Celeb News: Beyoncé proves she's the Queen at '4' Concert Debut

DG1

Billboard

Beyoncé owns NYC in '4' Concert Debut

There aren't many artists in the world that can pull off a 90-minute set in Stuart Weitzman heels and leave a beyond packed audience satisfied to the point of not needing an encore. But that's Beyoncé. Last night (August 14), the singer kicked off the first of four nights in her sold-out concert series, "4 Intimate Nights with Beyoncé" at the Roseland Ballroom. The 2,500 capacity venue in NYC swelled up within seconds of doors opening at 8 p.m. EST.

As the lights dimmed close to 10 p.m. EST, fans' lit up the room with camera phones to welcome Bey' on to the stage. "I just want to have a good time with y'all," Beyoncé said before kicking off the show with a cover of Michael Jackson's "I Wanna Be Where You Are." Beyoncé ran through her catalogue including choruses from Destiny's Child's hits, solo No. 1s, and her fourth album, "4," while sharing the fails (dropped from Elektra Records) and successes (signed by Columbia Records) of her career, starting from the knee-high age of 5 yrs. old.

Beyoncé blazed through hits in a gold number designed by her mother Tina Knowles, backed by four dancers clad in black shimmering leotards. Bey' shared details on the making of most of the songs, including "Independent Woman Pt. 1," mentioning how her father, Matthew Knowles, submitted the track to the "Charlie's Angels" soundtrack without permission. "I'm gonna write a song that celebrates a woman's curves," Beyoncé said before getting into "Bootylicious." The rundown of the trio's No. 1s rekindled hope in the many crossing their fingers and toes for a Destiny's Child reunion.

"It's 2002… I started to feel a little lonely till one day…" Beyoncé said before transitioning into the first song she's done with husband, Jay-Z, "'03 Bonnie & Clyde." After throwing up the Roc diamond, Bey' shared the label's hesitation towards her first solo album, "Dangerously in Love."

"They told me I didn't have one single on my album. Yep," Beyoncé shared. "I guess they were kind of right, I had five."

Bey' slow danced into "Crazy in Love," then sped it up with her signature walk from the video. After the Ne-Yo penned "Irreplaceable," Bey' had the audience, both men and women ranging from 8 to 38, flipping their hands to Billboard Hot 100 No. 1, "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)."

Beyoncé moved into "4" with opening track, "1 +1," wrapped up in smoke and red hued lights, reminiscent to her performance on the "American Idol" finale. Bey' kneeled above a white piano to sing the ballad with impeccability.

With the exclusion of "Start Over," Beyoncé brought each song from "4," to life with an all femme orchestra. Bey' slow-winded to "Party" as the crowd swayed their arms back and forth and stretched out the "y" to every other verse. Fans took the liberty to create individual dances in every pocket of the stadium to her "very experimental" track, "Countdown."

Beyoncé closed her set with the introspective "I Was Here," but not before the congregation of Bey' fist-pumped to her first single of the new record, "Run the World (Girls)."

http://www.billboard.com/column/the-...05316162.story

Entertainment Weekly

Only Beyoncé can call performing to a sold-out audience of 3,500 an “intimate affair” with a straight face.
If there’s anything to be learned from the R&B pop talent’s magnificent set last night at New York City’s Roseland Ballroom for her 4 Intimate Nights With Beyoncé run, it’s that Beyoncé’s bigger than any ballroom.
Queen B’s manic swarm of fans attacked the venue early, shoving and jostling through Roseland’s severely undermanned entrance, then rammed their way up to prime viewing real estate in the standing-room-only floor setup. Clear-eyed and swift, none seemed under the influence of a controlled substance. But obviously, they were high on excitement.

Just after 10pm, Beyoncé’s band arrived. For this evening, the first of four in the mini-series concluding Aug. 19 (All dates are sold out; sorry, guys), she brought along not just a drummer, keyboarder, and guitarist, but also a horn section and an orchestra—all women, cramped up on stage like an extremely concentrated dose of musical girl power.
Then came the lady of the hour. In a shimmering gold dress, Beyoncé opened with a refresher course of how a young lady from Houston, Texas, became a pop icon. Similar to her 2009 stint in Las Vegas (I Am… Yours) at the Wynn, the show began with a performance of the Jackson 5’s “I Wanna Be Where You Are,” which was followed by an audio autobiography of sorts.

