how the tracks on beyonce’s “4” could have been accepted by music critics as wonderful zeitgeist-defining music:
- 1+1 - if feist sang it
- i care - if fever ray sang it
- i miss you - if adele sang it
- best thing i never had - if lana del rey sang it
- party - if le tigre did it
- rather die young - if lady gaga did it and added a liner note about how it’s dedicated to the LGBT community (she’d rather die young than live her life without them :* also something something AIDS foundation)
- start over - if florence and the machine sang it
- love on top - if best coast or dum dum girls did it
- countdown - if wild flag or the kills did it
- end of time - if t u n e y a r d s did it
- i was here - if st vincent sang it
- run the world (girls) - if atlas sound or girl talk or some other artist that takes full songs then tweaks them a little bit put together major lazer and pieces of girls singing, the mainstream music press would shit themselves. but it’s just beyonce so whatever
look dude, here we have beyonce channeling 80s funk, 90s r&b, the apocalypse, all the great divas that came before her but with a bey twist. and it’s flawless. she mimics a guitar solo with her voice, whips up a song into a frenzy of a countdown then lets it lay low for a while so she can whip it up again, melts into soft and tender like we’ve never seen her before. she can’t even believe how in love she is. right as she dips into her sappiest, she tears back out of it with “run the world (girls).” and have you heard the bonus tracks? prince is looking them up on his purple laptop and rick james is tuning in from heaven above, and they’re both nodding with serene approval
most importantly, this music is joyful. it’s exuberant! so much music today feels like you’re navigating the quicksand in the swamp of sandess
i wouldn’t be too bugged about this album being “slept on” outside of pop music circles, but when all the above artists are lathered with praise, held up as “innovative” and “genre-defying,” i think our bey deserves a little more adulation. yes she’s already got as much money and attention as cleopatra, but to ignore this album — and to pay attention instead to the league of bums that masqueraded as artists in the past year — is criminal
AMEN
