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Celeb News: '4' Review Thread (74 on Metacritic)
Member Since: 4/23/2010
Posts: 5,226
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Quote:
Originally posted by BnPac
These UK critics really don't get it. And how can people say BTINH is the best song on the album. That's madness it is like the other UK critic that said RTW was the best song there, they just don't get it. 
And here I wanted her score to go up. |
Girl bye, everyone is entitled to one's opinion
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Member Since: 11/19/2009
Posts: 1,524
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Quote:
Originally posted by BnPac
These UK critics really don't get it. And how can people say BTINH is the best song on the album. That's madness it is like the other UK critic that said RTW was the best song there, they just don't get it.
And here I wanted her score to go up. |
It didn't read like a 4 review..it read like a "Beyonce" review. It was clear from the way the article started that the review would be a bitch session with the words "uninspired" shoved where the phrase "I don't like Beyonce" should be.
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Member Since: 4/17/2011
Posts: 6,399
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The first paragraph talked about her lip-syncing at Glastonbury. I don't respect this review at all. 
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Member Since: 11/21/2010
Posts: 3,809
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Member Since: 12/31/2010
Posts: 26,257
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The less said about the egotistical power ballad, from the pen of Diane Warren (no less), I Was Here, the better.
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I'm not here for this No Umbilicalcord website. A ****ing mess.
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Member Since: 10/29/2010
Posts: 29,249
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DJ Booth - Beyoncé '4' Album Review
In a strange way Beyoncé is a victim of her own success. She’s the closest we now have to Michael Jackson, a transcendent entertainer with the power to both sell out stadiums and have the White House on speed dial (and handcuff Jay while she’s at it). She is the pure embodiment of pop, a woman able to simply overwhelm her more girlish competitors like Rihanna and not nearly as over-the-top as Lady Gaga. But Beyoncé is also a student of history and she knows that all the true soul greats, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Etta James had a consuming inner pain that their voices carried out. What pain could one of the most beautiful, accomplished, richest women alive possibly have to sing about. It’s no coincidence that while Dream Girls was supposed to be her coming out as a serious artist it was actually Jennifer Hudson that people truly connected with. Her success has ironically isolated her from the kind of worship her soul idols earned through their tears.
Beyoncé’s previous album, I Am…Sasha Fierce was a concept album without a real concept; what was the difference between Beyoncé and Sasha again? Higher heels? A different color eye shadow? So it only makes sense that for her new effort, the aptly named 4, the Queen B has rolled out a much more striped down, simple album steeped in ‘80s and ‘90s R&B. It also focuses, not so coincidentally, not on Beyoncé the diva, or the global icon, but on Beyoncé the person, a woman who goes through the same relationship struggles as the average woman….only the average woman doesn’t have a husband who buys her a yacht as a make up gift.
There’s no clearer announcement of Beyoncé’s intentions on 4 than starting the album off with 1 + 1, a Dream and Tricky Stewart produced track that’s one of the duo’s more organic efforts ever (what happened to those “A”s?). Essentially conceived as a vessel for her powerhouse voice, 1 + 1 is vocally impressive, though strange. Considering the force B is delivering her lines with you’d think this is an angry break up song, not a pure love ballad. Rather Die Young is perhaps less notable but more coherent, as is the heartbroken Start Over, but for my money the best of the ballad bunch is I Was Here, a cinematic tale that’s also its most purely inspirational anthem. With rare exception (check the next paragraph) 4 mostly stays in this mid-tempo range, a fact that has to be considered a constant statement at a time when uptempo club tracks have taken over R&B, pop and hip-hop.
Speaking of which, the album’s lone Sasha Fierce-esque contribution is the hyper-kinetic Run the World (Girls), a song that’s shares very little, if anything, with the other songs it shares 4 with. It turns out that while personal ballads may be great for making an artistic statement they’re not so great for worldwide tours. Girls aside, and it really does deserve a separate categorization, the album’s only real loose record is Party, which tellingly reaches back to old standards like Keith Sweat and Andre 3000, not Pitbull and Far East Movement, to get the party started. Kanye’s insistence on peppering the song with Swagu sauce aside, it’s an enjoyable experience, as is Love On Top, which rides easily on a Quincy Jones inspired structure and the horn heavy Countdown, the album’s only real evidence of Beyoncé’s hip-hop influences. Together these songs are enough to keep 4 from sounding overly serious, though not nearly enough to significantly change its overall tone. This album isn’t a good time, but it’s not a bad time.
