Knowles, Beyonce
Beyoncé Will Change ‘Heated’ Lyrics After ‘Ableist Slur’ Criticism
Days after the release of her latest album, “Renaissance,” Beyoncé will modify the lyrics of one of its songs, a representative for the singer said on Monday, in response to an outcry from disability rights advocates who say the pop star should not have used a word that has historically been employed as a derogatory […]
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‘Renaissance’ Review: America Has a Problem and Beyoncé Ain’t It
It’s too much, this being alive. Too heavy, too uncertain, too chronically cataclysmic, too bellicose, too unwell, too freighted with a possibility of the perception of error. The word of the last few years — in American activist and academic circles, anyway — has been “precarity.” Which gets at ideas of endangerment, neglect, contingency, risk. […]
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Beyoncé Unveils ‘Renaissance,’ the First of Three New Projects
Since “Lemonade” (2016), her last solo studio LP and accompanying film, Beyoncé has tided fans over with a number of ambitious in-between projects. In 2018, she performed as one of the headliners at the Coachella festival, where her show paid tribute to the marching band tradition of historically Black colleges and universities, and was widely […]
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A Guide to the Dance Music on Beyoncé’s ‘Renaissance’
Beyoncé’s new album, “Renaissance,” is consciously steeped in dance-music history, cannily embracing decades of samples and sounds: the 1970s disco of Donna Summer and Chic, Jamaican dancehall, internet-speed hyperpop. She chose collaborators, references and even specific keyboard sounds that pay homage to club-land memories while making her own 21st-century statement. Here are some of the […]
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What Is Beyoncé’s Definitive Album?
Much is made of pop star “eras” these days, but the term is deployed as a tool of marketing, not meaning. Rare is the artist who can sustain multiple visions and repeatedly regenerate. But different cultural and social moments have demanded different Beyoncés, and she has consistently delivered. At times she has been a singles […]
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Beyoncé’s ‘Break My Soul’ and the Long Tail of ‘Show Me Love’
“Champion were obsessed with sweet and sour, they called it,” StoneBridge, now 60, recalled via phone from his studio in Stockholm. He dialed his Korg M1 synthesizer to the next preset, landing on Organ 2, and replayed his bass line. That was the bouncy, sweet part. The sour was the grinding sound that opens the […]
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Beyoncé’s ‘Break My Soul,’ and 12 More New Songs
The first song from Beyoncé’s album due July 29, “Renaissance,” has a clubby house beat and an attitude that equates defiant self-determination with salvation. She and her co-producers, Tricky Stewart and The-Dream, work two chords and a four-on-the-floor thump into a constantly changing track. They sampled shouted advice — “Release your anger! Release your mind! […]
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Beyoncé Announces New Album ‘Renaissance,’ Out Next Month
Cue up the celebratory tweets: A new Beyoncé album is coming. Early Thursday, Beyoncé updated her social media accounts to indicate that a new project called “Renaissance,” apparently with the subtitle “Act I,” would be released on July 29. A link on her website allowed fans to add the album in advance to their collections […]
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Best and Worst Moments of the 2022 Oscars
The 94th Academy Awards will forever be known for one, did-that-just-happen moment: Will Smith slapping Chris Rock after the comedian made a joke about his wife. That was probably not on anyone’s Oscars bingo card. Instead, going into the evening, there was mostly uncertainty: What would the ceremony do to acknowledge the Russian invasion of […]
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