Beyoncé tries to upstage with her own squad
IT'S OFFICIAL: the newest and most important celebrity accessory is the squad. With the release of Bad Blood and Feeling Myself, Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Nicki Minaj have solidified the notion that #SquadGoals are the only goals that matter.
After the Billboard Music Awards last Sunday night, all anyone could talk about was the premiere of Swift’s Bad Blood music video, which opened the show. Swift’s video, teased with two weeks of Instagram promotion, paid homage to, at MTV’s count, at least 16 movies, and included a slew of other pop-culture references.
Then a 30-second teaser for Feeling Myself landed on Monday afternoon and, boy, the social media sea change was brisk. Within an hour, Tumblr was filled with Feeling Myself GIFs.
There’s a point towards the end of the full video that captures Nicki and Beyoncé hanging out somewhere, perhaps backstage at Coachella.
“Wait,” Beyoncé says to Nicki. “Is that Bubbalicious gum?”
“No,” Nicki says as she bites through a piece of candy. “Now and Laters?” “Yeah, you want one?” How did Now and Laters and lounging around in a kiddies’ pool steal the thunder from Swift’s fantasy celebrity death squad?
Taylor wants to be No 1 in the art of what Buzzfeed’s Anne Helen Petersen calls Strategic Girlfriend Collecting. Petersen has written an exhaustive analysis of Swift’s habit of friend collecting, which the sii nger documents through Instagram. It appears Swift’s efforts culminated in the release of Bad Blood.
“It takes a lot of labour to make something as manufactured as a celebrity image look as natural as Swift and Lorde on a beach, just being the wacky and carefree young women they are,” Petersen wrote.
And Beyoncé, Nicki, and Now and Laters hold similar appeal.
This is something Beyoncé understands well. Feeling Myself bears an amateurish imprint, although the beginning is something that would have been cut from a traditional, stylised production. It feels like the music video equivalent of an expensive garment with edges deliberately left raw. Beyoncé is rap-singing under a road sign, with Nicki standing beside her, staring down the camera in boss pose. You can hear the director off-camera: “That’s dope, Nicki.”
It’s a different sort of realism from four years ago, when Beyoncé released the video for Party. In it, she courts the camera as a trashy-glam version of herself – “unfinished”, but flawless. Even then, the squad made appearances: Solange on the 1s and 2s, Kelly Rowland swaying to the beat.
But Feeling Myself has been crafted to feel spontaneously captured, as if to say:”This is just how we goof off.”
It’s the equivalent of Swift’s Instagram feed, in reverse. Swift friend-collects and releases a high-priced minimovie so she could flex on Katy Perry for stealing back her backup dancers.
Taylor is trying hard. So is Beyoncé. But only one of them has mastered the artifice, in video form, of making it look spontaneous. More than anything, Nicki and Beyoncé appear to be having a ball.
In Bad Blood, which is essentially Swift and her gang of friends playing dress-up with an unlimited bank account, Swift is clearly in charge, the star of her show.
For Minaj, netting Beyoncé as a public friend and co-conspirator was very much a come-up. When Beyoncé featured her on yet another Flawless remix, it was quite possibly the most valuable celebrity endorsement Nicki could have attained outside Lil Wayne, who launched her career.
But then something interesting happened. Beyoncé didn’t just offer Nicki a hand-up, she pulled her on to the stage. Minaj was the only featured artist to appear during Bey and Jay’s On the Run concert in Paris. Feeling Myself is striking as the two women appear as equals, although it’s unmistakable who possesses more cachet.
This is important to remember in contrast to Swift, because of this observation from Petersen: “For a young woman so mindful about the power of friendship, it feels noteworthy that of the 16 acts that have opened for Swift over the North American leg of her past three tours, none have been women… Swift, who loves to surprise fans with Christmas gifts and give them cash for dinner, seems less i nterested in actual female collaboration and partnership than the appearance of it.”