I’ve always had the vague sense that, like any truly great entertainer, Beyoncé is always playing a part. She’s far too skilled to make it look obvious or false, but can we say we actually know B as a person. When you’re that famous every move has to be carefully choreographed and while I suspect 4 was made in large part to sound more natural and real, it doesn’t succeed entirely. The album is a refreshingly understated change from the constantly banging and bumping sound of modern R&B, but it doesn’t really bring us closer to the Queen B. The throne remains as hard to reach as ever and perhaps that’s for the best. We want our pop idols on a pedestal, it’s the only way we can look up to them.
Rating: 3.5/5; 70/100
Review by Nathan S.
Nathan S. Picks: I Was Here , Love on Top
Radio Ready: Party, Countdown
Mixtape Ready: I Care, End of Time
http://www.djbooth.net/index/albums/...ce-4-06271101/
Counts for MetaCritic
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Member Since: 8/23/2010
Posts: 16,089
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Is the score still 74? I thought it was 73 now and I hope this new review won't make it decrease more.
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Member Since: 4/3/2011
Posts: 7,281
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Some of her reviews are AMAZING but i feel like the album deserves a better score.
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Member Since: 8/23/2010
Posts: 16,089
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Quote:
Originally posted by FreeBitch
Some of her reviews are AMAZING but i feel like the album deserves a better score.
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It does, she had some amazing reviews, like excellent. It is just that the UK ****ed up the score, they all reviewed before the Glastonbury and God were they mad.
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Member Since: 10/29/2010
Posts: 29,249
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Q Magazine (UK) - Beyoncé '4' Album Review
***
At Glastonbury she dazzled; here she plays it safe.
Asked to bet on which of this year's Glastonbury headliners would supply its defining "political" moment, it's unlikely anyone would have chosen Beyonce over seasoned collection-box rattlers U2 and Coldplay. Nonetheless she did, the Amazon-thighed diva's cover of Etta James's At Last against a civil rights montage climaxing in a salute to Barack Obama as simple as it was audibly soul-stirring among the crowd. The first female artist to headline the Pyramid Stage in more than 20 years, hers was in every sense a game-changing turn burying the last Luddite bleats insisting Glastonbury should never cater for mainsteam pop six feet under the Somerset mud.
Still, that historic performance wasn't without timely cunning, its high-camp feminist floorshow dazzing enough to cut her sufficient slck to repeatedly "play y'all something from my new record" out the weekend. So it's ironic that it, her fourth album, should act as a sovering reminder why anyone questioned her Glasto suitability in the first place: slickly produced, imbeccably sung, often beautiful but never venturing beyond safely established R&B horizons.
4's predecessor, 2008's I Am... Sasha Fierce, attempted reinvention with its Jekyll/Hyde format demonstating the two sides of Knowles, that of broken-heated balladeer and ring-demanding ballbreaker. While both return here, its the former who grabs the lioness' share of 4 from the opening 1+1, a stunning statement of betrothal marked by Beyonces rib-trembling power to leap octaves at the end of each line like a whistling kettle. Its breast-clutching tour de fource is matched by I Was Here, another potential funeral favourate from veteran songwriter Diane Warren (Toni Braxton, Celine Dion). Rather Die Young also pushes to the fore as a 21st century Shangri-Las; Knowles preffering the grave to a life without her "James Dean" lookalike boyfriend over a melody not so far from Massive Attack's Protection.
Yet this emphasis on balladry makes for an inevitably sluggish pace puntuated by too few breathers where her much-need "Fierce" self lets loose. Best Thing I Never Had delivers a fabulously breezy kick in the groin to he who dared wrong-do her ("I bet it sucks to be you right now"). The marvellous Run The World (Girls) sounds like Germaine Greers idea of The A-Team theme, a similar military rat-a-tat driving the equally infectious End Of Time. Less effective, if Countdown is forgivably daft fly-girl vaudeville ("Me and my boo in my boo coupe ridin'...") neither guests Andre 300 nor Kanye West can rescue the bland vibes permeating Party.
