“The Decade Beyoncé Made Herself Into A Legend - BuzzFeed News” plus 2 more |
- The Decade Beyoncé Made Herself Into A Legend - BuzzFeed News
- Texas Monthly Recommends: Our Favorite Films of 2019 - Texas Monthly
- Beyonce to 'Star Wars': 100 favorite pop culture moments since 2000 - Los Angeles Times
| The Decade Beyoncé Made Herself Into A Legend - BuzzFeed News Posted: 20 Dec 2019 07:48 AM PST  Kevin Mazur / Getty Images Beyoncé performs onstage during the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, Feb. 12, 2017. "How would you like me to describe you?" asked journalist Liam Bartlett in a 2007 60 Minutes Australia interview with Beyoncé, who at the time was only 25 years old. "A legend in the making," she responded. It's safe to say that by 2019, after dropping two critically acclaimed albums, a documentary and a film, winning 23 Grammys, and headlining Glastonbury and Coachella (the first black woman to do so), she's undoubtedly made that happen. At the start of the decade, however, in 2010, Beyoncé was at a crossroads. She had always been a talented performer. Her solo music was upbeat and catchy; she had bona fide hits with "Irreplaceable" and "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)," both topping Billboard's Hot 100; her dance moves sparked viral parodies; and her vocal performances were commendable. But in a world where a new class of pop stars were emerging — from the eccentric Lady Gaga, to the chameleonic Rihanna, to the hit-making machine Katy Perry, those traits were not enough for Beyoncé to stand out from her contemporaries in any significant way. (In fact, Beyoncé herself later admitted to Access Hollywood in 2011 that two previous solo albums, 2006's B'Day and 2008's I Am... Sasha Fierce, weren't classics.) Her 2011 album 4 became the lowest-selling record of her career, and her first attempt at documentary filmmaking, 2013's Life Is But a Dream, was criticized for being shallow and self-involved. So how did Beyoncé go from clearly talented, but merely mortal pop star, to the woman behind some of the decade's most memorable, politically radical works of art, credibly claiming the mantle of King of Pop? Through determination, self-discipline, and a notable thwarting of pop music conventions. Bow down. Ian Gavan / Getty Images Beyoncé performs live during the Glastonbury Festival in Glastonbury, England, June 26, 2011. In 2010, Beyoncé had just completed a successful world tour (grossing nearly $120 million worldwide) for her third solo album, 2008's I Am... Sasha Fierce. That era presented the public with two Beyoncés: Beyoncé the entertainer and Beyoncé the person. One way of looking at the project is that she was splitting herself in two. By employing the gimmicky Sasha Fierce as an alter ego, she was able to silo different music genres on the album — R&B and pop, placed on separate discs — as a means of appealing to a broad audience. But the move felt like a transparent attempt to please everyone, and while the album generated some hits, including the smash single "Single Ladies," and topped the charts, moving 482,000 copies, it wasn't a very memorable album. Its success was simply par for the course for a performer of Beyoncé's level. And Beyoncé seemed burned out. In January 2010 after her tour was over, she told USA Today that she'd "like to take about six months and not go into the studio." That sabbatical, which lasted nine months, was eventually captured in 2013's Life Is But a Dream, an HBO documentary Beyoncé directed, wrote, and produced that was met with lackluster reviews. (Critic Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah later referred to it as a "video-length selfie.")
