Member Since: 4/17/2011
Posts: 9,162
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The Woman on Top of the World
Quote:
A few years ago, Beyoncé Knowles was like any other record-breaking pop star in an already crowded field. Then something changed.
If you’ve ever seen Beyoncé Knowles astride a concert stage or a red carpet, you know she is a woman with a flair for dramatic entrances. But no previous coup de théâtre prepared the world for the arrival of the singer’s fifth full-length solo record, “Beyoncé,” the “visual album” that airdropped onto iTunes at midnight on Dec. 13, 2013. For months, the music press had seethed with speculation about Beyoncé’s delayed record release, with rumors of disastrous studio sessions and dozens of scrapped songs. “There is utter disarray in Beyoncé’s camp,” the website MediaTakeOut.com hissed. It was an unheard-of turn of events for Beyoncé, whose career had been a testament to, as it were, array: a regal, orderly parade from hit to hit, milestone to milestone, strength to strength.
Historically speaking, this is no small achievement. Black women have always been dominant figures in American popular music, but no one, not even Aretha Franklin, has reached the plateau that Beyoncé occupies: pop star colossus, adored bombshell, “America’s sweetheart.” Inevitably, Beyoncé is also a flashpoint, provoking ire from naysayers and ideologues of all stripes.
Literally and figuratively, Beyoncé is a moving target — it’s as difficult to get a fix on her as it would be to keep up with her on the dance floor. Beyoncé represents down-home earthiness and impossible glamour, soul-woman warmth and diva hauteur, a nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic and garish 1 percent excess. Her new album is sexed-up to the point of lewdness, with punch lines about body fluids on evening wear and intimations of rough sex. Yet the sex — in the limo, in the kitchen, everywhere, apparently, but the bedroom — is married sex, family-values sex, which, the album makes clear, produced a bouncing baby girl, a result perhaps even Bill O’Reilly can feel good about.
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Full Article: http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2...magazine&_r=1&
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