Beyoncé - Renaissance

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

Honey Dijon credited on the album lfg

Beyoncé | act i | #RENAISSANCE Tracklist.https://t.co/F0KnAWrupc pic.twitter.com/lfNKCGKAJx

— BEYLEGION is COZY (@BeyLegion) July 20, 2022

she made a typo

"America IS the problem"

lol angling for that fox news/breitbart promo i see

afropop alert: track 10 “Move” has credits for P2J and GuiltyBeatz as well as Tems.

lol it leaked

i'm at work someone please report

nothing here seems very exciting

setting aside "the carters," first album of the beyonce decline?

Interesting, all other reports I've read have been full of breathless praise and have described it as pretty innovative (especially the second half)

(n.b.: I'm waiting for tomorrow as I have no idea how to source leaks anymore)

idk i thought "church girl" was really exciting in particular. the interplay between those really old school church harmonies & the "triggaman" beat, connecting history in a way i haven't really beard before. the transition between "energy" and "break my soul" i thought was really great too. i liked "cuff it" a lot... she really should just make an album that sounds like diana ross - diana. the second half of "pure/honey" is another one where you get just the pure satisfaction of really sugary harmonies over a lush groove. i thought "move" finds this neat little thruline between some of the club music she's referencing elsewhere and afrobeats in a way that doesn't feel like it's pandering in either direction.

i didn't think everything works... she isn't a good rapper lol. the first few songs didn't really hit for me. i would've locked the doors the studio before AG cook arrived. but off one listen my feeling was that it was a better album than lemonade which has basically had zero replay value to me as a full length. the film was great but man that album has a lot shlock in my opinion -- "don't hurt yourself," "6 inch," "freedom," "sandcastles"... diplo sampling "spottieottiedopalicious." maybe this doesn't have the highs of that album tho i'm not sure i would even agree w/ that either. i think certainly from an academic/discourse perspective there's a lot more to chew on here in terms of what she's doing musically than what she did w/ lemonade, which had the gossip-y divorce angle but after that felt like a pale imitation of the s/t. i feel like that album really faded from cultural memory as music. as a full length have ppl been pressing play on that one and letting it ride out at any point in the last 2 years? i never hear the songs accidentally anywhere. i think i could see myself listening to this one a lot more. but we'll see how it feels w/ more listens

i would've locked the doors the studio before AG cook arrived

He has a single credit on a song with 7 other writers. Sounds like you would have done that regardless of what the song sounded like.

Lemonade is my favorite Beyonce album, one of the few I can play end-to-end, despite duds.

i feel like that says more about how you feel about beyonce than how you feel about lemonade. but maybe i’m wrong

this is pretty good, i can understand why "break my soul" was the single because it's one of the most straight-forward tracks here but it's also one of the least interesting. i'm pleasantly surprised & already tempted to call it her best

all the track transitions are very cool

the s/t probably has higher highs but this hangs together better

I have not heard this yet, but I cannot really fathom thinking Lemonade is a better album than the self-titled (or indeed b’day or 4).

I feel like some albums really benefit - in terms of their reputation - from having a clearly defined ~vibe~ that you can summon up in your head without returning to the music to verify (indeed, perhaps doing so would only complicate the sharpness of one’s hot take encapsulation of that vibe), and Lemonade feels like that kind of album to me. I mean, I still like it! But when I read some of the super-positive takes on it I feel like I’m reading about the album the writer likes to imagine it to be rather than the album it is.

apparently the liner notes confirm that there's two more albums recorded & presumably on the way before too long