Have I missed a thread in here or something?
Because this is some amazing shit. Watching it was kind of like listening to The Downward Spiral for the first time.
For those without access to HBO or that other thing, before it gets taken down:
[It’s down]
I’m skeptical that Beyonce had any creative input for this. It definitely feels like some Exit From the Gift Shop shit.
It would be an interesting move to produce an hour-long music video of Beyonce accusing her husband of cheating on her, talking about how she wants to wear Rihanna’s skin and use her sternum as a cane, and out her father’s affairs, if she didn’t have some kind of personal input into the proceedings.
why, exactly?
Because this is very personal, contentious stuff to talk about, a big break from her prior form, and brings everyone a bunch of negative attention that needn’t happen.
I mean. This is a puzzling thing to do, creatively, if there isn’t a personal driving reason to do it.
Edit: oh, that wasn’t in response to me.
I can’t imagine a person who gives a shit about Jay Z and Beyonce’s sex life, so I’ll chalk this one up to what happens to your twitter feed when you’re a billionaire musician
never listened to Beyonce, so I can’t really say much on that front, but doesn’t it kind of seem like poor form to release a music video movie like a day after Prince dies?
after poking around most of this I think I would like the album, but girl, bey, I’ve suffered through enough poetry workshops in my life, I can’t take these between bits, I just can’t do it. you probably live five minutes away from columbia, they got a chair for you I promise, please.
Someone else has a music video where they’re walking down a street smashing cars with a bbbat that looks really similar to a part of this and I can’t keep watching till I figure it out. From probably ten years ago.
nice “exclusive” (it’s on iTunes)
It’s not that their sex life is interesting in and of itself, but here that serves as a catalyst for basically an hour of striking back against everything in her past, in culture, that serves to take away her agency, and claiming her own autonomy for her life. Tearing down a poisonous world to rebuild a new one based on compassion for her daughter to live in. It’s pretty powerful stuff.
Honestly, I pretty much ignored Beyoncé previously to “Formation.” She was a pop diva with an occasional feminist agenda, and fine. It wasn’t really that interesting, I didn’t think, but she seemed at worst harmless and at best sort of broadly cathartic to some of the petty indignities that women can face.
This still isn’t For Me, but what she’s doing now – of which Formation is the first single – is a huge sea change, artistically. Where before she was basically doing safe pop stuff with a bit of a social edge – let’s not scare the straights, you know – now she just doesn’t give a fuck, and is going in deep. And it’s really impressing me.
Yeah, that’s sort of familiar.
Here, though, notice that the bat says “Hot Sauce.”
To me the most outrageous parts of this whole video were the abuses of vintage automobiles, I wasn’t ready to see that
I dunno, I’m just not seeing much of a difference between these things. sure, this is more personal, but, you know, name a pop musician who hasn’t written songs about hating the people they fuck. the criticism of beyonce is that she just labels her self-aggrandizing tendencies as feminist. that’s struck me as fairly apt in the past, even if the occasional followup that this is particularly insidious or even all that different from pop in general hasn’t really resonated. I don’t know that you get to claim that your breakup album (sans actual breakup, of course) is culturally important. and I don’t know that “fuck the haters” has much potency coming from a critically acclaimed billionaire pop icon married to another billionaire pop icon. like, who has violated beyonce’s agency, here? jay z? is there a more culturally relevant active musician alive today? the only competition is what, kendrick lamar? and she’s like kendrick lamar if he sold as many albums as taylor swift. so her context is always off to me. it’s like if kanye didn’t know he was an asshole.
“my marital problems are the problems of all of black america” is a pretty uneasy premise, especially when none of those other people exist outside of window dressing, and this sponsored by HBO pop event drops on tidal, owned by – surprise! – Jay Z.
This album was a lot more boring that I expected
The Jack White thing might be the best number and that’s a throwback anyway
oh hey i almost made this thread and i would have made most of the posts aderack made, i was also very hype about this post-formation
i haven’t listened to the album but the videothing is dope as hell
boy there are a lot of fucking dumb nedge posts in this thread huh
at least one part of this sentence is definitely false
yeah, well, maybe
three for three was pretty good
somebody on my facebook said she definitely knows what she’s doing and her and jay-z were basically like “you know what’ll make everybody go nuts and get hella publicity?”
it worked i guess
(i haven’t seen it)
I’m not that cynical
All right, well. There’s a lot more to it than that, but sure.
I like it, anyway.