Beyoncé - Renaissance

I think everybody is too scared of Beyonce’s army to give this record anything less than a B+

xp I listen exclusively to “Top That,” from the Teen Witch soundtrack. Am I doing it wrong?

i tend to find questions about whether archetypal pop divas paying obvious, specific and lovingly executed tribute to lgbtq people/art/community is 'appropriative'/exploitative approximately as insightful as those ppl on twitter years ago who were asking with complete sincerity whether drag performance is a problematic appropriation of effeminacy after the rachel dolezal fiasco

xp no but you sure are annoying about it

i can't remember the last time i read a good review in resident advisor, the one above certainly isn't

I think everybody is too scared of Beyonce’s army to give this record anything less than a B+

― ✖✖✖ (Moka)

this is true tho, on fan spaces it is abundantly clear that the gravest sin that this reviewer committed was causing the album's metacritic score to drop to a paltry 92 (!!)

xp sorry to annoy!

idk I feel like im more bearish on the album than a lot of people here but I didn't think that was a very good review. what does “is it burying or uplifting queer history?” even mean?

― xheugy eddy (D-40), Wednesday, 10 August 2022 00:29 (two hours ago) link

I'm not crazy about "the album falls flat when it tries too hard to immerse itself in a culture that does not belong to Beyoncé." Who polices this and Bowie's Young Americans?

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 10 August 2022 00:31 (two hours ago) link

I guess to me it’s like — I’m super open to the argument if someone told me they find the project frustrating bc ie it’s using ballroom tropes but wouldn’t actually work in that context, for them, or something like that — like i am interested in critiques of the project & its utility in certain spaces or lack thereof. But this piece reads to me more like someone making the point of vague problematic aura bc they think it’s a point someone is supposed to be making than bc they have a compelling reason to believe it

― xheugy eddy (D-40), Wednesday, 10 August 2022 00:41 (two hours ago) link

I talk about this quite a lot but I find it super-frustrating how the convergence of pop criticism, cultural studies, gossip and twitter snark results in this kind of short-circuit argument where the connection between the quality of the music and the issue which is purportedly problematic is posited but not unpacked, e.g.:

"But, as a wealthy cis woman, Beyoncé lacks an intimate understanding of the subcultures she is borrowing from, and this sudden, random interest in underground queer culture renders the execution awkward at best, and painfully pandering at worst. "

How would an "intimate understanding" of queer/ballroom subcultures (even assuming the writer is correct to conclude that Beyonce lacks it) have manifested as a different end product? The writer doesn't say, perhaps hasn't even turned their mind to the question, beyond a kind of vague "I'd know it when I saw/heard it" presumption (presumably because the artist in question is not a wealthy cis woman).

The result of this kind of approach tends to turn what could be a very thoughtful examination (of how an artist like Beyonce can successfully or otherwise engage with queer culture) into a quite shallow one.

it does at least accurately capture the stakes there - if it was a misstep by beyonce in that regard then it's only awkward and/or corny, but it doesn't really spend enough time justifying why they think it's a misstep, there's just one line they take minor issue with and the rest of the critique seems to just boil down to vibes

i feel pretty ambivalent about the album in that regard, it doesn't really feel like some real misstep nor success, in its relation to queer culture

To be clear, I'd be open to being persuaded that it is a real misstep - but I think that kind of allegation should require more reasoning in support rather than less.

I don't think it's a misstep, but it is interesting that she's specifically adopting the persona and cadences of some of these subcultural club styles. She could have just sampled it as window dressing, or done her normal style and had guest vocalists. I appreciate the commitment, but it's definitely a riskier move. I think it works but also feels like she's trying on costumes at times?

exaggerated, even 'costumed' expressions of oneself are literally inextricable from these subcultures. among the foremost personae adopted within these spaces is that of the diva, the sort of larger-than-life star that certain figures like, hm, say, beyoncé have embodied for decades. have you all not seen queer people literally dressing up as beyoncé before

Yeah otm, queer culture and pop divas have been in a symbiotic relationship for decades. Weird conversation to have regarding this album.

