BEY AND JAY: HEARTACHE B EHIND THEI R JOINT TOUR
THE COUPLE WHO slay together, stay together. At least, that seems to be Beyoncé’s thinking, after announcing her second joint tour with husband Jay Z.
The pair will hit the road together in June as part of their On The Run II tour – four years after the original string of shows. Awkwardly, their latest album releases are 2016’s Lemonade and 2017’s 4:44 – both of which deal, in forensic detail, with Jay Z’s various infidelities. Considering the 2014 pre- Lemonade shows featured Beyoncé wearing a wedding veil while sobbing, ‘She ain’t even half of me, that bitch will never be’, this could be… interesting.
According to one associate of the couple, the pair’s marital difficulties have informed their decision to tour as a duo. ‘After Lemonade, people assumed that Bey and Jay had put their demons to bed – and that’s certainly the message they’re keen to promote,’ said the source. ‘In truth, things are more complicated and their marriage is very much a work in progress. Their problems were so severe that they actually split a few years ago, and they’ve had to rebuild trust from the ground up after Jay’s affairs. During the last few years, they’ve worked hard to communicate fully and have invested heavily in their relationship. They don’t want to undo all of that progress by Jay going on tour alone and falling into old patterns, so they made the joint decision to tour together.’
In November, Jay confirmed reports that he and Beyoncé had once embarked on a collaborative album, saying, ‘ We were using our art almost like a therapy session. And we started making music together.’ When the shared project stalled, Beyoncé focused her attentions on creating Lemonade, a record which Jay admitted made him ‘very, very uncomfortable’. With lyrics like: ‘Looking at my watch, he shoulda been home/today I regret the night I put that ring on/he always got them fucking excuses’, few could blame him.
For his part, Jay’s atonement came in the form of his subsequent album, 4:44. On Family Feud he refers to the antagonist of Lemonade, the mistress who Beyoncé nicknamed Becky with the good hair, when he raps: ‘ Yeah, I’ll fuck up a good thing if you let me/let me alone, Becky.’ Elsewhere, he refers to the couple’s infamous 2014 lift incident (‘ You egged Solange on/knowin’ all along, all you had to say you was wrong’). And the title track includes the line: ‘And if my children knew, I don’t even know what I would do/ If they ain’t look at me the same/i would prolly die with all the shame.’
The source added, ‘ There’s no question that Beyoncé and Jay are in a better place than they were, but the legacy of Jay’s indiscretions still looms large. They’ve both processed a lot of past trauma in their art, so they see performing the albums together on tour as part of that healing process.’
THEIR MARRIAGE IS VERY MUCH A WORK IN PROGRESS