Beyoncé - Renaissance

I’m going to be on former ILX poster Fluffy Bear’s radio show again today at 8 PM Eastern, this time playing music sampled by or referenced in the songs from Renaissance, sourced partially by Matos’ NY Times article about the album. Tune into https://uncertain.fm tonight if you’re interested.

just shockingly got standard admission tix for the opening night show here in Toronto

absolutely shitty seats but still a miracle that there are standard admission tix left

Right now, you are on the waitlist for RENAISSANCE WORLD TOUR Verified Fan Onsale.

If tickets remain available to sell after the initially selected fans have shopped, we will use a lottery-style selection to invite Verified Fans from the waitlist to shop.

Stay tuned, if you’re selected to move off the waitlist, you will receive a text with a unique access code and link to join the Onsale.

Only Verified Fans with unique access codes will be able to join the Onsale. Do not attempt to join unless you receive a code.

If you’re on the waitlist, you’re not alone. Because registration demand was 8X over ticket inventory, most people are on the waitlist.

Usually, not everyone that gets an access code shows up to the sale, and some that show up don’t buy. We expect to lean into the waitlist to send more access codes out tomorrow. There likely won’t be enough tickets to go around, but you still have a shot.

If you registered for other onsales, you still have a chance to be selected based on the lottery-style process.

I honestly prefer the old everyone everywhere all at once system but I also prefer the Ticketmaster heads being chopped off by a guillotine system too

Because registration demand was 8X over ticket inventory

The system is bonkers, but if this is what it takes to combat the scalper bots…..

I know I'm old when I'm at the Beyoncé show and having fun and all, amazing show (visuals are stunning despite the Jim Morrison quote lol)

AND

I'm noticing her business acumen - correct me if other artists do this bc I've only started going to bigger shows again in the past few years - she had merch on sale outside of the venue beside the lineups to get in and on the floor of the stadium (in addition to the usual spots), I've never seen artists do this before

also, I do know other artists do this but how long have bigger touring acts been putting out city/stop-exclusive shirts/merch?

Feels like for a few years at least, for pop stars. Often there is a pop-up shop a day or so beforehand, which actually makes a certain amount of sense. You get to hang out with other fans, and you get to buy your stuff early and not have to carry it around with you for the duration of the show. Merch wise, the differences from date to date seem to be modest. But certainly some rock bands have been putting out city exclusive merch for a while now, people like Pearl Jam and the like. Wilco, Jason Isbell, jam bands ... for silkscreen artists and designers, it has been a real boon and safety net.

oh yeah, she also had a pop-up store/exhibition of her more notable looks here as well

Jenna Wortham on Bey and the tour.

concert film on Dec. 1st

digging Taylor and now her bypassing the streamers yessssss

new song played during the credits

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuBdV0BIIMw

film itself is great, teared up a few times, etc. nothing you don't expect at this point from her

Act II coming out March 29, the clip of the new single suggests a country album??? I AM SEATED

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3Ot8xfRIaA/?igsh=YmRsanc0MnhxNmly

first two songs are wonderful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g92AYBlNOi0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fV37wdHG8U

oh god yes

“16 Carriages” is astonishing

yeah it is

Oh damn I am very into this

Digging both songs a lot. Apparently Rhiannon Giddens plays on “Texas Hold ‘Em”.

oh awesome

I think my favourite part across the two songs is the whistling coda to "Texas Hold 'Em". "16 Carriages" reminds me of Kelis' "Floyd" a bit?

Did not think a new Beyoncé song could be…refreshing?

Her voice is so well suited to this! Guess "16 Carriages" was written by Atia Boggs and Raphael Saadiq, with Robert Randolph on steel.

“16 carriages” sounds great. “Texas hold em” idk… but I do like the coda.

As someone who hasn’t really vibed with most beyonce since “b’day” this sounds like it has potential to be the Beyonce album that brings me back.

Reserving judgment, but Renaissance was my favorite Beyonce album and this sounds very much not like that, so

I think that for me I wasn’t really vibing with her because in her early records there was a vulnerability that made her more relatable to me and it got gradually lost as she grew up to be more of an “imperial” artist. “16 carriages” makes her sound vulnerable again, at least to my ears.

I wasn’t expecting to feel excited about a Beyonce album this late in her career.

2024 is going to be a stacked year

I like the idea of this culturally but not so into the music.

I mean, she sounds amazing, but I wish it stayed closer to the dynamics of the verses and didn't feel the need for those stadium production touches, kinda ruins it for me.

Kinda want Act III to be metal.

egg punk

Agree with this take:

But as with “Break My Soul,” Beyoncé’s attempts at 9-to-5 relatability can ring slightly hollow from beyond the veil of privacy and security her monies afford—it’s just as difficult to imagine her boot-scootin’ at a honky-tonk as it was to imagine her rolling at the club. The ho-hey stomp-clap of it all, complete with an Andy Griffith whistle, veers dangerously close to the border of Lumineers car-commercial music; this is working-class music for folks who can afford to drive a Lexus.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/beyonce-texas-hold-em/

Eh. I find a lot of her stuff kind of hollow, but I'm pretty sure there are plenty of country fans that drive Lexuses. It's not like Beyonce is covering (or aiming for) Hank Williams. Plus: she is from Texas, after all.

Lol I thought of Lumineers listening to Texas Hold Em which is why I didn’t really like that one on first impression.