Yeah, it feels like a moot point. Queer culture is not monolithic, has shared the global stage for decades, and can't be construed as a person who never saw it coming that a pop superstar in effing 2022 would integrate and promote it on her own terms (or queer culture really has a short memory). It's not like we can measure, but it's funny to suggest that queer culture could have been portrayed and impacted negatively, as if Beyoncé was commissioned and failed, or not even commissioned since she didn't ask for permission, and couldn't even had the idea since she's supposed to be compartmentalized... when it seems to me that queer culture can only gain from the additional exposure. I mean, it can be a conversation-starter, like, "what did you think of the new Beyoncé", rather than the negative "in what world did she think she was allowed to", as if silence would have been better. I prefer the world where she did it (even if I still have no idea what "it" is).

I think a lot of writers just find it easier to frame assessments of music which throw up these issues as boiling down to a question of "who gets to have this conversation" rather than "what is the conversation, and what does this specific artefact add to that conversation".

there's something i've been pondering, because I live in LA now and am surrounded by dispensaries, about what people expect ... not just of weed, or art, but the world itself, to do for them.

when I was a teenager weed was like, something you did to get high or feel stoned or eat too many chips and watch bad movies

and now weed is marketed, at these dispenseries, as something which has great personal therapeutic and even biological utility -- good for aches and pains and nausea and tension headaches and to feel calm and relax or feel energized and stimulated or etc etc. This maybe obvious to you all as to be unremarkable, idk, I just moved here and never smoked much. I know this sounds like an attempted comedy bit but I really mean it--the language around this stuff is so funny

An energetic sativa strain with diesel and blueberry aromas. The presence of the limonene terpene in this strain heightens focus while the presence of terpinolene, when in concert with THC, acts as a natural stimulant. The result is a heavy-hitting and fast-acting flower with an invigorating cerebral effect.

This pure sativa originates from the South African port city of Durban. It has gained popularity worldwide for its sweet smell and energetic, uplifting effects. Durban Poison is the perfect strain to help you stay productive through a busy day, when exploring the outdoors, or to lend a spark of creativity.

The Wedding Cake strain provides relaxing and euphoric effects that calm the body and mind. This strain yields a rich and tangy flavor profile with undertones of earthy pepper. Medical marijuana patients choose Wedding Cake to help relieve symptoms associated with pain, insomnia and appetite loss.

Someone with more time & an anti-industry bent could probably relate this trend to music by talking about how streaming playlists are marketed ... lo fi beats for you to study to

anyway, to get to the point, people write about music in a similar kind of sense I find -- that it owes them something as a consumer, and that that something tends to be graded on a scale of 'good for me' >>>> 'bad for me', rather than whether it, like, works creatively, or to really approach it on its own terms in any way...what does it do for us? does it help empower us, affirm, to heal: it's a balm for our troubled times, or whatever? And this healing property is given the weight of a moral imperative. And then when you want to critique it, to be a bold truth-teller about someone who can't be criticized, you have to disqualify its efficacy as some kind of musical medicine. There's no sense that it's failed creatively, but that it's in some way "bad for you," that authority for the critic's pan must be sourced in an objective fact of the work, like calling on the chemical components of a weed strain to explain why it makes you feel kind of dumb.

(D-40 and Tim F. are both getting at something that’s bothered me about a lot of music crit for quite a few years, but that’s much bigger than the reception of this album.)

I interpret it as fear, insecurity. There's a first question that comes before "Do I like it?" which is "what will people think or say if I like it?", and somehow the latter is supposed to answer the former, and of course it does not work. Especially when there is no time, and you're looking for a big-picture justification about something that came out hours / days before, it's like self-inflicted torture, just because you don't want to go on record as having had a "bad take".

