Review: Beyoncé's Self Titled New Album

On Friday morning, Beyoncé blessed us mere mortals with a new album that came from nowhere but is going far.

BEYONCÉ IS MY LIFE OK!?

10 Stars, because Beyoncé broke the scale.

I won’t lie, on first listen to the album, I was disappointed. Where was this album’s ‘Halo’? Where was the equivalent on Beyoncé to 4s catchy pop sensations like Countdown or Love on Top? But this album is not a crowd pleaser, and nor should it be.

In this album, Beyoncé a.k.a Miss Carter a.k.a Miss Third Ward is showing us – not begging us, or asking us, just offering us the chance to see – what she has been up to in the last two years. Her relationship with Jay-Z, her daughter Blue Ivy, her career are all focal points of this latest release. The fact that the album is a ‘visual’ album, comprised of 17 music videos back to back and the fact that it came out of the blue both demonstrate Beyoncé’s intention not to please a crowd or release another best selling single, but is more a gift from the flawless Queen to us all. It is a check in, the album equivalent of a blog post. ‘Here is what I have been doing,’ it says, ‘take it or leave it.’

That said, whilst (save maybe a couple) none of the tracks have single potential, there is some stand out new music on this album. The first track, ‘Pretty Hurts’ is heartfelt and one of the few songs on the album that offers more than a couple of phrases you can sing along with. Drunk In Love is the latest in a longstanding history of ‘Adjective/Adverb in Love’ songs, but is nothing like Dangerously in Love or Crazy in Love so do not be fooled by the title. Drunk  is still one of my favourite tracks on the album, and of all the videos in this visual masterpiece, this is my favourite. Simple and understated, Queen Bey and hubby Jay-Z dance together on a beach and it is adorable. ***Flawless is the finished version of a track realised a while ago on the internet, (as Bow Down/I Been On) and in its finished form is highly enjoyable and a devastating reminder to anybody who ISN’T Beyoncé that you just can’t get on her level. She’s in charge and we must all be OK with this (I certainly am).

Other favourites of mine include Blow, which is a fairly explicit account of Beyoncé satisfying her man, and Jealous which is in my opinion the closest to past hit Halo stylistically than any other record on this album. There are some tracks that feel like fillers, such as Haunted and No Angel, but as previously explained, this album isn’t about hits and fillers, it’s a statement of what Beyoncé has been doing. And when it’s been so long since she’s released new material, we should be grateful that the goddess blessed us with an offering such as this. She single handedly blew every other popstar out of the water. In a year that has seen more album ‘leaks’ (and subsequent early releases) for exposure and sales surges, this album arrived seemingly from nowhere and generated an enormous amount of hype purely because it came from demi-God Beyoncé, and whilst this may lead some people who just want to break it down to Beyoncé to feel disappointed, for die-hard fans this is like finding a lake in the desert.

The album is much more sexually charged than previous albums. 4 was about the happiness of finding love and preparation for motherhood, this album is a lot more about being settled and keeping it real (yes, I said ‘keeping it real’). Blow, Partition, Rocket and Yoncé are unabashedly sexual, but on Beyoncé’s terms. This doesn’t feel like an attempt to buy her stake in the trend that took off this year of artists stripping to sell music, this feels like Beyoncé is reminding us that she enjoys sex and from the sounds of it is doing it well. And frankly, if a male artist released songs on the same theme he’d be praised for pleasing his other half the way it sounds like Beyoncé has pleased Jay-Z, and I think she deserves mad props for putting together an album so explicit but yet, still so in her control. We know what she wants us to know, no more and no less.

In other news, Blue-Ivy Carter is featured in the track Blue, which is the album’s lead love ballad (if it can be viewed reductively). Blue-Ivy Carter is not even yet two years old but is a featured artist on an internationally released album. And here we are struggling to roll out of bed in the mornings.

So that’s my review/interpretation of Beyoncé and now, I’m off to watch Yoncé for the 12,000th time.

Thank you Beyoncé, Jay-Z, and Blue-Ivy Carter for existing.