Here’s the abbreviated version: She (as part of the first incarnation of Destiny’s Child) was on Star Search in 1990 and lost. The group was later signed to Elektra Records. The label dropped them. Then Columbia signed them. Success! Leading to a run-through of Destiny smashes like “Say My Name,” “Independent Women,” and of course, “Survivor.”
Next, Beyoncé performed her solo hits—but not before mentioning that Columbia didn’t believe she had one big radio record on her 2003 debut album, Dangerously in Love. They were right, she teased. It cranked out several. That recap lasted about a half hour, which was long enough considering the night was only supposed to feature songs from her latest effort, 4. The medley was a gracious move on her part, though–pleasing all the fans that have rocked with her since day one.

B then climbed on top of a piano and launched into track one of 4: the love-drunk ballad “1+1.” Her voice rang soulfully, only breaking to let the crowd fill in gaps for a sing-along feel. Old school groove “Party,” Afrobeat “End of Time,” and lead single “Run the World (Girls)” were among the several highlights of the show.
It’s no secret: Beyoncé’s all about female empowerment, making her music not so relatable for this young male journalist. It wouldn’t be a cool look for me to be caught singing “Single Ladies” at the top of my lungs in the gym. But her excellence is undeniable. Her quaking vocals beat her contemporaries and competes with legends’, as does her dancing.

When she closed with 4’s final cut “I Was Here” and bowed, fanatic screams and cheers followed. There was no encore. None was needed. Still, I’m looking forward to seeing her in a bigger venue, where there’s more space for her voice to soar, elbow room for her band to play, and room for her wild-child fans to dance.

http://music-mix.ew.com/2011/08/15/b...new-york-city/

Rap-Up

CONCERT REVIEW: BEYONCÉ REIGNS AT ROSELAND BALLROOM

“Tonight, I want to tell you guys my story,” Beyoncé divulged to a sold-out crowd at New York’s Roseland Ballroom last night. The 90-minute, guest-free show, the first of four this week, found the 29-year-old diva splitting the difference between hushed torch singer and stadium belter, running through a 30-minute revue of her greatest hits before performing virtually all of 4, her latest album released earlier this year.

For a singer long accustomed to stadiums, Sunday’s show was the most intimate performance most fans would see from the ubiquitous superstar. Backed by a 20-piece, all-female orchestra, including a conducted string sextet, three-piece horn section, three backup singers, and a harpist, the singer devoted the first third of the show to a “VH1 Storytellers”-type greatest hits showcase-***-history lesson. If you didn’t know Beyoncé’s biography before—auditions with Destiny’s Child starting at age nine, her father’s early and frequent involvement managing his daughter’s career, getting dropped by Elektra, etc.—she laid bare her entire musical history starting with a Michael Jackson obsession at age five. Opening with Jackson’s “I Wanna Be Where You Are,” the singer interspersed minute-long snippets of her greatest hits both as a solo artist and with Destiny’s Child, stopping each track to discuss her life and mindset during each stage of her career.

After recalling her father’s interrupting of an audition for numerous labels because “they’re not ready yet,” B talked about entering the studio by herself at 18, hearing Stevie Nicks’ guitar riff for “Edge of Seventeen” that would inspire “Bootylicious,” and how the last years of Destiny’s Child were a “reality show like ‘Survivor.’” “It was trying to figure out which member would be the last one on the island,” explained the singer.

The medley combined the quick blasts of a Las Vegas revue with the emotional candor of a singer-songwriter performing to a near-empty room. It was an odd, yet effective juxtaposition; a global superstar who could effortlessly shuffle between slick, bombastic R&B and awkwardly honest confessions of a tumultuous career. By the end of the set though, humility, as one expects from a singer with 16 Grammy awards and more than 75 million records sold worldwide, turned to sly confidence. “[The label] told me I didn’t have one hit song on my album,” she said of her 2003 debut Dangerously in Love. “I guess they were kinda right. I had five.” With the exception of a slowed-down, jazzier version of “Crazy in Love,” the orchestra augmented rather than transformed the tracks, as if deviating too much from the recorded versions would violate the victory lap feel of the show.