Though the reviews for the film were mixed, the break itself inspired her album to come. In 2011, she released "Run the World (Girls)," the lead single for her new record 4. It was a song that heavily sampled Major Lazer's "Pon De Floor" and echoed themes Beyoncé had sung about before, with lyrics about women who were "smart enough to make these millions, strong enough to bear the children, then get back to business." Her extravagant May 2011 Billboard Music Awards performance solidified this idea. Flanked by an army of majority-women dancers, Beyoncé powered through the visually stunning performance with a stamina and intensity that drew widespread acclaim and sparked an iconic GIF. The performance indicated that Beyoncé was striving for all-time greatness, a message she would also convey with the artwork for her second single, "Best Thing I Never Had." The art depicted Beyoncé looking at a mirror in a wood-paneled room, with the phrase "King B" scribbled in lipstick on the mirror's surface. By refusing to use her customary nickname Queen B, it was clear she was coming for everybody's wigs, men included. But while her die-hard fans appreciated the gesture, 4 only sold 310,000 copies in its initial week, Beyoncé's lowest-performing album to date. All of the singles from the album underperformed as well, with none of them going No. 1 on the Hot 100. (Though some songs like "Countdown," "Love on Top," and "Schoolin' Life" have since become fan favorites.) Beyoncé appeared mostly unbothered by 4's lackluster commercial performance, at least publicly. "I wanted to bring chords, bridges, and melody back on the radio. I thought I've earned the right to make artistic music and not just radio songs," she told Good Morning America in July 2011. But after the commercial disappointment of 4, Beyoncé began making business decisions that worked for her as both an artist and a brand, essentially creating her own rules and measures of success. In 2012, she inked an unprecedented $50 million deal with Pepsi, which would not only make Beyoncé the face of the brand with commercials and print ads, but would fund her creative projects as well. In 2013, she headlined the Super Bowl. The much-anticipated sporting event, which typically attracts around 100 million eyeballs, was overshadowed by people talking about how the NFL was hiding a "Beyoncé concert in the middle of a football game." Joe Amon / Getty Images Beyoncé performs the halftime show at the Super Bowl, February 2016. Once her 13-minute set was complete, the lights in the arena cut out, prompting jokes that it was caused by the singer's greatness. It would have made sense to release a new album as a follow-up to the Super Bowl, as fans were speculating. But that wasn't Beyoncé's move. In retrospect, this was a sign that the singer was playing a long game, but no one would see that until later in the fall. Instead of a new album, she delivered a song — for free — called "Bow Down/I Been On" the next month, which revealed a new, angrier Beyoncé.
The gutsy anthem, which included lyrics like "I'm so crown, bow bow down bitches" rubbed some people the wrong way, including singer Keyshia Cole and some professional critics who felt the song was out of step with the singer's anthems about women's empowerment. But Beyoncé herself didn't see it that way. In interviews, she said she woke up and "had a chant in my head, it was aggressive." She added that she "felt the need to defend herself," but she didn't elaborate what from. Perhaps it was her way of pushing back against people who felt that — after her notable pregnancy announcement at the end of her VMA performance in 2011 and the subsequent birth of her first child, Blue Ivy, in 2012 — it was time for her to put her career on hold. Maybe she was just having fun, something that seems to rattle people who often project their own feelings of inadequacy onto Beyoncé. Or maybe, it was a warning that she was preparing the public for something much bigger. Two years after her Super Bowl performance, without any promotion or prior announcement, in the early morning hours of December 13, 2013, the singer dropped Beyoncé, a 14-track album with 17 accompanying music videos. The album was a major success, both critically and commercially, shipping more than 800,000 units worldwide in its first three days, becoming one of the fastest-selling albums in iTunes history and securing Beyoncé a fifth consecutive No. 1 album on the Billboard 200. (She was the first woman to ever accomplish that feat.) By the album's fifth day of release, it had sold more than 1 million copies. Though surprise album drops weren't new (David Bowie and My Bloody Valentine had pulled them off before), the fervor around Beyoncé was unprecedented, driven in part by social media and the nature of Beyoncé's huge mainstream celebrity. And then there was the music. The songs were sexually explicit and intimate, exploring the sexual escapades of the singer and her husband, Jay-Z, from their nights surfborting while alcohol is free-flowing on "Drunk in Love," to their sneaky sexual adventures in back of limousines on "Partition." She sang about her own sexual pleasure on tracks like "Blow," instructing her lover on the exact way to devour her "Skittle" while she leans back and enjoys the moment. While past Beyoncé songs have talked about sex, none of them were ever this explicit. Larry Busacca / Getty Images Jay-Z and Beyoncé perform onstage during the On the Run tour in Chicago, July 24, 2014. The album wasn't just about sex, however. After years of creating women's empowerment anthems like "Independent Women" — and some not-so-empowering bops like "Nasty Girl" from her Destiny's Child days — Beyoncé also notified the world about her thoughts on feminism. On the track "Flawless," Beyoncé smartly fused lyrics from "Bow Down/I Been On" with the sonorous voice of writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, turning a song that had been criticized for pitting women against each other on its head as Adichie preached about equality among the sexes. She sang about having a miscarriage in "Blue," and in "Rocket," she mentions how "comfortable" she is in her own skin while briefly throwing shots at "cyclical trends," a reference to her desire to break out of the music industry's conventional approach to, well, everything. Critics were breathless with adoration for the new, bolder Beyoncé. The New York Times called the project "steamy and sleek, full of erotic exploits and sultry vocals"; Rolling Stone described it as "moodily futuristic R&B, strongest when it goes for full-grown electro soul with an artsy boho edge"; and Pitchfork, which gave the album an 8.8 and called it Best New Music, said the album "finds Beyoncé shifting gears to pull off her most explicit and sonically experimental music to date, exploring sounds and ideas at the grittier margins of popular music."
