base talk Is Beyoncé about to have a reverse Taylor Swift experience?

[Jon Snow]

6 minutes ago, Sweeftie13 said:

I'm grateful to be European because these conversations about whites against blacks don't belong to me, guys you must know that culture is universal: we literally live in a society born in the Middle East developed in Greece by a species born in Africa...

it's different for us. there might be no races, but we do fight each other and almost every nation has a feud with someone else in the neighborhood that spans back a couple of centuries or there are deep feuds inside the states between different groups. and we fight about culture too

 

in usa the context is different, african-americans invented so many things and they never got credit. it's like if british claimed that they invented democracy and not let others to have it, when it clearly existed in greece long before. white people in america now don't allow african-americans into the genre that wasn't created by them. they actually stole it and now claim it as the part of their identity 

[ReneighIsHere]

I saw a tweet saying that Renaissance was kinda her Lover (first proper release in the streaming era) which sets the ground for act II to smash..the key to success in the streaming era is to keep the momentum going so her dropping a new album after she had her first (solo) streaming hit with cuff it is perfect. The fact that it seems to be a more stripped down/personal album is gonna help people connect with it. Texas Hold Em already outdid every song from renaissance and her catalogue streams are rising too, I can see this next album doing better on streaming

Edited February 17 by ReneighIsHere

[Tripthelight]

54 minutes ago, Erreur2 La Nature said:

This only shows that the public does not care for Beyoncé’s urban music while her pop songs seem to resonate much better with their expectations. 

How are you defining “the public” ?

[MingYouToo]

I don't think country has anything to do with her commercial *ahem* RENAISSANCE

 

Savage, Cuff It and now Texas Hold Em' are all compilations of proof that Beyonce as a figure to listen to when it comes to popular music has never fallen off, its just that she's actively chosen to shy away from Top 40 genres and this was clearly for good reason.

 

If you look back, there were at least 3 external pressure points constantly wearing her career down as it progressed leading up to 4:

1.) Generally spaking, she has been in the mainstream since 1998, first #1 hit 1999 and endured the cultural sphere for a long time

 

2.) She came about in a sea of female talent that were clearly in it for the long run. Entering her 10th year in the mainstream she was going against the most number of active women who would eventually dominate Top 40 even to this day: Lady Gaga, Adele, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Kesha, Nicki Minaj, while her mainstream appeal was that she was the go to urban-pop popstar, and that was just kind of it. Mind you this was a point in time where the public could not care less if you sang like Mariah.

 

3.) She is a black woman in her 12th year in the industry, many would say her twilight years were upon her and that there wasn't really much setting her apart, again this was the time where traditional choreo and lives were put to the backburner in favor of shock factor and crazy moments. Things Beyonce was never really known for.

 

With that in mind, had she followed the Rihanna-print and actively chased hit singles post-4 I doubt she'd be where she is now, she'd be directly competing with women like Taylor, Ariana, Dua, and in a Top 40 world dominated by understated synthpop vs her bombastic brand of pop music. Dare I say had she followed the trend and did similar things Rihanna did eventually one of them would come push to shove and I think Rihanna would come out on top for Top 40 mainstream.

 

Being a black woman too had she done that the geepee would be bored of her quick and tune out easily. We can say talent this talent that but honestly talent is not enough in this industry, you need to be interesting, case in point why validly people criticize Taylor for being relatively talentless on stage vs someone like Ariana or Beyonce but one thing Taylor excels at is in being interesting, her narrative always has something to sell. A 2013-14 Beyonce doing a My Everything style of hitmaking playlist album mid 2010s would be a prelude to her downfall.

 

I think she knew her candle in Top 40 was running out after nearly 12 years of nonstop being the de facto queen of Pop Radio, for her to regenerate that she needed to stay above all of it while still maintaining her presence and being like 'hey I'm still that girl never forget it', so ST, LMND and everything in between that was absolutely necessary. Truth is its 10x harder for black artists, women especially, to be generally liked by the public, she had to be either palatable or undeniably a legend, those were the only 2 options she really had, and she can't just stay adjacent to Rihanna as the queen of playlist pop music, she needed to elevate and do something else, and I'm sure she was aware of that.

 

Her larger than life narrative was her approach and that was the right decision in retrospect, she had the live stage skills to back it up so being an elusive chanteuse absolutely held sway with the GP. 'Beyonce makes an appearance', 'Beyonce interview' became such a big big BIG deal from the mid-late 2010s-even now because she deified herself to keep her mainstream appeal going, and fast forward to Texas Hold Em', it paid dividends. 

 

The public remained constantly aware of Beyonce and simply waited for the time she returned to Top 40 sounds, and here we are, 12 years later with a smash hit on the Beyhive's hands