Beyoncé - Renaissance

https://www.vogue.co.uk/fashion/article/beyonce-vogue-cover-new-music

She then asked me if I wanted to hear her new music. As someone who first saw her perform live with Destiny’s Child 23 years ago, a moment’s walk from my family home when the group played at the Notting Hill Carnival in 1999, I can feel the tingling excitement build as we make our way to her home recording studio. With minimal ceremony, she takes her laptop and plugs it in as we all sit on some sofas. Quietly, the superstar hits play on her upcoming album.

Instantly, a wall of sound hits me. Soaring vocals and fierce beats combine and in a split second I’m transported back to the clubs of my youth. I want to get up and start throwing moves. It’s music I love to my core. Music that makes you rise, that turns your mind to cultures and subcultures, to our people past and present, music that will unite so many on the dance floor, music that touches your soul. As ever with Beyoncé, it is all about the intent. I sit back, after the wave, absorbing it all.

wow @ the photos. i guess this is going to be club focused.

Others think disco/house, which would be the first Beyoncé album I care about tbh. Hope they’re right.

This writing, lol

As a scrumptious dinner of ribs, cream corn, peas, and mashed potatoes is served

now Renaissance needs to release an album called Beyoncé

something tells me beyonce's diet does not regularly include soul food

but if it does then more power to her.

i would very much welcome beyonce doing disco / house this year.

I feel like Beyonce is someone who could really nail the subcultural element of Paris Is Burning influences - her last two albums have been explicit in dealing with race and feminism. But I would settle for twelve tracks of starlit house that sound like Freemasons's remix of Green Light.

an amapiano-inspired album would be nice

something tells me beyonce's diet does not regularly include soul food

“Break My Soul” out tonight

I guess the horse is country, there's the disco ball, gold is for amapiano (KDS), and the motorbike is for the Rosalía influence
We're missing the vulva coat from the pictures which stands for... err...

idk if it's true but some on social media seem to believe that the-dream has produced or is otherwise involved in "break my soul"

rly excited either way!!

hmmmmmm yeah idk about this

BEYONCÉ B7 RENAISSANCE ACT 1 BREAK MY SOUL LEAK LEAKED SNIPPET SONG COMING OUT TONIGHT #BEYONCE #BREAKMYSOUL pic.twitter.com/WVS8ZzyEhh

— Normani Chart Source (@ManiChartSource) June 21, 2022

well then why are you posting it here!

bc I like to be of service ;)

anyway a bit better in non-leak form

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjki-9Pthh0

pretty underwhelming & doing that with the "show me love" sample is a weird move

I agree - but maybe it will grow on me.

I like it and I expect in a club it will sound revelatory

the positive is that if she's making a house album at least something should be good surely

Hope it turns new people on to Black Box.

Are soaring vocals and fierce beats combining, and in a split second transporting you back to the clubs of your youth?

I, noted non-fan of the 90s house sound in general, really dig this.

this should be up my alley but it all just seems so basic, cheap, and obvious

like sampling “Show Me Love” with Big Freedia as guest seems like something Katy Perry would do

sorry is this a safe space from the wrath of the Beyhive

I feel like I’m gonna regret what I just said

Anyway I have faith the rest of the album will be better

Listening to this and then revisiting "Show Me Love" back-to-back is not flattering to the Beyoncé track.

It reminds me of that recent Muni Long/Saweetie track that's essentially a "remake" of "My Boo," and just makes you go – why?

I kinda like this but feels like she could have done more with it

it saddens me as a longtime Beyoncé fan to say that I don't find this to be good, really at all. there's just so much about it that feels wrong to my ears. it made me think of 10 different similar-sounding tracks/records that I'd much rather listen to.

it's definitely a force for good, though! I hope its anti-establishment sentiments will be central to its resonance and success.

I wouldn't say I find it great but after listening to it once, not expecting much following the first comments here, I like it !

It has a summer party vibe that will certainly be enjoyable in the next few weeks.

I like it more the more I listen to it. First listen was, frankly, very “wait, that’s it?”

It reminds me (in a good way) that I was a high school student in Baltimore in the first half of the 1990s.

(That should be “Baltimore County”.)

this should be up my alley but it all just seems so basic, cheap, and obvious

like sampling “Show Me Love” with Big Freedia as guest seems like something Katy Perry would do

sorry is this a safe space from the wrath of the Beyhive

― Murgatroid

100%

Coming from very creative and tasteful dance pop albums in recent years from Robyn, Jessie Ware and Roisin Murphy… hell even Dua Lipa. Someone with the stature of Beyonce choosing “show me love” is eye rolling and borders on parody.