Back at Glastonbury, Beyonce said she'd "always wanted to be a rock star". That night she was, but as far as 4's comfortably accomplished R&B is concerned, she isn't fooling anyone.
SIMON GODDARD
Download: Run The World (Girls)/I Was Here/1+1/ Best Thing I never Had/ Rather Die Young
RATING: 3/5; 60/100
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Member Since: 9/7/2010
Posts: 28,471
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Oh dear...the bitterness continues.
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Member Since: 10/29/2010
Posts: 29,249
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ROLLING STONES ITALY - Beyoncé '4' Album Review
{Translated}
By Emilio Cozzi
Beyoncé is gifted and not only for her Goddess voice, along with Diamanda Galas, perhaps the most impactful female voice of our times. It’s not even for the millions of records sold, because she makes 87 million dollars a year, or because of her Grammy record win (six in just one night!). These things are all secondary when it comes to the former Destiny’s Child. Beyoncé has a monster talent, because she knows what to do to get the best. And she does it. Inhumane talent, right, but also will, sacrifice, fearlessness: we would say an upgraded version of Madonna if only Madonna had something to do with the concepts of “singing” and “voice”. Let’s just focus on this vocal factor. With such a John Holmes monster equipped voice as Beyoncé’s, someone like Mariah Carey would have built a multi-millionaire career, but all around their vocal tricks and theatrics and record high notes. The Outcome: mediocre songs sung by a Goddess, only good to be sung in the shower. No, Beyoncé always let her 12 inches of singing almightiness bow down to the productive intuition, the harmonic hazard, the rhythmic challenge. And 4 is another record that exemplifies this uncompromising superiority. And if it’s true that aesthetic subversion has inhabited pop music for the last twenty years, 4 fully shows it: non-banal melodies, key changes, arrangements a la Michael Nyman, minimal hip-hop, maximal hip-hop, Africa, Latin America, adult r&b, hit parade r&b, scarily great r&b, with an eye to who, like Dominique Young Unique, plays the Beyoncé game with a stronger electro accent, which means a touch of elettro show off and some dissonances. You got everything here, but this not the kind of record made to be played at the next nerd after dinner party. 4 has also got to pay Beyoncé’s bills, about the amount of Togo’s GDP. And this is why, like Beyoncé herself, her record is gifted.
RATING: 4.5/5 stars
http://www.rollingstonemagazine.it/m...nsioni/4/41251
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Member Since: 8/23/2010
Posts: 16,089
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I guess since you posted it, it counts toward Madiacritic. It might help us keep the score at 74 despite all those bad UK reviews.
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Member Since: 10/29/2010
Posts: 29,249
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Quote:
Originally posted by BnPac
I guess since you posted it, it counts toward Madiacritic. It might help us keep the score at 74 despite all those bad UK reviews.
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No it doesnt... I posted it because it was RS & it was a good score. 
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Member Since: 10/29/2010
Posts: 29,249
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The Quietus (UK) - Beyoncé '4' Album Review
Who run the world? If you watched her stepping on stage against the backdrop of a glowing pyramid at Glastonbury then you'd be hard pressed to answer anything but Beyoncé. One half of music's ultimate power couple, BFFs with Michelle Obama, a run of hit singles and now a headlining set at THE music festival; Beyoncé's ratcheted up enough accomplishments to fill up multiple careers – and she's yet to hit 30.
She might be an overachiever but the work is clearly paying off. In an era where the musical tribal divides of old are officially a historical footnote, the overwhelmingly positive response to her Glastonbury performance is a clear sign that everybody now loves a bit of Beyoncé. She's just that right kind of rare, generational superstar with the total package appeal that make A&R men squeal while the rest of us stare in glowing awe as the superwoman in a bodysuit tells us all to put a ring on it.
