All this time, we were fooled by
one of the greatest. But then again, that’s what makes her so great, right?
Friday morning, at midnight, Beyoncé dropped a surprise album on ITunes and
shocked the world. There was no warning, no hint and nothing that would’ve had
us guessing that Queen B was even in the studio preparing to release anything.
A few months before, while on tour,
Colombia Records went on record saying that Beyoncé had started recording an
album but decided to scratch everything she had worked on and start fresh. The
major label expressed its concern of her lack of material, but I’m starting to
think that this was part of the entire marketing scheme. Since the album’s
release, it seems to have been promoting itself. This is Beyoncé’s first time really
digging deep into the artistic side of her music. Every song has a
corresponding video to go along with it. But one has to wonder, how in the
world did she have time for all this production and studio time. Beyoncé has
been on tour, since God knows when, while having no new songs to perform, with
the exceptions of “Grown Woman” and critically acclaimed “Bow Down”.
All the work going into the new
album seems to have slipped right under our noses. Her sound is definitely very
different than what we are used to this time around. Bey is experimenting and
quite frankly, we like it. Of course, no Beyoncé album is right if you don’t
have her typical sassy, upbeat songs like “Blow”. But in collaboration with
artists like Frank Ocean, Pharrell and Drake, the songs, lyrics, melodies and
concepts on this album are very new for the Bey we know.
The self-titled album premiered as
number (not surprising), and has been since the drop. Now, all that is next to
do is to guess how Mrs. Carter will portray these stories on stage. There’s no
doubt that she, yet again, won’t cease to surprise us. - Ashley Germain
