Beyonce restabilises herself in the pop landscape by reaching back to its world long before she arrived. With the confidence and ability to go beyond her traditional 90s house jams, Beyonce has created a nonstop extravaganza inspired by the dance culture forged by black and queer pioneers in the 1970s and beyond. I feel Kendrick Lamar has raised the bar for contemporary hip hop production on albums such as 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly - she more or less reaches this standard, not dramatically, but it's fine. There’s an fun approach to everything going on behind the words, with what sounds like a theremin during THIQUE a particularly good earworm. The songs zip around so often, with excellent transitions between, it’s akin to the sensations of a DJ set, though this gets weary not played in a party atmosphere.
CUFF IT is a faithfully classic disco stomper with a feisty horn section. It’s a joy that Beyonce relishes in introducing the original dance-floor-tune style to a large subsect of her audience likely only familiar with club music in this century – “Wanna go where nobody's been / Have you ever had fun like this?” Escapism goes hand-in-hand with pleasure on ‘Renaissance’; two things sorely desired by her audience after the COVID-19 pandemic, with dance fanatics missing out on congregating due to the temporary closure of clubs everywhere. Naturally, the record is chockful of samples and producing and songwriting credits. Even an unexpected extrapolation of Right Said Fred’s unforgettably cringeworthy ‘I’m Too Sexy’ turns up on ALIEN SUPERSTAR, yet this track feels justifiably spacious enough to just be another facet of her maximalist attitude, taking in everything, no matter how kitsch the record is becoming.
Grace Jones is a welcome presence on MOVE, a song very much in her style due to its sparse bass-heavy funk – Beyonce’s whispers of her name almost sound like exclamations, which is perfectly understandable, as she still sounds sensationally formidable. It’s a perfect case of the current move in the music industry to record songs that capture specific ‘vibes’ for a record to stick around in a listener’s rotation – the synth-based soundscape accompanied by relaxed beats could fit on any playlist. It’s certainly a playlist-ready album.
There’s also a confidence – the song COZY depicts how the emotional wounds of the introspective Lemonade have healed to create a together and thicker skin, physically and spiritually - “comfortable in my skin, cozy with who I am, I love myself – goddamn!” This confidence is outrightly sexual; the lyrics may be overwhelming for those with conservative attitudes to music, but Beyonce’s frissons of passion sound entirely well-placed in the exciting club energy well-captured within the record.
It's conclusion, SUMMER RENAISSANCE, a perfectly agreeable record, sees Beyonce end her quest for dance music at its arguable root – it beefs up the pulse of Donna Summer’s I Feel Love, a song which every music writer will parrot about its influence. Beyonce cements herself as her own backing singer, front and centre, whilst the club walls around her bounce enough to raise a smile.
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