But Beyoncé wasn't interested in obsessing over her accomplishments. In a candid moment about the process of making Beyoncé, the singer touched on the emptiness of sacrificing the most important things in life for ephemeral things like trophies and awards. "I have a lot of awards and I have a lot of these things and they're amazing and I worked my ass off, I worked harder than probably everybody I know to get those things," she said. "But nothing feels like my child saying mommy, nothing feels like when I look my husband in the eyes, nothing feels like when I'm respected when I get on stage and I see I'm changing people's lives." Perhaps what's most striking about the album is that she didn't have to sacrifice parts of herself to make it or create an alter ego to express things about herself that might've soured some listeners. And she didn't make herself beholden to the same measures of success of previous albums. Instead, Beyoncé chose not to shy away from topics of sex, politics, and motherhood and its complications, and as a result, fans related to her in a deeper, more meaningful way. And both Beyoncé and her following album, 2016's Lemonade, were much more personal than previous albums. As exemplified on tracks like "Sorry" and "Don't Hurt Yourself,"Beyoncé suggests that Jay-Z cheated on her, an implication Jay-Z appeared to confirm when he released his own soul-baring project, 4:44, in 2017. Her pivot to a more seemingly authentic approach to her music would continue to be evident in the music and films she released in the latter half of the decade. The release of 2016's "Formation" continued the theme of Beyoncé highlighting touchier subjects in her art, a decision that terrified white people. The song's lyrics were unabashed when it came to praising black physical features — "I like my negro nose with Jackson Five nostrils," and the singer's own black Southern roots — "My daddy Alabama, momma Louisiana / You mix that negro with that Creole make a Texas bamma." The music video was just as black, highlighting black joy and pain in various forms, and featured Beyoncé taking a purported anti-police stance, as she crouched on top of a cop car being submerged in water. That message in the New Orleans–set visual is enhanced with the words "Stop shooting us" spray-painted on a wall and an imposing flank of cops in full body armor standing in line as a young black boy wearing a hoodie dances in front of them. Larry Busacca / Getty Images Beyoncé performs onstage during Coachella in Indio, California, April 14, 2018. When you think about the seemingly countless publicized deaths of young black boys, such as Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Jordan Davis, and Trayvon Martin, the imagery in the video is especially profound. The Black Lives Matter movement was one of the most important social movements this decade, and for one of the biggest stars in the world to use her influence and privilege to echo its aims was tremendous. Beyoncé further leaned into making Americans — and the rest of the world — reckon with the pain and trauma of black people in her art with the release of Lemonade, an album and accompanying film that focused heavily on the black woman experience, with themes of love, infidelity, and forgiveness. The mothers of young black boys and men who were killed by police were featured in the accompanying HBO movie, looking solemnly at the camera while holding photographs of their deceased children. The premonitory nature of "Formation" as a protest song speaks volumes when you consider that the track was released in February 2016, nine months before Donald Trump, the "mendacious racist," won that year's presidential election. Beyoncé's venture into protest music — expanded upon with the track "Freedom" featuring Kendrick Lamar and her decision to pay homage to the Black Panthers in a performance at the 2016 Super Bowl — ruffled the feathers of various police unions around the nation. The singer addressed these concerns in a 2016 Elle interview, saying, "I'm an artist and I think the most powerful art is usually misunderstood. But anyone who perceives my message as anti-police is completely mistaken." She added that she had "so much admiration and respect for officers and the families of officers who sacrifice themselves to keep us safe. But let's be clear: I am against police brutality and injustice. Those are two separate things." The Lemonade era arguably came to a close when Beyoncé, pregnant with twins and dressed as a golden goddess, invoking both Madonna and the Yoruba deity Oshun, gave a memorable performance at the 2017 Grammys. That same night, she won the award for Best Urban Contemporary Album, even though she absolutely should've won Album of the Year, and Adele, who took home the top award, even admitted as much. The speech Beyoncé delivered encapsulated what may ultimately be the lasting legacy of Lemonade. "My intention for the film and album was to create a body of work that would give a voice to our pain," she said, "our struggles, our darkness, and our history, to confront issues that make us uncomfortable." In the years since the release of Lemonade, Beyoncé has been committed to uplifting black artists within her own work, from being adamant that Tyler Mitchell photograph her on last year's September issue of American Vogue (the first black person to photograph a Vogue cover) to her Homecoming Coachella performance and subsequent 2019 documentary, where the overwhelmingly white festival was treated to one of the blackest concerts in recent memory. Among Beyoncé's contemporaries, there is no one