A December surprise, without whispers – or leaks
Beyoncé self-releases an album that is sleek, steamy, superb
While Beyoncé constructed the songs with a phalanx of collaborators, they all know better than to eclipse her creamy,
soulful voice.
Beyoncé is flawless so no one else has to be.
That’s the theme of her superb fifth studio album, Beyoncé, which arrives as a feat of both music and promotion. Its songs are steamy and sleek, full of erotic exploits and sultry vocals; every so often, for variety, they turn vulnerable, compassionate or pro-feminist. And with both the songs and the videos, Beyoncé consolidates one of pop’s most finely balanced personas; she is, at once, glamorous and down-home, carnal and sweet, Queen Bey and a diligent trouper, polished and human. “Underneath the pretty face is something complicated,” she sings in No Angel.
Beyoncé suddenly appeared in the iTunes music store with no prior hype — though plenty thereafter — at midnight Thursday. That’s the latest iteration of a tactic already used this year by David Bowie and My Bloody Valentine, who also released albums with no announcement or buildup. Of course, Beyoncé one-upped them: Her album includes elaborate videos for every song, many of them made on location — in France, Brazil, Australia — while the multitasking singer was taking her Mrs. Carter Show tour around the world.
She needed only an Instagram announcement to draw international attention, and the album immediately went to No. 1 in 90 countries on iTunes’ rankings. It was no secret that she had been working for a long time on the album, her first since 4, in 2011. And it arrives at nearly the last possible moment for the lucrative Christmas season.
But Beyoncé transformed a delay into a selling point. And by not manufacturing discs until the album appeared online — they are promised to retail stores before Christmas — her label avoided the leaks that often occur during manufacturing and distribution. Neatly done.
In a year full of overblown marketing campaigns for albums that were letdowns — among them Magna Carta … Holy Grail, by Beyoncé’s husband, Jay Z — Beyoncé should long outlast the initial stir. The songs are alert to the current sound of clubs and radio, but not trapped by it; the refrains are terse and direct, but what happens between them isn’t formulaic. And while Beyoncé constructed the songs with a phalanx of collaborators, they all know better than to eclipse her creamy, soulful voice.
After the scattershot styles on 4, Beyoncé has chosen to stick with largely electronic R&B. She worked with longtime hitmakers — Pharrell Williams, Timbaland, TheDream, Justin Timberlake — and relative newcomers like Hit-Boy and Boots. Mostly, they supply her with means of seduction: particularly in Rocket, an ultraslow tease that looks back to Prince (by way of the Prince fans Miguel and Timberlake, who are among the songwriters), as harmonies blossom all around Beyoncé’s cooing lead vocal.
The even more explicit Partition, savouring sex in a limo, has a sparse synthesizer pulse and little swoops before a whispery chorus joins her. Superpower, a vow of lasting “tough love” that’s a duet with Frank Ocean, gives doo-wop a futuristic sheen, as her voice goes low and smoky. Meanwhile, Jealous — about promises, suspicion and potential revenge — turns into an accusatory anthem.
But Beyoncé offers solidarity alongside romance. Heaven is a mourning song with hymnlike piano, offering tearful comfort: “Heaven couldn’t wait for you / So go on, go home”; it may be heard at funerals for years to come. Flawless, with a staccato, trap-flavoured track, mixes growling celebrity autobiography — “I took some time to live my life / but don’t think I’m just his little wife” — with a feminist speech from a Nigerian author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and a sisterly cheer, “I look so good tonight!”
The album’s opener is Pretty Hurts, written with Sia Furler, which denounces “plastic smiles.” Its video shows beauty pageant contestants in backstage distress, and both video and audio snippets of the album remind us that Beyoncé has been a performer and contestant since childhood.
Flawless begins and ends with a televised talent contest lost by one of Beyoncé’s many youthful groups, Girls Tyme (raising the hindsight question of where the winners are now). And while most of the videos show Beyoncé in elaborate designer luxury with dancers and actors, she also appears among ordinary people on Coney Island, in Brazil and at a Houston roller disco.
The full album includes a video of Grown Woman — a song that appeared this year as a Pepsi commercial — that juxtaposes images of the wealthy, grown-up Beyoncé, drink in hand, with grainy shots of her youthful efforts as a performer: eager, smiling, diligent. Superstar and striver, impossibly accomplished without forgetting a humble start, Beyoncé has it both ways, and Beyoncé makes it believable.
Beyoncé is available now on
iTunes.