Surprise! I'm talking about Beyoncé (again).
Britney Spears, the teenage need to be cool, a celebration of Queen B's new tour and my 22 years in the Beyhive.
Image: “The bee fly” | Artist: David Fairchild, Marian Fairchild | Date: 1914 | From: Book of Monsters
Last year, as the most gracious birthday gift to me and my twin sister, the one and only Beyoncé came to play her sold-out stadium tour Renaissance here in Toronto, a night that forever changed my brain chemistry, it was the cathartic moment after months and months of listening to the album, after giving birth twice, after becoming a completely different person than I was when I first started following her career. I will never forget how serendipitous the whole experience was; it was the perfect weather, perfect date, perfect concert, in many ways, my own Renaissance, with each listen healing a part of my soul until I was made whole again.
Recently, I listened to the whole 5-part series of Pop Pantheon’s podcast on Britney Spears’ career and legacy, over 12 hours of overanalyzing the icon and the sad trajectory of the most magnetic figure in pop history. Do I agree she’s in Tier 2 of the Pop Pantheon? No. But I bring this up not to discuss at length how she is, in fact, a Tier 1 Pop Icon, I bring it up because the series made me remember that before Beyoncé, I had Britney. And I had the Spice Girls, and the little girl I was was a direct reflection of those pop stars. I would spend hours dancing like Britney, and I would tell everyone I was Posh Spice (to this day, being “chic” is something I aspire to…thanks, Victoria Beckham!).
I was aware of Destiny’s Child, and like the whole world, I was singing along with Survivor, but I had the other girls to focus on, and so they slipped into the cracks of an already pop-obsessed me. However, when I first watched on MTV Beyoncé’s debut music video “Crazy in Love” at the ripe age of 14, something fundamentally shifted in my brain. There, I had someone who looked like she could be a girl from Brazil, who was proud to have a big butt, something that I was so ashamed of having my whole life, she could also sing and dance and to top it off she was a proud advocate for girls, a vacuum left by the Spice Girls that I was so happy to see being filled.
The problem was, by 14, I had also developed a deep need to look cool. And if you were a teen girl in 2003, there were a couple of things that were hammered into your head daily: you need to be skinny, if you like pop, you’re not cool, and if you want to be cool, you need to hang out with the boys. So I did the whole thing, I started a few tumblrs, I started to listen to classic rock from the 70s, I was a die-hard fan of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and you can rest assured I was wearing Converse Chucks with scribbles on them. But at home, on MTV, I had Beyoncé. One thing that didn’t fit my cool persona was the fact that I enjoyed all sorts of music. I enjoy music period, so I did like rock, but I also liked pop, rap, R&B, MPB (or bossa nova as you call it here), my music taste ranged far and wide, it still does. But that was not cool, so the façade remained as I quietly followed Beyoncé & Britney’s career from behind my RHCP teenage obsession (Britney’s Blackout album from 2007 was #1 on the charts on my iPod nano).
Beyoncé then gave me a gift with her 2013 self-titled album. At 24, I was a young adult that gave less of a fuck about being perceived as cool (albeit stained by it), but with a cool visual album like that she permitted me to scream from the rooftops that I was a Beyoncé stan, and a stan I have been from the jump, the same Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter famously said about her latest album, Part II: Cowboy Carter: “This is not a country album, it's a Beyoncé album", and after listening to it multiple times, I can attest to that, she makes her point even clearer on her Cowboy Carter tour that debuted this past month, weaving hits from past and present, the trilogy she is cooking up is showing the monumental contributions and influence of black culture and artists on all genres of music, if anyone had doubts before, Beyoncé is kindly asking you to get educated, don’t worry she’s teaching the class too.
In this album, she honours the country genre as a good Texan while expanding it into something much more vivid and interesting. She also gave a wider platform to under-appreciated black country artists, a woman for the people. I’ve always had a penchant for her songs that features other artists throughout her career and on this album, she does an exemplary job again when she shines and let the featured artists Post Malone and Miley Cyrus shine bright right alongside her in “Levii’s Jeans” and “II Most Wanted” songs to me that are an absolute standouts and deserved a long run on the radios, an injustice.
Looking back now, silly old me me have been a faithful member of the BeyHive for 22 years (!!!) and of course, I am biased when talking about Beyoncé, but even if I wasn't, I can assure you this album alongside its “Part I: Renaissance”, “Lemonade” and her Self-Titled album are amongst the best body of works ever made, they are quite simply art. I could write extensively about “Renaissance” alone, a house and club music album true to the Beyoncé genre, but today I’ll restrain myself. I am, however, firmly anticipating “Part III” as the rumours are rampant about it being a rock album, and I might be overconfident, but that third one could potentially be my favourite of the trilogy since a rock album will finally heal the teenage me who chronically needed to look cool but also loved Beyoncé. Either way, I'm sure she'll not disappoint in delivering an album trilogy that will most likely change the music industry forever, something she has done a couple of times before.
I can’t wait for part 3