“Artists with too much money are inherently fake” is certainly a take, I guess

From Marissa R Moss’s weekly newsletter today re Beyonce

“Texas Hold ‘Em” is a perfect country song for the moment. The inclusion of Giddens, whose life mission has been a full-scale historical reeducation on the Black roots of country music and country instrumentation, makes it revelatory (Giddens and Beyoncé, as Natalie just said in a conversation we were having about this, were both shut out of the Country Music/Music Row machine, for both different but very connected reasons!). The omissions – a Nashville producer, a Music Row co-writer – tell a story, too. Beyoncé didn’t need to build a country record with Nashville, because anything she could borrow they had already taken out on loan.

You can add three seconds of banjo to a white man’s record, and suddenly it’s country. I have a feeling there will be arguments and diatribes on why “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages” are not – we will hear a lot of the “just adding banjo doesn’t make it country.” The tell of that is they simply cannot register the Black ownership of the instrument in the first place. A white person holding it is authentic, while a Black person is show, signaling, fake.

https://dontrocktheinbox.substack.com/p/issue-42-beyonce-and-the-horse-she?publication_id=115265&post_id=141610190&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&r=5x9it

You can get a brand ass new Lexus for under 40k

"texas hold em" definitely does have stomp-and-holler lumineers-esque qualities. "16 carriages" is much better.

Beyoncé makes music for the elite 40 percenters

Sounds like the perfect record us to spin and fight about in this particular year

people made the same complaints about "break my soul," which was also silly. at the time, i tweeted something along the lines of:

*billionaire beyoncé makes song about dead-end job*
twitter: whoa whoa whoa slow down moneybags!
*hundred-millionaire/theme park proprietor dolly parton makes song about dead-end job*
twitter: <3 <3 <3

I was tired of the incoming tide of thinkpieces as soon as I heard the first few notes, but also approve of country music fans being forced to reckon with Beyonce.

I am a huge country -- and Beyonce -- fan and am very happy to hear her take on the genre (loved "Daddy Lessons"). I just wish "Texas Hold Em" didn't sound like the Lumineers!

my big question last night was: why did she do a Verizon commercial? not judging her, just seems like something she normally wouldn't do.

if the answer is "money" then how much money do you think it takes to get Beyonce to do a commercial?

or is it something more / bigger than that, i.e. they bankroll a tour (still money, i know) or maybe gave her a free line on her family plan for Blue Ivy's new phone?

fwiw a friend in advertising guesstimates she made $15-20mm for that spot

Not bad for a couple days of work.

people made the same complaints about "break my soul," which was also silly.

i think it's silly if you just take people's objections at the surface level of "this rich person is singing about doing 9-5 work" but i think there is a more bedrock criticism happening about her ability to inhabit songs that are not from her own perspective. and i would say that is generally fair criticism because i think beyonce has cultivated an artistic & celebrity persona that makes it hard for her to sing from the POV of a working class striver. like, this person's entire persona is based around the concept of regality, untouchability, virtuosity beyond comprehension ... partly of her own doing and partly of her stans but also from critics, commentators, talking heads -- beyonce as Queen Bey is not just some incidental context for her life's work. so for her to successfully inhabit the character of a 9-5 clock puncher she has to go the extra mile that other wealthy artists may not have to, and i personally would agree w/ people that "break my soul" and "texas hold em" do not succeed on those grounds. we'd all agree that "break my soul" is one of the least essential songs on that album right? that's not coincidental.

you can compare her to taylor swift who is constantly being hounded over her wealth -- she's currently trying to prevent some twitter account from tracking her private jet etc -- but when she writes in character, people don't stop and say "hold on we don't believe you." and that's because her artistic and celebrity persona has long established her credibility in that arena. i would say that this is largely for artistic reasons -- taylor has been writing in character forever -- but also because she chooses to craft her celebrity in a way that maintains the veneer of accessibility i.e. fan meet and greets, standing on stage at her shows and speaking at length to the audience etc

the idea of beyoncé as existing on a different plane than the rest of us is the driving force of her art. we want something from her concerts that we don't, and don't expect, from taylor, to just use that example. we want to see beyoncé spend 2 hours showing us how inferior we are to her. but i'd also point out that the world *has* responded extremely positively to beyonce cracking the facade and showing us what is happening in her personal life, showing us that even the most untouchable genius artist of a woman may marry a man who fucks around behind her back. there is a huge amount of power in leveling with her audience in that way, as she has shown since the self-titled. i just don't think ppl wanna hear her talking about doing normal people stuff out in the real world! she doesn't do that and nobody really buys that character from her, and not being able to credibly sing about going to dive pars is a small price for her to pay given the rest of what she is capable of pulling off

(dive bars)

What helps or hinders Beyonce is that she's not a songwriter in the way Swift is; her public image doesn't depend on her audience's regard for her as a songwriter, therefore playing characters doesn't quite work for her.

i also actually do think "break my soul" largely connected w/ ppl in the real world on an emotional level, there is an urgency to the way she sings the chorus that i do think helped it stick as a club song even tho it's based off a tired sample and stuff like that. people will readily believe that there are forces holding beyonce back that she needs to move past just like the rest of us, i just think going the extra step to sing about 9 to 5s and dive bars is the part where people are like "yeah you don't need to do all that" & i would agree