Beyoncé has a new album called, um, “Beyoncé”. Out of the blue, interesting, varied and backed up by a bunch of videos. I think it’s pretty good and you can find it on iTunes, but I recommend that you enjoy the full experience on her swish website.
Inevitably, there are also negative reviews. One of the recurring themes is that it’s hard to be pretty sometimes. The songs are also very much in the first person, which leads to accusations of narcissism (What? A narcissist pop singer? Surely not).
Beyonce’s new album is about you
But Raw Story’s Amanda Marcotte makes a great point in her article on Beyonce‘s surprise new release.
“These are songs that the singer believes, with good reason, will be played on repeat and memorized and sung along with. They will be sung along with at clubs and in cars. They will be sung in karaoke bars. The singer is just as much us as it is Beyoncé. And Beyoncé clearly knows that. When she released “Single Ladies”, for instance, she wasn’t singing about a personal experience with having to dump a man to get him to know what he was missing out on—she was already with Jay-Z and they were getting married. The song is clearly for the women in the audience to sing along to, and, regardless of the problems in the framing of it, the idea is to boost yourself up and say that you deserve to have standards.”
From a singer’s point of view, the album features Beyoncé using a slightly lower voice, which is good news for those that want to sing like Beyonce.