else who has the same work ethic or who inspires the same reverence from fans — both online and off. She is one of the few marquee names in music who can command our undivided attention in an increasingly crowded pop culture landscape. Her surprise album drops have set a trend that other music heavyweights emulated, including Frank Ocean and Drake. Even her outlook on success has changed. She once talked about how she wasn't pressed to be No. 1 on the charts anymore, and why should it matter, especially since she has more Grammy Awards than any other woman artist, with the exception of Alison Krauss? During a rehearsal for her Coachella performance, highlighted in Beyoncé's Netflix documentary Homecoming, the singer begins a prayer and says to God: "I ask that we're able to touch people and give them hope, to make people feel beautiful, strong, and united." Her ascent to becoming the King of Pop was hard-won, but what makes her dominion significant is that she understands the transformative power of using art and performance to enrich people's lives, most especially black people, so that they can finally see themselves reflected in it. ● |
| Texas Monthly Recommends: Our Favorite Films of 2019 - Texas Monthly Posted: 20 Dec 2019 10:30 AM PST Alita: Battle AngelThe movie may not have been a box office or critical smash—its domestic take was $85 million, less than Downton Abbey or The Addams Family, and its Rotten Tomatoes score sits at 61 percent—but I've found myself thinking about (and rewatching) Robert Rodriguez's Alita: Battle Angel a lot since its February release. The movie is fun and weird and thrilling—few blockbusters stage their fight scenes this well—with a lead performance that might make a star out of Rosa Salazar even without commercial success. The film's approach to world-building doesn't just ape the ones we've seen built in other popular franchises, either (Motorball, anyone?). Alita: Battle Angel is more fun than it got credit for, and I suspect that it'll earn itself some coveted "cult" status over time. Robert Rodriguez might not get another $170 million budget anytime soon, given how it performed. But I still had a blast watching what he did with this one. —Dan Solomon Shazam!Wait, what? The Philadelphia-set action comedy Shazam! has a Texas connection? Sure! The screenwriter, Henry Gayden, is a UT alum. (He may actually be from Memphis, and the movie itself is based on a DC comic that has no connection to our state, but pay that no mind.) I think it's fair to say that Shazam! was the best comic book movie of the year, and it was certainly my favorite. It follows a kid, Billy Batson, who is turned into an adult superhero by a wizard in order to defeat a bad guy. It has big energy, and it is actually laugh-out-loud funny (not just haha-Tony Stark-wisecrack funny). But what makes Shazam! a great movie is the emotional journey its lead character goes on: he's spent his childhood searching for his mother, whom he believes lost him at a carnival one day, and as a result has developed no real connection to anyone, ever, in his present life, including the members of his new foster family. He's on his own. He already thinks of himself as an adult, and as his only protector. Now that he has the body of an adult, he's so out of his element that he has no choice but to accept help from his makeshift family. The movie is an eloquent meditation on childhood trauma, and when I finally got to watch it on a plane this summer, it had me bawling tears of joy thousands of feet above the Atlantic Ocean. —Emily McCullar The River and the WallI had the opportunity to watch the documentary The River and the Wall when it premiered this year at the SXSW Film Festival. Directed by Texas native Ben Masters, the film follows a journey down the Rio Grande and the Texas-Mexico border. Masters and four friends spent two and half months traveling from El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico down both sides of the river and borderlands, capturing stunning shots of landscape and wildlife rarely seen on film. Besides the stunning cinematography, the film also explores how building a wall on the border could affect culture, immigration, and wildlife. As an El Pasoan, some of my favorite memories have been along the border, and the film captures the essence of what makes it so distinctive. And after watching this film, you'll likely have a deeper appreciation for the beauty and vastness of the Rio Grande region. —Danielle Ortiz HomecomingWritten, directed, and executive produced by, and, of course, starring Beyoncé herself, Homecoming proved that the Houstonian is one of the hardest-working people in show business. The Netflix documentary chronicles weeks of intense preparation and planning leading up to her two 2018 shows at Coachella, interspersed with musical segments from those performances. As the first black woman to headline the music festival since its inception in 1999, this was a defining moment for Beyoncé—so much so that the festival was even dubbed "Beychella"—and the film is a communal celebration of black history and culture happening in real time. There's a reason Beyoncé is an unmatched force among pop stars, and Homecoming is a reminder of why that is. —Arielle Avila Ad AstraAn intimate, visually stunning journey through space, Ad Astra (like most movies of its kind) is about everything but the cosmos. Centered on astronaut Roy McBride (played by Brad Pitt), the film follows his journey to track down his father (played by Texan Tommy Lee Jones), who is lost in space and previously presumed to be dead. Part adventure and part mystery, the film ultimately reflects on isolation and loss, with an incredible performance from Pitt in particular. —Cat Cardenas WavesWaves, Trey Edward Shults's most ambitious film yet, follows six characters in the buildup to and aftermath of a family tragedy. And while it's so easy to get a father-child relationship wrong on screen—too sincere and it feels imbalanced, too aloof and it feels overdone—the Spring native excels at uncovering his characters' flaws and forcing you to forgive them, or at least sympathize with them, until they reach a breaking point. Men in this film have a choice between showing vulnerability or bottling up at the risk of harming themselves and the people around them—an indictment of a familiar brand of toxic masculinity, that, if ignored, threatens to explode. —Sam Russek |
