Beyonce single ladies live rehearsal11/12/2022 ![]() ![]() People care about Beyoncé for the same reason Camille Paglia and bell hooks cared about Madonna. And of late, Beyoncé has become a cultural lightning rod whose obsessive fans tell us loads about how conversations around sexuality and race still pervade American pop music. She has become a dancer, a wife and a mother. Over the years, Beyoncé has razored off friends and group members who slowed her down. ![]() She is the sort of woman who in between a 132-date world tour found time to record an entire album in absolute secret, film 17 music videos, and organize it all through her own fledgling company, Parkwood Entertainment, instead of her established record label, Columbia Records. I own only one of her albums, the one I think is her best until her most recent, B'Day, but over the years, ever since a friend gave me a pass to attend her intimate Roseland show in 2011 where backstage I watched a breathless, drenched Beyonce walk off stage like it was nothing, I've been forced to concede that, love her or not, there can be little doubt that Beyoncé is a behemoth of work ethic and sweat in nude salsa-dancer tights. I was not left particularly breathless by her Super Bowl show, nor did I race to see it. To me she is a cyborg.Īt this point, you don't have to be a Beyoncé fan to acknowledge that Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, age 32, is the clear contender for the title of the hardest working woman in pop music. Is Beyoncé a feminist? Is she a womanist? I don't know. There was no judgment, because a Beyoncé concert is a world run totally by girls, and by that I mean women. If you couldn't make up your mind about whether you wanted that really expensive T-shirt with a half-naked, bent-over Beyoncé emblazoned on its front, you could take your time because chances were the person behind you was giddy with the same excitement and indecision too. If you wanted to evade security and crash a section that was closer to the stage, it was all good. In another concourse, I watched a rambunctious group of blonde women in six-inch heels buy shots and eat huge hamburgers under unforgiving stadium lighting, totally not giving a f- about their appetites or their table manners because at a Beyoncé concert absolutely none of that matters. In the elevator going down to another level, I danced with two supersassy Delta sorors to "Blurred Lines" as it played over the loudspeaker. ![]() And even though it was a hot night in the city, inside Barclays the women were being nothing short of congenial. A Beyoncé concert is like one epic Beyoncé video. They wear their best outfits - baggy vests and baseball caps, to dresses tight enough to look like bondage. They twerk in front of food kiosks while they wait in line to order snacks. There are some men there too, of course, but the women, and by this I mean every kind of woman you can imagine, they come invincible. At a Beyoncé concert are swarms, literally swarms, of women. Not everyone at the concert was a woman, and not everyone was bedazzled, but it was pretty remarkable how many of them were. Justin Bieber calls his fans Beliebers, Lady Gaga calls hers the Little Monsters, and Beyoncé calls her most hardcore fans the "BeyHive." As they clogged and crammed Atlantic Avenue, all trying to get to their Queen, the description never seemed more accurate. Carter Show World Tour." And because Beyoncé has been on the road since last April, almost an entire year, there has been ample time for the constellation of the fans who pay serious money to follow her to create a fan culture (much like The Grateful Dead and their Deadheads but updated for the 21st century) that is almost as intriguing as the star herself.īarclays Stadium might be an athletic venue, but for the four nights that Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter performed there last summer, it became a coliseum of glitter, sequins and gold lamé. Now that she is back on the road, now that the Internet is again awash in pictures of her sweating on stage in Glasgow, running through sold-out crowds in London in costume, it seems as good a time as any to talk about what for many young women was the most important big live show of the past two years - Beyoncé's "The Mrs. ![]() Kevin Mazur/WireImage for Parkwood Entertainment ![]()
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