“1+1,” the opening song on 4, found Beyoncé kneeling atop a piano, her coy, torch singer poses bumping up against wind machines and spotlights beaming from above the singer’s head. The contradiction was emblematic of the set, as the deservedly entitled diva shared space with her populist alter-ego. For every fog machine, there was a 3,000-person sing-along; for every extravagant light number, there was a heartfelt emotional moment. Tonight was Beyoncé being all things to all people without pandering or condescension.

Performing the album virtually front to back (“Start Over” was curiously left off Sunday’s setlist), the singer displayed both the stamina and vigor that makes for stadium-perfect shows. “End of Time” and “Run the World (Girls)” utilized flamboyant light displays to bring elaborate routines to a smaller stage, though most of the time, Beyoncé viewed the reduced space as advantageous over limiting. B ended the last song—the self-empowering ballad “I Was Here”—with “Roseland, we were here.” In less confident hands, the line would’ve come off as hokey. For Beyoncé, it was the recognition of a singular event before returning to the stadium.

–Jason Newman

Associated Press

Review: Beyonce Showcases Her Dominance at Concert

By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY AP Music Writer
NEW YORK August 15, 2011 (AP)
NEW YORK (AP) — With 16 Grammys, millions of records sold, several defining hits and a superstar husband, Beyonce has nothing to prove.

But sometimes, even queens need to show what it means to be royalty. And on Sunday night, Beyonce arrived at the Roseland Ballroom to give fans and critics alike a reminder that she remains the head diva in the music world. She made her case to a select group of fans one rump-shaking move at a time.

"This show is going to be a little different," Beyonce told the standing-room crowd at the show's outset. "I just want to have a good time."

But she clearly had more on her agenda for Sunday's concert, the first of a four-night run at the famed concert-dance hall. While she usually performs for audiences of around 20,000, Beyonce downsized at Roseland for a sold-out crowd of about 3,000 to promote her new album "4," which has received critical acclaim and gone gold since its June release, but has not dominated sales and radio charts as her previous three solo albums, all multiplatinum successes with multiple hits, did.

The album's release came at a critical time for Beyonce, with the 29-year-old firing her father and longtime manager Matthew Knowles and taking control of her own career, amid the increasing chart pre-eminence of competing acts such as Lady Gaga and Rihanna. With the initial slower-than-usual start for her latest album, there's been discussion about whether her career is heading in the right direction.

Sunday's concert was Beyonce's dazzling rebuttal to all that talk: She put her track record up for display along with her new material and a subtle but undeniable message that she is not to be doubted, or counted against. Dressed in a shimmering gold minidress, she gave fans a history lesson of how Beyonce became Beyonce, from her early days as the star of Destiny's Child to her reign at the top of the charts with such hits as "Crazy in Love" and "Single Ladies."

She kicked things off by reaching deep into the past to do a song by one of her idols — Michael Jackson's "I Wanna Be Where You Are." Like Jackson, Beyonce started singing as a child, and like Jackson, she became the undisputed star of her group. "I Wanna Be Where You Are" was a song Destiny's Child once sang for a recording contract audition that ended unsuccessfully. Beyonce noted that the setback didn't stop them — a recurring theme for her concert, and her career.

Throughout the first half of the show, Beyonce ran through the chart-topping hits that came from her pen such as "Independent Women," and said they were often inspired by her critics. Before launching into "Survivor," she told the crowd about all the jokes lobbed at Destiny's Child and their ever-changing personnel.

"This song was the defining moment of our career," she said, noting the constant criticism she received at the time. "It actually inspired me." Later, she recalled how her record company wasn't a fan of her solo debut, "Dangerously in Love."

"They told me I did not have one hit song on my album," she said of the album that contained such hits as the title track and "Baby Boy."