The spotlight is, of course, now shinning on Beyoncé and 4. Early rumors surrounding the album revealed a Who's Who of leftfield beatmakers and musicians not normally associated with a mainstream R&B and pop artist reportedly working on the record. Depeche Mode and Fela Kuti were all tossed around as possible influences on 4's sound. There's been a sneaking suspicion among those paying close attention that this could be one of those mythical moments when a triple AAA superstar users their considerable clout to veer off into a bold, new and (whisper it now) risky direction, while dragging the rest of us along for the ride.
With not a single David Guetta flavoured euro-trance beat in sight, the Major Lazer sampling first single, 'Run the World', appeared to confirm the rumours. It's staccato military rhythms and cries of "who run the world" offered an exhilarating glimpse of a world free from pop's current fixation with the 'soar' (see Daniel Barrow's recent piece for the Quietus for a full definition of that term.)
So, with even Gaga's musical output failing to match the boldness of her visual aesthetic, does 4 finally take the bold step forward for pop hinted at during its gestation? No.
For all the buzz and cries of pop salvation surrounding it, 4 finds Beyoncé sticking to the same mix of MOR ballads and future funk pop single she's been lucratively touting since her debut. '1+1' opens with Beyoncé going vintage Tina Turner as she flexes her upper register over a lone guitar melody and Hammond organ. 'I Miss You' features Frank Ocean (Odd Future's resident practitioner of smooth) on writing duties and the result is a gleaming dose of 80s-inspired electro soul. Sleepy Jackson/Empire of the Sun mainstay Luke Steele lends a writing-hand on 'Rather Die Young' while Kanye and Andrew 3000 pop up on the synth-funk heavy 'Party'.
Interspersed between all of these is a series of forgettable songs doused in a light pop-gloss, apparently designed to serve as little more than an opportunity for Beyoncé to remind us what she's vocally got. It's not until the final few songs that 4 beings to pick up the tempo and introduces the production tics hinted at on 'Run the World'. 'Countdown' charges ahead with a repeating blast of stabbing horns, 'End of Time' breaks out the marching band drum beats and 'I was Here' temporarily veers back to ballad country before paving the way for closer 'Run the World'.
The future unfortunately doesn't start with 4. It's not to say that the album is a failure. Beyoncé may be giving us more of the same here but a Beyoncé album that treads water is still a Beyoncé album, and few of her peers can currently match her. Steady on then but as other writers have rightfully commented, the entire album is haunted by a sense of what brilliant possibilities could have been and that's a point that can only be echoed here.
http://thequietus.com/articles/06512-beyonce-4-review
I'm thinking this may score about a 60 on Metacritic.
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Member Since: 10/29/2010
Posts: 29,249
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The Observer (UK) - Beyoncé '4' Album Review
Michael Cragg
Beyoncé's fourth album is a continuation of the split persona of 2008's patchy I Am.... Opening with a clutch of 80s-influenced ballads – the minimal "I Miss You" the highlight – it creeps uptempo, peaking with the incredible "Countdown", Beyoncé near rapping over ecstatic horn blasts, steel drums and a Boyz II Men sample. Elsewhere, "I Care" showcases a much rawer vocal over screeching guitars, while "End of Time" channels Off the Wall-era Jackson. Only the syrupy "I Was Here" disappoints, its corny bluster at odds with the laid-back feel of her most accomplished album yet.
RATING: 4/5 stars; 80/100
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011...yonce-4-review
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Member Since: 10/29/2010
Posts: 29,249
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UNCUT Magazine (UK) Review
Uncut
Overall 4 is a very strong record indeed. Print edition only
RATING: 8/10; 80/100
Unfortunately this magazine is print edition only, not available online. But it counts for MetaCritic.
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Member Since: 8/23/2010
Posts: 16,089
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Quote:
Originally posted by DG1
UNCUT Magazine (UK) Review
Uncut
Overall 4 is a very strong record indeed. Print edition only
RATING: 8/10; 80/100
Unfortunately this magazine is print edition only, not available online. But it counts for MetaCritic.
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OMG too 80 back to back and from UK. 
Sad the RS review doesn't count.
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Member Since: 4/2/2010
Posts: 17,951
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I hope the final score can go back up.
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Member Since: 10/28/2009
Posts: 26,465
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Positive UK scores.
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