Hope the rest of the album is more interesting but don’t have my hopes high after listening to this one.

As a mythbusting gesture and maybe even a dance track, it works.

But was her intention to get myth busted?

I don't care about intentions. Releasing a solid pop house track is not what the audience expects.

What? Everyone was expecting this based on the Vogue shoot.

“As a mythbusting gesture”

“I don’t care about intentions”

???

I interpret it as a mythbusting gesture. I haven't talked to Beyonce's office.

i like this but yeah it's really not at the level of excellence one expects from bey these days

i hope normies don't think this is all house music is capable of

incidentally i did quit my job like a month and a half ago so this should resonate more w/ me but it doesn't quite

i enjoy how it swells a lil as it advances

perhaps the fact that the 'single cover' simply shows its numerical placement in the track listing signifies that this isn't 'really a single' and is more just a random preview track?? a little sad that i'm trying to come up w/ excuses for it tho

I couldn't get more than 90 seconds into this, but my fondness for her whole deal has curdled and my ears are probably jaundiced

it sounded kind of incompetent though? the diff elements don't fit together at all imo

I was underwhelmed by this last night, but it's really grown on me through repeat listens this morning. Maybe you have to hear it when you're trying to psyche yourself up to go to work. (Now I'm silently mouthing "You won't break my soul!" all around my office.) There is an actual single cover for it now, and I think a video release is imminent.

This reminds me of when Solar Power by Lorde came out. There are 90s signifiers, but it's so empty. Oh wow, and then they straight-up pokemon'd us at 4:10 for some reason.

lol yes i was surprised she would allow a potentially seizure-inducing sequence in her lyric video

this is a tricky/dream joint fwiw

Might have done better with Portishead, tbh.

i fucking love this. it's gonna sound so good on a club system.

^^^^

liked this more than i expected based on the thread, eagerly awaiting the ten minute david morales remix

the review is fine and the song does strike the zeitgeist more or less effectively, rich ilxors notwithstanding

i know that ilx loves rediscovering the cognitive dissonance of a rich person making art that voices a poor pov and all but just a reminder that this is pop music we're talking about.

Yep. Pop music has inhabited these contradictions forever, regardless of the reviews the music inspires.

well, yeah. all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts. thank you, Beyoncé!

i'll tell you what's going through a renaissance - the discourse!!!

Ryan Dombal is somewhere breathing a sigh of relief.

lol vg Murgatroid

I'm guessing those lines about "building my own foundation" are a preview for some big philanthropy program.

Maybe she's designing the Beyoncéverse version of Avengers Tower.

wow... talk about The Discourse:

https://i.imgur.com/cQ96SeN.jpg

sorry smartasses, i'm gonna be real for a second, last time and then i'm out of this thread for a while i promise, as a person who has struggled with finances his whole life and is now 40, the idea of building my own foundation means working 1.5 jobs, paying off credit card debt and escaping the abusive cult my family belongs to. it's cool that you all find it trite and are over it but i'm willing to bet this resonates with a lot of people because it feels lived in. also to "this house sound is boring" - that house sound is forever, fuck off lol.

I’m younger than you and it’s trite af. Pop argument can miss me as well, it’s crass and embarrassing, people are pointing out the contradictions for those reasons, not because contradictions are inherently alien to pop.

Like Beyoncé herself has done commentary so much better - Formation is full of clever, knowing lyrics. It literally ends with “always stay gracious, best revenge is your paper” - fuck your racism, I’ll succeed despite you - but the video is all about taking pride in blackness and also her anger about anti-blackness, and Beyoncé being rich doesn’t mean she can escape that. This? This is just basic in all senses.

i probably wouldnt even be giving it a second thought if she hadnt literally crossed a high profile picket line for a billionaire party a few months prior to this. the song is fine and im sure i will enjoy hearing it in clubs and hotel lobbies for many years to come, but i cant help but feel that context affecting the way i hear those lyrics. if others can enjoy it without that lens, that's great, but its a valid lens to look at the work through. its obv naive to call bullshit on a popstar just for being rich, but its equally naive to think that their celebrity persona isnt in dialogue with the music as its received, particularly w/someone like beyonce.