"I guess they were kind of right: I had five," she boasted, before launching into a smoldering, slow version of the album's biggest hit, "Crazy in Love."

Backed by her all-female band, Beyonce reaffirmed her role as a peerless entertainer with her full-throated, soulful soprano and killer dance moves, in her signature stilettos. While she spent the first half the concert running through her life story (including her romance with husband Jay-Z) and her achievements, the second half was devoted to the future, courtesy of "4."

She said the album was about "being brave, managing myself ... giving myself artistic freedom to make real music for you." That freedom resulted in an album that showcased her romantic, torch-song persona with her bootylicious, dance-groove side. Though she didn't sing every song on the album, she sang most of them, from the Kanye West-produced "Party" to the girl-wronged anthem "Best Thing I Never Had" to infectious, marching-band inspired "End of Time."

"I searched the world, and found myself," she declared.

She ended the night with the song "I Was Here," a celebration of having left a lasting legacy — a point she underscored at Roseland to perfection.

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/...ry?id=14307596

NY Times - Closer to Her Fans and Further Away From Her Past

By JON CARAMANICA
Published: August 15, 2011

She is thunder, Beyoncé is. Fire and quake. A thing that can’t quite be contained. There is not any better advertisement for Beyoncé than Beyoncé herself, a hard worker who makes effort look like the most glamorous thing in the world.

Sunday night at Roseland Ballroom, where she was flogging her most recent album, “4” (Columbia), she was visible up close, moving parts whirring, betraying no wrinkles. It’s a gimme, this sort of show: Take a smallish room, by Beyoncé standards, full of the faithful; lubricate the willing members of the crowd with old hits; then slip them the new material when they’re feeling generous.

All this in an attempt to connect “4” to the earlier and better received parts of her career. “4” hasn’t been the world killer her first three solo albums were. “Run the World (Girls),” its first single, is intense and forceful and appealingly chaotic, but not as straightforwardly slick as her previous hits. The follow-up “Best Thing I Never Had” hums beautifully but not powerfully.

If this performance — one of four sold-out shows this week at Roseland, announced on very short notice — was meant to double as a focus group for choosing which singles might give “4” longer life, the answers were clear. “Countdown,” based around a Boyz II Men sample — which Beyoncé called “really experimental,” a little improbably — is a bubbly wonder. And “End of Time” was the high point, a martial stomp with flamboyant drums, keening vocals and electrifying harmonies.

But this robust and driving show had bigger aims, trying to paint Beyoncé as a stand-alone figure: Destiny’s Child in the past; her manager-father now removed; her husband, Jay-Z, admiring from a respectful distance.

This campaign has taken many forms. “Beyoncé: Year of 4” a half-hour special that was broadcast on MTV the week of the album’s release in late June, showed her engaging in feats of independence: floating in the ocean, tobogganing on the Great Wall of China, telling her collaborators to work out their differences elsewhere, lest they interfere with her concentration and energy. Jay-Z appears twice — both times in silence, once only in shadow. At a meeting she announces, with a mix of embarrassment and entitlement: “I’m Beyoncé. I’m the president.”

This year she parted ways with her manager — her father, Matthew Knowles — and at points in this show he was the recipient of carefully placed barbs, painted as a sort of benevolent dictator. “I can hear that snot in your nose,” Beyoncé recalled him saying during an early, unsuccessful record label audition.

That was one of several quick tales Beyoncé told while relating her biography in between early-career song snippets. And she’s got enough distance from the past that she can talk about old tensions with laughter. After she’d narrated her own history, including a couple of unexpected asides (“I’d been eating a lot — I’d packed on a few,” she said before “Bootylicious”) she downshifted into her new material.

“What do you do after 16 Grammys?” she asked. “Whatever makes you happy.”

If the first part of the show had been Beyoncé’s sketch comedy, the second part — in which she worked through “4” sequentially — was her drama. For the opener, “1+1,” she slithered atop a white piano. On the redemptive “Best Thing I Never Had,” she was practically in earth mother mode, a healer curing her minions.

