be detached from each other in this particular instance but it's an interesting thought and I'd love to hear what you mean by it in more detail.

'Great songs' are overrated. This album sounds broken, confused, searching, everchanging. It's not a grand statement, it's art. It's not MEANING, or even #MEANING, it's meanings.

The lack of "great songs" means the focus is moved from the songs to the person singing them. Hence to "meaning".
That being said, the songs are not bad. I quite like a few of them.

my favorite 'music video' moment in the film is toward the end in "hold up". so replete is the history of the music video with shots of the performer (esp. if they're women) looking right into the camera that it really struck me to actually feel "oh shit, she's actually looking ~at me~" as she approached with the bat ready to strike.

album appears to be available to buy on itunes and other digital retail outlets now btw. the individual tracks can be purchased a la carte, even, which was not the case at first for self-titled. i guess the tidal exclusive is just for streaming?

It's not on Amazon.

digital is now for sale on Amazon---I just checked---and maybe for streaming if you sign up for Prime (unless it's just a vague ruse to get you to sign up, period; didn't read the mention that closely, but not in the way they might prefer me to be careless). Anyway CD/DVD out May 6 (contents of DVD listed as "short film," so not the whole video gallery, or is that short?) Somebody on Sunday All Things Considered suggested that theme of album could be read as referencing marriage and/or fraught relationship with her father and/or institutionalized patriarchy/gender presets (though I inferred last phrase) Haven't listened yet, but trying not to read too much about it first (hard, but I'm trying).

I've got Prime and it's not available for streaming for me

A subtle cool thing about this record imo is the lip-service crediting of so many white indie-mainstays. Took a line here, a word there, then she gives credit to Ezra, YYYs, AnCo, Father John Misty for their barely-there contributions, it's beautiful tokenizing. It's genius. Animal Collective took Frankie Knuckles' masterpiece-track (a soundtrack for safe spaces for the queer and not-white and poor) and turned it into a song glorifying heteronormative privileged life. Beyonce and co. took it back by stealing two words. And giving credit.

handing someone a paycheck for basically no work is a strange form of justice in that case

i would be willing to buy that if she didn't duet with james blake and have two tracks primarily produced by diplo (and if she didn't also throw soulja boy a "don't sue me" writing credit)

not sure an arpeggio counts as a heinous theft of the entire song "your love".

can't believe i connected vastly more with a couple of jack white & diplo collabs than with anything on the pj harvey album.

if only, for every time someone types the words "jack white" into a CMS, they were forced by the spirits of beyonce and tim berners-lee to also embed a wynter gordon video

oh shit, hi spirits of beyonce and tim berners-lee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT-ulCJxNfo