Thanks, Map - it’s good to hear how the song is working for you. (I really do think the foundation line is an Easter egg.) It makes for an interesting compliment to “Nice for What,” which was also a celebration of just getting by and staying strong.

i did find bey musing about "all these people on the planet working 9 to 5 just to stay alive" viscerally thrilling back on the self-titled

I doubt this song will have enough legs to be heard in clubs / hotel lobbies for many years to come. Regardless of how obnoxious or on point you think the lyrics are, it’s lacking that wow factor and hooks of some of her most successful singles have. I know repetitiveness is a feature on house music but it works against her. She’s trying to do too much with her vocals for it to really work for me.

We’ll see I guess… most of the pop charts have been super bland this year so far, so it might as well be the anthem lacking in lustre that 2022 deserves.

Different approaches since Beyonce is clearly a better singer, but compare this to Drake’s “Massive”. That one allows the track to breathe and there’s many parts where he allows the beat to carry the song.

There’s virtually no part in the Beyonce song where the song doesn’t have vocals either sampled or by beyonce.

As a house track it’s terrible imho, and as a pop track it’s also super constrained and confused and frankly tasteless.

I was excited about the idea of Beyonce doing a house album but this single doesn’t make me think she truly has the gear in place to pull it off.

yeah it is an indictment that there's stuff on the drake album more compelling than this

she encapsulates the Great Resignation, the Great Unionization

https://www.etonline.com/sites/default/files/styles/970xh/public/images/2015-05/500_beyonce_feeling_myself_champagne_still.jpg

I'm trying to decide how indicative it is that my IG feed is basically 90% dancing footage from films and tv shows synced to the chorus of "Break My Soul".

Funny how homing in on the drop into the chorus makes this song seem more exciting than it actually is.

(well it's indicative of several things, probably)

The Long Tail of Show Me Love:

Earlier last week, Robin S. got a call from her son informing her that she was trending on social media as a result of the apparent “Show Me Love” reference in Beyoncé’s song, which replicates that M1 Organ 2 sound (in a different rhythm). She and StoneBridge both said they had no idea what was coming. StoneBridge discovered the connection while searching for his name on Twitter.

still think the inspiration here is at least as much the MK Nocturnal Dub remix of “Push The Feeling On” (not exactly an obscurity either, but obviously much less famous) as the StoneBridge “Show Me Love”

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cfb3ddsFe2S/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

still think the inspiration here is at least as much the MK Nocturnal Dub remix of “Push The Feeling On” (not exactly an obscurity either, but obviously much less famous) as the StoneBridge “Show Me Love”

― big movers, hot steppers + long shaker intros (breastcrawl), Tuesday, June 28, 2022 6:39 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm, very mk sound

(not mark knight, marc kinchen, it took me too long to figure out they were different people lol)

Gotta be an NFT of this:

act i RENAISSANCE 7.29 https://t.co/6sfw3sBWnz pic.twitter.com/FPPhEW1OTK

— BEYONCÉ (@Beyonce) June 30, 2022

lol

during the Great Unionisation everyone will have a crystal horse of pure light

We just need the Studio 54 moon and spoon laced with cocaine in the background and the aesthetic is complete.

I would likely highly enjoy Beyonce making a quasi-concept album structured around the deeply impractical combination of quitting your job and doing coke.

Beyonce's been playing Elden Ring

I would likely highly enjoy Beyonce making a quasi-concept album structured around the deeply impractical combination of quitting your job and doing coke.

― Tim F, Thursday, June 30, 2022 2:01 PM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

All 70s disco is a soundtrack to an eventful, but regrettable weekend.

Not really feeling any of these vibes.

cover is hilariously godawful and makes me fear she’s reverted into sasha fierce

I can’t believe how bad that cover is.

it's a born this way-level cover

i wish!!!!

Born Again This Way

born this way cover is an explosion of camp, this could be aiming at camp but seems to land in a zone of tasteful tastelessness which is anticamp

Posing like a work of art, nude in the cosmos / void / constellations, motherly boobs and sculpted thighs on the stallion is pretty uninspired, cold, and bland symbolic. Any shot from the Apeshit video would have worked better.

She quit her job and now she can’t even afford a real horse.

The cover immediately made me think of Lil Nas X.

it made me think of Geocities

a zone of tasteful tastelessness which is anticamp

or kitsch, per Sontag

cover is hilariously godawful and makes me fear she’s reverted into sasha fierce

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Friday, July 1, 2022 1:34 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

we know that's not the case bc "Break My Soul" comes nowhere close to "Single Ladies"

It sounds to me a little like "I already reused 'Get Me Bodied' once, I'd better do something different" was said at some point in the song's construction