It's not just critiques. I swear you hear it in artists, who frame their work more and more, looking to provide the justification. Beyoncé has the privilege and luxury not to have to do that, and her album sounds more fresh, daring, immediate, less calculated than average.

Does queer have meaning for this album as a work or for her personally? (My fear from reading reviews only, not careful listening, is that queer is being exploited.)

I'm not following you.

this healing property is given the weight of a moral imperative.

Excellent line.

Beyonce's mentioning her queer uncle strikes me as defensive, which, of course, she didn't intend.

Tim F's question ("what is the conversation, and what does this specific artefact add to that conversation?") is among the ones I try answering in my own stuff except I'd reverse the order: what is this artifact, how does it work, and which conversation does it address?

Beyoncé has the privilege and luxury not to have to do that, and her album sounds more fresh, daring, immediate, less calculated than average.

"Calculated" isn't a condemnation, I hope! How can an album this deluxe and expensive NOT be calculated?

“Calculated” is a meaningless word, anyway

Rock 'n' roll is s'posed to be spontaneous, maaan.

Well, any art is calculated but must feel simple - easy, you get to perfection not by adding but by removing etc. that's what I meant.

“Beyonce's mentioning her queer uncle strikes me as defensive, which, of course, she didn't intend.”

I’m sure someone is already writing this, but there’s a 2022 Kendrick/Beyoncé think piece in this theme, maybe.

ooh

Lots of good posts! I'm not making the argument that she's not allowed, just pointing out that what she's doing at points on this album feels different than what she (or maybe any big popstar who dabbles in regional/subcultural sounds?) has done before. Possibly in a good way.

Would also like to point out that I'm not solely talking about queer culture, ie NOLA bounce is not a primarily queer music, even if some of its most well-known exponents are.

My rejoinder to that is that there is a reason why “Break My Soul” was mashed up with “Vogue” and that the phenomenon you’re describing has been paramount to most of Madonna’s career, and that’s before getting to the Whitney/Mariah remixes or Crystal Waters/CeCe Peniston/Martha Wash etc. Like, if this is a line of thought worthy of interrogation, should we also be questioning Bette Middler’s career?

or judy garland etc. etc.

the thing that bothers me about resident advisor's general approach to dance music is that it often seems to trot out an authenticity discourse that is ideological, class-signaling and pretty white in its own way. i think people like say omar-s pick up on that. trying to make authentic queerness into something class-based and just sort of gesturing rather than doing an actual class reading that looks at the past and thinks about the contradictions of the culture industry when it comes to producers vs. consumers serves no one but the writer and ra i guess. i would actually love to see terre thaemlitz on the subject, i'm sure he would do a much better job of it.

that being said, writers aren't exactly well supported for their work, so i don't want to be overharsh

judy garland was not a great addition to that list

I think that this is in part a case of rhetorical transplant, where writers deploy the same logical device from one issue to another that superficially looks the same to them. Within queer circles, most discussions of appropriation are about white cis male gay culture appropriating from black culture (in most cases straight-presenting cis female black culture), in large part through the inflection point of black trans culture. There’s obviously a lot of sense to the frame, though whether and how it applies in a variety of specific contexts is heavily contested as you might expect.

Bette Midler probably bypasses interrogation because of the sociocultural variants of the queer communities her career is most heavily associated with.

Beyoncé superficially provides a better fit in terms of the appropriation site (ballroom culture) but the specificity of her relationship to that scene, if any, is not really examined (though who has the time or the capacity, when they’re required to pump out a hot take review?), and that aporia gets skipped over with a handwaving “oh but she is wealthy so”

Not sure I would invoke Omar-S at this point though. He was very happy with the progressive pipecockification of music criticism right up to the point where it came after one of his friends.