| Beyonce to 'Star Wars': 100 favorite pop culture moments since 2000 - Los Angeles Times Posted: 20 Dec 2019 06:00 AM PST 26. Taylor Swift skewers her exes  Taylor Swift doesn't disclose her songs' subjects, but it's easy to connect the dots. "Dear John" puts her former relationship with John Mayer under the microscope. (John Shearer / Getty Images for DirecTV) When Taylor Swift was prompted by a reporter in 2012 to respond to John Mayer's claim that he'd inspired her song "Dear John," the pop superstar played coy, saying, "How presumptuous! I never disclose who my songs are about." Well, not explicitly. But Swift — our young millennium's greatest chronicler of celebrity heartbreak — has hardly placed the identity of her subjects beyond deduction. (Reflecting on her breakup with a "James Dean daydream" widely thought to be Harry Styles, she called the resulting tune, uh, "Style.") "Dear John," which appeared on Swift's 2010 album "Speak Now," is her masterpiece of the form: a nearly 7-minute-long acoustic ballad, written when she was all of 20, in which she surgically — and hilariously — dissects her relationship with an older dude with a "sick need to give love, then take it away." Here, a close look at the song's most revealing moments. Long were the nights when my days once revolved around you Counting my footsteps Praying the floor won't fall through again (1) My mother accused me of losing my mind But I swore I was fine, you paint me a blue sky And go back and turn it to rain And I lived in your chess game But you changed the rules every day (2) Wondering which version of you I might get on the phone Tonight, well, I stopped picking up, and this song is to let you know why Dear John, I see it all now that you're gone Don't you think I was too young to be messed with? The girl in the dress cried the whole way home, I should've known Well, maybe it's me and my blind optimism to blame Maybe it's you and your sick need to give love then take it away And you'll add my name to your long list of traitors who don't understand And I'll look back and regret how I ignored when they said, "Run as fast as you can" (3) Dear John, I see it all now that you're gone Don't you think I was too young to be messed with? The girl in the dress cried the whole way home Dear John, I see it all, now it was wrong Don't you think 19 is too young To be played by your dark twisted games (4) when I loved you so? I should've known You are an expert at sorry And keeping the lines blurry Never impressed by me acing your tests All the girls that you've run dry Have tired, lifeless eyes 'Cause you burned them out (5) But I took your matches before fire could catch me, So don't look now, I'm shining like fireworks over your sad, empty town (6) Dear John, I see it all now that you're gone Don't you think I was too young to be messed with? The girl in the dress, cried the whole way home I see it all now that you're gone Don't you think I was too young to be messed with? The girl in the dress wrote you a song You should've known, you should've known Don't you think I was too young? You should've known (1) With this vividly rendered opening — miles from the "cheap songwriting" that Mayer in his comments accused his ex of deploying — Swift makes clear right away that she's operating on a more sophisticated level than most of her peers. The clever "nights"/"days" wordplay evokes her background in Nashville, while that crucial "again," delivered on the record with just the right amount of vocal exhaustion, establishes a pattern of manipulation even as it nods to Swift's earlier songs about having been done wrong by other guys. (2) Imagine one of those gently bent electric-guitar notes that define Mayer's music — then imagine someone in Swift's studio band unmistakably replicating it right here. (3) By this point, the lyrics' telltale details, including the reference to an age difference, all appear to be pointing in one direction. Yet this line is an almost verbatim quote from "Runaway" by Kanye West, who'd recently premiered his song at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, one year after he infamously interrupted Swift's acceptance speech during the same event in 2009. (4) Another apparent Kanye reference, in this case to the rapper's album "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy," which came out shortly after "Speak Now" (but whose title had been floated months in advance). Who said she had to limit a song to a single nemesis? (5) Speaking of burns, this one is just savage — a breathtaking description of toxic masculinity that seems now to anticipate Swift's discovery of Joni Mitchell on her next album, "Red." (6) "Your sad, empty town"! R.I.P., Mr. Whoever You Were. — Mikael Wood |
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