poptimists | Urgent and Key Sasha Fierce update

I think my favourite thing about I Am..., and the most key thing wrt B's artistic evolution, is its range - not just the concept, which could easily have fallen flat, but the emotional and vocal range she displays, and pulls off. An early criticism of Beyonce's persona, esp wrt her balladry, was that there wasn't a single chink in her armour - she was almost too perfect and poised to convince as vulnerable - but she's started using that to her advantage now. All her ballads still have that steel core - you still can't imagine her singing something as abject and broken as 'We Belong Together' - but now it reinforces the song's narrative rather than blocking it, whether adding to the chest-beating forcefulness of 'Halo' and 'Hello', or (more interestingly) in cases like 'Irreplaceable' and 'If I Were A Boy', when her innate strength functions both as something to be unexpectedly torn down, with the hitherto unimaginable fragility providing the first emotional blow, and then as the end point of the story, where despite the heartbreak she holds her head high and blinks back the tears because she's so strong.

Also, this ties into something that

weasel_seeker mentioned on the Britney thread - he said that Beyonce's "perfect" persona prevented him from being really captivated by her as an artist (contra Britney and Ashlee). I'll readily admit that I've been a sucker for the Beyonce persona since day one - that combination of ruthless ambition and diva fierceness is amazing - but I think she's now taking it in some fascinatingly directions now. She's not just the most popular girl in high school (as she was in DC) any more - the way she's keeping the essential foundations of that persona but letting traces of vulnerability and bouts of crazy through is really effective.

Am desperately trying to create space on my hard drive for Sasha Fierce and about twenty other albums. Back in '99-'00 I said that Destiny's Child was fun but cold, though I didn't have the idea of "perfect" so much as "classy." My favorite DC track ended up (a couple of years later) being the very uncold "Survivor." There was plenty of tension in Destiny Child's music, but the tension was more like, "We're doing double flips from a ski lift onto an ice cube; let's see if we can do it without falling." But the voice was the essence of flexibility.

Based on the two tracks I've heard from this, and the B'Day singles, I'd say the voice is technically as flexible as ever but now there is tension within the voice, so emotionally it is a strong thing that is nonetheless full of severe strain. (This is for the songs I'm noticing and that stay in my mind. I'm sure that she varies over the course of two disks. And I've yet to hear B'Day in full either.)

"Classy" definitely fits, though I never thought DC were restrained by their classiness - social status was just another means by which they were Better Than That (or Better Than You, where "you" = the triflin' good-for-nothing type of brothers and nasty trashy females that they concerned themselves with), along with their cold self-possession and their prioritisation of flawlessness, which is why I loved it all.

I guess warmth started to creep into Beyonce's voice (all of their voices, really) with their solo careers - Cis and I discussed ages ago how females in girl groups are permitted to be feisty and bad-ass to the point of misanthropic, especially when it comes to dissing males; but as solo artists, female pop stars rarely mine this territory and tend to sing love songs or sex songs instead. Anyway, on Dangerously In Love Beyonce was clearly still getting used to the idea of warmth, hence its mere handful of good tracks, but I think she realised on B'Day that bringing out her love of melodrama, her propensity for being a ridiculous mental diva, was the best strategy. So we have the same classiness and flawlessness as at the start, but it's metamorphosed into a more open, generous persona on record. Which is neither better nor worse for me, but it means she can do amazing ballads now.

What do you think of Michelle Williams? "We Break The Dawn" is one of the great songs of the year, and there's other good stuff scattered through her album, but I'm getting very little out of her voice, even on "We Break The Dawn." No character, no verve, not even an interesting blankness.

Ha I completely forgot about her album. 'We Break The Dawn' wasn't much more than "good" for me, definitely not "great", partly because she just didn't sell it - I fear she is doomed not just to Beyonce's cast-offs, but to Kelly's as well. I've enjoyed her on DC tracks, partly because her wimpy softness is a good counterpart to the Beyonce Express that so many DC tracks are (I think her finest moments are probably 'Soldier' and 'Survivor'), but...I haven't heard anything suggesting "viable solo artist" from her yet. Though I said that after Kelly's first album, then Ms Kelly turned out to be awesome, so who knows.

It took me months and months to realize the greatness of "We Break The Dawn" simply because Michelle was barely even adequate for it. But it did eventually kick in, the strength of the song itself and its arrangement.

This is, like, her third solo album? (Checking Wikipedia, I see it is her third. Her first was a gospel album; those tend to get overlooked.)

Oh, and my point about this being Michelle's third solo album is that I don't think I heard even a note from her first two, so I don't know if she's had a history of interesting achievement/nonachievement beyond DC.

Neither had I, I thought they'd both been gospel albums? ie, not for the pop market. As it is she still comes in below LeToya Luckett in the post-DC solo career stakes.

Ah, you're right, they're both gospel albums. Maybe they're good. Haven't heard either, as I've said.

Almost everything on her new one is pretty good, and other tracks I particularly like besides "We Break The Dawn" are "Private Party," "Hungover," "Stop This Car," and "Unexpected." But it's still hard to connect to them, her singing being so not there.

I love "We Break the Dawn". I listened to that over and over again this past summer (along with Keke Palmer's "Keep It Moving"). I actually think Michelle William's album kick's Beyonce's new record's butt. True, Michelle's use of the autotuner on almost every song makes for a cold sounding record, but overall there are more great songs on her record than on Beyonce's (admittedly I only bought the regular edition of B's record) and both have some stinkers that keep them from being great albums. I just can't get enough of "Hello Heartbreak", "Unexpected", "Lucky Girl", and "The Greatest". I also love the weirdness of "Until the End of the World". I think the coldness of her autotuned voice also works for an autumn record, at least for bleak grey chilly November days in Chicago...

It wasn't the most popular girl in high school thing WITHIN the music, so much as out of it. B always felt vaguely robotic. I take it back. Was watching random Single Ladies live performances, because they're insane, which led me here:

Check where they're talking about Cadillac Records, and the sheer JOY Beyonce has at being able to play the 'bad' side of Etta James, specifically getting to "use all the profanities, because I don't curse".

It's around 2:15.

Btw speaking of armour, every single picture of Sasha Fierce includes her robot hand.

Seriously guys I can't stop looking at the back of the CD case. You know on that Skepta track where he goes 'some chestplate bizniz'? DUDES SHE IS WEARING A CHESTPLATE. That appears to be made out of an entire Roman garrison.

Urgent and Key Sasha Fierce update

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