Beyoncé - Renaissance

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 :(

fair enough your gf is correct though xp

I had such high hopes for this that I don't think it would have ever lived up the potential it had in my head, but I've really not felt myself drawn to return to it at all

THIS ALBUM IS SO GOOD WTF k3vin???

u guys are crazy

in conlcusion i'm mad

possibly appropriative of queer culture which i'm poorly qualified to evaluate, but SO GOOD

i played "Heated" for my 1 year old daughter and got a little carried away dancing along...she looked alarmed

yesterday, i mean. i'm not eternally playing "Heated" for my daughter

OR AM I???

i had this same argument with my students at the beginning of the school year. they are also RONG about Renaissance

horsehoe otm

so you're saying that it's the children who are wrong

precisely

a horseshoe theory I can get behind

A game of horseshooooooe

good luck to everyone including me who will be trying to get tickets

may we not get another Taylor situation (this will most likely be another Taylor situstion)

if it's the "verified fan" thing then...yeah, it'll be the same as taylor (and springsteen and countless others). Godspeed.

I always find it funny when these tours are marketed as "world tours" when they really just mean parts of North America and Europe. Hopefully she will make it to Australia later in the year - the last time she did was in late 2013 pre-s/t (and it so happened that at that time I was living overseas)

lol one night here to Taylor's three ... gonna be a shit show.

Two Toronto dates were announced at first but the second date was removed a bit after, which makes me think extra dates will be announced when the first date inevitably sells out

yeah if you look at the dates there’s a lot of gaps in between, i’m sure they’re gonna announce multiple shows in most cities

new dates already added

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/arts/music/grammy-awards-beyonce.html

Setup:

NEW SHOWS ADDED: The tour has announced its first extension, adding second shows in 7 cities: Toronto, Chicago, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles and East Rutherford.

Punchline:

DEMAND UPDATE: These seven shows have been added to help as many concertgoers get tickets as possible, and are based on venue availabilities and scheduling for the tour. Fan demand already exceeds the number of tickets available by more than 800% based on the registration numbers in the Group A cities. It is expected that many interested fans may not be able to get tickets because demand drastically exceeds supply.

I feel pretty bad for fans of all these acts right now. It's as if every tour was the Victory tour and a farewell tour, all wrapped up.

I signed up for the Verified Fan presale for one of the two shows here and the "Beyhive" presale for the other date, I'll consider myself lucky if I even get into one of the two presales

xp How did things work before this, I can’t even remember… tickets just went on sale, and if you missed out, that was it? Like what is different now for this top tier of artists when they tour?

They are demanding a lot more money, and the promoters et al. are also demanding a lot more money.

But the scramble is to get tickets(?) Folks seem willing to pay… is demand just higher than ever?

Yeah, I dunno how that works. Wasn't demand huge for, say, Fleetwood Mac or the Eagles in the '70s? Madonna or Springsteen in the '80s? Were people getting shut out left and right due to demand and scalpers? I don't remember it that way, or at least, I don't remember any show I wanted to see that I did not get to see. But I suppose I didn't go to that many arena (let alone stadium) shows.

I guess the preregistration / “fan verification”thing just adds a new level of complexity?

If Ariana Grande ever tours again, it’s gonna be bananas… glad I spent what I spent for the seat I had at the final show of her last tour.

i preregistered and would honestly be willing to pay an unreasonable amount of money but that won't matter!

I'm split between paying an unreasonable amount of money and not paying for "dynamic pricing"/resale tix out of principle, fuck Ticketmaster and scalpers

i am kinda hoping this is the worst possible shit show and she plays to half empty houses and the pitchforks come out

They are demanding a lot more money, and the promoters et al. are also demanding a lot more money.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, February 3, 2023 12:34 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I was amazed to see she got $24 million for a single one hour show to open a new hotel in Dubai recently. Not directly related obv.

OK, so my wife, as always, is a voice of reason, theorizing pretty well exactly What Has Changed.

The first thing she noted is the presence of bots. We're a long way past scalpers hiring homeless people to line up for tickets, and what's more, Ticketmaster has no incentive to curb the bots at all, since driving up the secondary market only benefits them.

Second, she noted that before boomers, going to concerts to see big touring acts was not really a mass thing that people did, but it has been since the '60s. Another major factor is that the same acts the boomers saw in the '60s are *still touring*, and, importantly, the boomers are *still going to shows*. Live music, rock and pop and whatnot, used to be just for young people, but now, especially for a major legacy act, you're going to find an audience that ranges from teens to people in their '70s, depending on the act. The fan base of someone like Beyonce or Springsteen or Swift or whomever is just vast, spanning several generations at this point. Back in the '80s, say, Madonna fans were probably somewhere between 15 and 35, say. Now they're between 15 and 65, and the same goes for someone like Beyonce. That's a lot more people for the same number of tickets. Demand is up because the audience has never stopped growing.

That sounds right, although (without wanting to give Ticketmaster the benefit of the doubt for much), it seems like a lot of this rigamarole is meant to curb the bots, even if it's not foolproof(?)

I've gone pretty much from arena and stadium shows to all small venue shows overnight due to the ease/difficulty and expense of getting tickets, but it feels weird how I can get tickets at the door for an established great in a venue seating 150 while I have seconds to grab a ticket for a band in an arena seating 20,000. (Yes, jazz is far less popular than rock, pop and R&B but still...)