My specific irritation with this entire line of thinkpiecing is that Black queer culture was perfectly happy to elevate vocally-slightly-better-than-average Beyonce to diva status over a decade ago, so it really feels like now that she is taking a strain that always existed in her musical output and spends an entire album exploring it, large swathes of people are ignoring the reception of her past output and how she intersected with the circles she is explicitly drawing from and celebrating with this album, seemingly because she's a light-skinned billionaire and not really because of the music itself or any claim she might have to incorporate it into her work. Bette Midler has a story that is much more explicit in its ties to gay fandom, which is why I brought her up; policing Beyonce of all people on this axis strikes me as being equally ridiculous as policing Bette, so my thesis is that bringing up the argument means you're using it as a proxy to attack her for being rich. Which, if that bothers you, just say it; it's 2022, half the people you encounter online want to murder anyone making more than $100K

(Going to state for the record that that last statement is knowing hyperbole so that people hopefully don’t get hung up on the specifics and grapple instead with the rhetorical intent behind the exaggeration)

yeah agree with DJP. also, to Tim's point:

I think that this is in part a case of rhetorical transplant, where writers deploy the same logical device from one issue to another that superficially looks the same to them.

― Tim F, Wednesday, August 10, 2022 4:18 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

one might even call it 'rhetorical appropriation.' lol

not speaking of the beyonce RA piece specifically -- but of that maneuver in general

The problem with writing to a thesis.

Yet! Not using Beyonce's putative exploitation of subcultures as a paragraph-by-paragraph critique cripples that piece; but such an approach would've required a rigor that in itself wouldn't have satisfied me, for there's no way to write such a thing without getting into intentions.

I'm not talking about the RA review personally, just thinking about the moments on the album where she fully emulates a bounce mc and a ballroom mc respectively. To me they're the most striking parts of the album and also probably my favorite, but they also take me out of it because they're so specifically referential. Really they make me want to put on other records of that music.

one might even call it 'rhetorical appropriation.' lol

― xheugy eddy (D-40), Wednesday, 10 August 2022 23:14 (yesterday) link

haha.

All this is part of a broader problem I have with current music writing which I alluded to above, being the twitter-induced collapse of the space between cultural studies and celebrity gossip (all of which is driven by the brutal economics of what most effectively induces reader responses), squeezing out anything that occupied a space in between those two poles (most notably any detailed or thoughtful consideration of the music) but also doing a big disservice to the "cultural studies" end of the resulting frankenstein's monster.

Like, to map's point above, I think there is an arguable basis to say that class analysis, wielded thoughtfully, can act as a skeleton key for the purpose of understanding the dynamics at play in various forms of social inequality, marginalisation, appropriation, co-optation etc. (I'm not sure I fully agree with this proposition, but I can appreciate the argument). But there's a certain... performative irony in then deploying that critical overlay primarily in the context of discussions of celebrity culture.

Trying to say something useful about the marginalisation of black trans communities and culture by reviewing a Beyonce record and then basically concluding that the problem is that Beyonce, personally, is not marginalised enough, strikes me as only marginally more useful an exercise than trying to identify sustainable environmental policies from the starting point of considering Taylor Swift's private jet carbon emissions. If your critical intervention boils down to "okay, but let's get serious about the broader social issues at work here" then get fucking serious about them, rather than writing what amounts to a vapid extended tweet about a celebrity. Critic, heal thyself.

Tim, I hope you can hear my applause and cheers faintly in the distance

Tim, wanna meet for a beer

this album is a dud but I gotta admit, they went all out on the vinyl packaging

album is absolutely not a dud but why would you want vinyl of something you don't like?

I had to stop playing it. Indelibly an August album.

I think it will sound good at Christmas

can't believe i still love this terry hunter remix, like andre squared. legit organ solo too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b9wQjg6qi8

andres that is

I think it will sound good at Christmas

― your original display name is still visible

For sure. About the only reason I like driving is to blast bumpers like this album.

album is absolutely not a dud but why would you want vinyl of something you don't like?

― your original display name is still visible (Left), Monday, October 10, 2022 2:53 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

it’s not a dud according to my gf!

I can't spin vinyl in my car :(