Last Night: Beyoncé (and Red Wine Shortage) at Key Arena
By Erika Hobart in The Morning AfterThursday, Apr. 2 2009 @ 11:41AM
I thought it was a freak accident when the Tacoma Dome ran out of white wine during the Celine Dion concert. I was wrong. Last night the Key Arena ran out of red wine—20 minutes before Beyoncé even went onstage. "We're supposed to get more, but we haven't seen any," the woman behind the counter informed me. Damn. What is it about seeing a diva live that drives people to get sloshed off of $6.50 plastic cups of wine poured from a box?
Even more absurd were the signs posted all over Key Arena: "Per the tour's request, all bottle caps will be removed." (I couldn't figure out for the life of me why.) And of course, the request led to drunk people spilling their sodas which led to sticky floors. (I'm sure the clean-up crew were thrilled.)
Aside from the odd requests, it's understandable why everybody would be so riled up over Beyoncé's performance. The sexy siren's Seattle appearance was a sneak preview of sorts. She's now on the international leg of her tour which lasts several months. That means we're the only city in the country that got to experience the I Am... tour before this summer.
Let it be said right now: Beyoncé gives her fans exactly what they want. There are a lot of pop stars that in person have a far tinier physique and presence than they do on television. Beyoncé is not one of those pop stars. At 8 p.m. she stepped out in a billow of smoke looking like the quintessential diva. She was Amazonian in stature. And hands down she has most muscular thighs and ass I've ever seen on a woman.
The bootilicious singer zipped through a two-hour set that included songs from both Destiny's Child and her solo albums. But for the most part, she pulled material from her current album I Am... Sasha Fierce. And she killed it. Wearing a slinky gold sequined dress, she sashayed her way through "Crazy in Love." She somersaulted through the arena on a wire while singing "Baby Boy." She danced her way through a medley of Destiny's Child hits like "Say My Name" and "Bug a Boo." The singer's weave started to look a little lopsided after all that dancing and she tried in vain to fix it. "My Sasha Fierce is deflating," she joked after realizing there was nothing she could do.
The evening's flow was interrupted only when Beyoncé stopped singing her hit "If I Were a Boy" to do a cover of Alanis Morisette's "You Oughtta Know." I got a lot of hate from fans for saying it sucked. But I'm sticking by my statement. It's like when Simon Cowell tells Idol hopefuls that they could've been great had they not chose the wrong song. "You Oughtta Know" just ain't a Beyoncé song.
Fortunately, Sasha Fierce redeemed herself toward the end of the night with a soulful cover of Etta James' "At Last." The crowd erupted into cheers when the giant screen behind the singer showed several clips of Barack and Michelle Obama dancing. Soon after, Beyoncé wrapped up her show with "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" and "Halo." The former had the entire venue shaking as the ladies and men busted out their best dance moves.
"Seattle, I am... yours," Beyoncé announced graciously before retreating backstage. I was taken aback. The two hours flew by. And it didn't dawn on me until the diva exited that I was ing exhausted. If you're planning to see the singer in concert, be prepared to do some serious dancing. And if you can't dance without a couple drinks in you first, well, you better get to the venue ing early so you can snag yourself some red wine before it runs out.
http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/rever...t_key_aren.php
Concert review | At the Key, Beyoncé put a style on it
Beyoncé played KeyArena on April 1 in Seattle, with a two-hour show that included her big hit singles, ("Crazy in Love," "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)," "Irreplaceable"), soft ballads ("Ave Maria," "Broken Hearted Girl"), and a medley of hits from her Destiny's Child days.
By Joanna Horowitz
"I'm gonna take y'all through a lot of different emotions tonight, but I hope you're ready to dance," promised Beyoncé at the start of her KeyArena show Wednesday night.
The R&B diva made good on her first vow for sure. In the two-hour show, she raced through 25 songs in just about every genre, sampling moments from her varied career and trying on new musical personas with abandon.
She played the big singles ("Crazy in Love," "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)," "Irreplaceable"), the soft ballads ("Ave Maria," "Broken Hearted Girl"), and even did a medley of hits from Destiny's Child — her now-defunct girl group. There was ska, reggae, girlish pop, jazz, rap, soul, gospel, Middle Eastern, rock and body-thumping club remixes.
It makes sense for Beyoncé to work the sampler-plate angle. Starting with Destiny's Child and on through her three solo albums, Beyoncé has molded and shifted her sound, landing now with her latest album "I Am ... Sasha Fierce" on the soft pop/rock side of the R&B fence. She's also a bit of a ham who can imbue her performances with whatever character fits: sexpot, woman scorned, strutting hip-hop Miss Thang, poised matriarch.
The only thing is, while she can wrap her voice and body around just about any style, she doesn't really have her own signature, at least musically. And while all the variety kept the concert interesting, it came off a little unfocused.
I could have done with more of what she does best: the full-throttle, raw emotion of a song like "Listen" from "Dreamgirls" (a song from the Beyoncé-starring film adaptation of the Broadway musical) or a surprisingly fantastic cover of Alanis Morrisette's "You Outta Know."
But for a show that's as much about style as music, you gotta hand it to Beyoncé. The evening played out like a hip-hop Cirque du Soleil — sequins galore, dramatic dance numbers, and Beyoncé at one point soaring through the audience suspended on cables. And while she said she uses all female musicians for empowerment's sake, the sassed-up 13-piece also leant some serious je ne sais quois, in their skintight body suits, dancing in rhythm.
During Beyoncé's costume changes, said ladies of the band got a chance to show off. We got a funky bass jam, a dynamite classical piano sample, and a song from the fantastic backup singers, a trio called The Mamas. And speaking of costumes, Beyoncé donned a series of curve-hugging leotards and mile-high stilettos, revealing every inch of her legs as she kicked, spun and dipped. The lady's got moves.
As far as her promise to get the rest of us moving ... the three-quarters-full KeyArena seemed happier just watching Beyoncé do her thing rather than busting out with some "Single Ladies" choreography of their own. No matter — Beyoncé had enough strut for the whole place.
Joanna Horowitz:
[email protected]