Member Since: 12/5/2009
Posts: 9,974
|
I think it's time to bump this thread.
Quote:
|
Originally posted by Pitchfork Media
26. Beyoncé
"1+1"
[Columbia]
Following Beyoncé's work on "1+1" is like a journey to the center of her craft, a stripping away of every distraction until all that's left is her voice. Without it, "1+1" would be a muted ballad: Its simple guitar line and stardust-sprinkled strings serve no purpose other than to evoke a sense of familiar romantic intimacy, and then to elegantly step aside while Beyoncé delivers one of her most wonderfully impassioned performances ever.
"1+1" possesses that slightly scary intensity that has been R&B's worst-kept secret weapon since Whitney Houston's "I Have Nothing", but it also demonstrates perfectly how Beyoncé stands apart from every other big-chested diva getting her Whitney on. She lets the song sing through her with a clarity that is never clinical, a strength that never sabotages, and an expressiveness that is precisely as sentimental as its subject matter requires. Beyoncé is R&B's field marshal, demanding of her listeners and herself an absolute fidelity to the music's emotional possibilities, with a perfectly modulated vehemence that is as captivating as it is tyrannical. "Pull me in close and don't let me go," she commands, but here it's her own grasp that is thrillingly assured. --Tim Finney
|
Initial review by Pitchfork:
Quote:
Among other things, Beyoncé's "1+1" is a clever, of-the-moment update on Sam Cooke's "Wonderful World". Writer/producers Tricky Stewart and The-Dream retain the 1960 hit's "don't know much about algebra" line, but they scoop up that love song sentiment and plop it down into the perilous world of 2011. Cooke told his girl, "I know that if you love me too/ What a wonderful world this could be," while Beyoncé, referencing death, war, and maybe even a pending apocalypse, knows that the world is chaos, and just hopes that love can still do what Sam Cooke promised. "Make love to me," she implores, mixing vulnerability and confidence, and then she even explains why you should: "When the world's at war/ That our love will heal us all."
But this Sam Cooke update is also a Prince homage. Specifically "Purple Rain" thanks to those delicate guitars, melodramatic piano, and Beyoncé affecting the Purple One's high-register whimper a few times. But what could have been just a musical exercise for Stewart and The-Dream ("I don't know about guns/ But I've been shot by you" is a Prince-like head scratcher for sure) becomes something so much more for Beyoncé. So she really digs in and sells the song's knotty qualities, and when that over-the-top guitar break appears exactly when it should, it's cathartic. At that precise moment, this passionate pastiche of timeless pop becomes a classic all its own.
|
|
|
|
|
from 1+1 to RTW,4 is amazing