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Beyonce’s hot new album 4 is out today and is expected to top the Billboard charts. The reviews have been solid (some rave) but a recurring theme has cropped up again and again that deserves a little discussion: the criticism of the amount of ballads and slow jams on the album.

NME seems to miss the upbeat tunes the most, writing, “Beyonce making million-miles-an-hour in-yer-face pop singles: amazing; Beyonce doing schmaltzy R&B ballads: nowt to write home about. So it’s with great, great disappointment that we are forced to report that Beyonce’s fourth album is comprised almost entirely of the latter.”

EW, in a still mostly positive review, isn’t much kinder, saying, “Why does it feel like Beyonce is struggling so hard to prove herself on 4? The album is an every-song-for-itself welter of conflicting ambitions: It wants to be cutting-edge but familiar, accessible but artistic, hot-blooded but strictly impersonal. Those tensions hurt most in its lumbering first half, a defiant bird flipped at anyone expecting out-of-the-box radio killers. Instead, we get a sleepy recital of ballads.”

But we think these reviewers are missing the point, making a broad generalization that the volume of the slow songs is a bad thing regardless of their quality (we think most are very good), and are borderline suggesting something they’d otherwise chastise – that Beyonce keep releasing the same pounding, radio-friendly dance track over and over again and not mature as an artist or attempt anything outside the box. We love Beyonce’s up tempo tunes as much as the next guy, and it’s worth noting that there are more than a few to chose from on 4, but why is it a bad thing that she chose a different direction for her new album? Read More...

Tags Beyonce

Beyonce’s hotly anticipated new album 4 drops tomorrow, and word is that Bey has done it again. Well, kind of.

While some critics have mixed feelings about the number of ballads featured on 4, most of the reviews have skewed positive, with some outright raves sprinkled in for good measure. The Atlantic sums up 4 the best, saying, “The course of 4 documents a progression, a maturation, of Beyoncé's worldview” – apparently so much so that New York magazine posits an alternate title: I Am Sasha Happily Married and Thinking Seriously About the Joys and Tribulations of Making Long-Term Commitments in Life.

Indeed, almost every reviewer has noted that the album deals heavily with themes like commitment and the gravity of what it really means to settle down, suggesting Beyonce, now 29 and happily married to hip-hop mogul Jay-Z, is less interested in pushing broad generalizations about self-worth and its relation to independence and is now ready to examine the strength derived from being part of a team while not losing yourself in the process.

For the record, we love the album. The lyrics to some songs occasionally border on simple and she’s not breaking ground here, but you don’t get the impression that she’s really trying to either. This is top-notch R&B comfort food from the master of the game. The lack of theatrics on 4 is refreshing and the pared-down lyrics are more relatable than if she'd chosen to sing about how awesome she is (the way many singers and rappers do). You’d think it would be difficult to find common ground with Beyonce, but she’s uniquely able to connect with universally human things like love, loss, hope and her desire to leave a lasting impression. And when she does turn the tempo up, with the “Get Me Bodied”-like jam “Countdown” and “Party,” respectively, she brings a smooth groove absent from the current top 40, which has recently favored erratic Euro beats and dubstep breakdowns.

Check out a sampling of reviews below. Read More...

Tags Beyonce