She was backed by an all-female band, which includes, among others, two saxophonists, a sinuous guitar player, a seven-piece string section, a peppy pianist and a superfluous conductor. They’re strong players but even more important as visual spectacle — an army Beyoncé is both a part of and in charge of.

In her performance it’s always clear that a finely tuned engine is at work, but what was refreshing here was that it was in service of a surprisingly casual manner. She made funny, exaggerated faces; twirled her hair (when it wasn’t floating); and spoke to the crowd like a knowing buddy. She was working off a teleprompter for her between-song patter, but improvising frequently, and for the better.

That relatable mien is not what she’s often praised for, but it’s her secret weapon. Because of it, she has a gift for making a regular phrase indelible, as on “Best Thing I Never Had.” Earlier in the night, after the crowd took over for her on “Irreplaceable,” she moped, “I didn’t even get my ‘to the lefts.’ ”

She is an outrageously nimble entertainer, enough so that it compensated for this album’s awkward or halfhearted choices: the too-goofy Kanye West hook on “Party” or the lackadaisical Jackson 5 mood of “Love on Top.”

Even on these songs Beyoncé persevered, with a voice that skips up octaves and still gains power, with words that are as compelling as they are straightforward, with legs that treat the stage floor like an enemy in need of a thorough stomping. Even in moments of uncertainty, these are her constants. They survive her missteps.

On Tuesday, Thursday and Friday Beyoncé plays Roseland Ballroom, 239 West 52nd Street, Manhattan; beyonceonline.com.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/ar...view.html?_r=1

Beyonce Proves She's The Queen At Roseland Ballroom

Beyonce, Beyonce, Beyonce!

That was pretty much the only name on everyone's lips and minds after Queen Bey finished the first of her four intimate shows at Roseland Ballroom in New York City.

Beyonce took her fans on a ride through the ups-and-downs of her long and illustrious career, starting with her rejection by Columbia and the termination of her contract with Electra.

After being told she wasn't ready for superstardom by her father, Bey finally signed to Columbia and began the amazing ride that was Destiny's Child.

Beyonce performed songs from her Destiny's days, check out "Independent Women" below.

After Beyonce took the crowd back to the Destiny's Child years with her stunning background dancers, she schooled everyone on her rise as a solo artist, including her first song with Jay-Z.

Beyonce gushed throughout the night about finding love and the huge role Jay-Z plays in her life. We even saw a bit of that Jay-Z swag rubbing off on the former Sasha Fierce throughout her set.
Beyonce then took her fans through her latest album 4, performing all of the cuts off the platinum-selling record. The crowd shocked Beyonce by already knowing all of the words to the relatively brand new songs.

Overall, it was an amazing night, with Beyonce proving that she is hands down the best in the business.

We've seen a lot of shows, but no one seems to do it better than Beyonce.

Check out a few pictures from last night's epic concert below!

http://globalgrind.com/music/beyonce...ow-photo-video

Duca

Easily the best performer of all-time.

Comedor

... yet again.

DG1

Quote:

Originally posted by Duca

Easily the best performer of all-time.

You are correct.

Boop

DG1

Just wait for the "4 world' tour. Slaying these gerls in her test shows...

Nɑɑji.. ©

Only the King Bey.

mons†er

RatedG²

King Bey, this generation's best performer. No one can kill it like her

itsJAMESbitch

only The Queen. best performer to EVER live

QueenBeyoncé

She's so AMAZING!! I love her! The Queen

Ejayfierce

This isnt a surprise cause beyonce never ever lets us down...she puts her all into her performances......nobody can touch her

lady_j

She's so amazing

I will stan for this bitch FOREVER

Tinker

Mister Martian

Quote:

Originally posted by Duca

Easily the best performer of all-time.

Now that is a stretch.

Marry The Night

.. and she's beautiful.

Beyond Say

Quote:

Originally posted by Mister Martian

Now that is a stretch.

Name a person who's better.

Knix

So many DVD's coming out of this era already.

Brooke-lynn

All was needed was a mic & a light...no one else is doing it, that's why she's The Performer Of Our Generation!

Mani.

So proud of her & Tina knowles, That outfit is gorgeous.