| О себе: |
BEYONCÉ
On the closing night of her record breaking, globe-trotting I Am... stadium tour, Beyoncé made a pact with herself. The multi-million selling artist and one of the best performers of her generation decided to give herself 12 months off. In fifteen years of professional life, as a member of the ground-breaking R&B trio Destiny's Child and as a solo pop icon, she had only enjoyed a maximum of one month off previously. Sasha Fierce represented an artistic and commercial peak for the artist - if she could not move away from the spotlight now for some me-time and a personal debriefing, when could she?
"So I made a list to myself of all the things I wanted to do in that time," she says, in a Downtown Manhattan loft, looking as effervescently recharged as she should after 12 months downtime. She wanted to go to the ballet, to learn to cook, to master the Final Cut Pro edit suite she'd bought herself, to pick her nephew up from school, to see Broadway shows, to sleep in her own bed and not in a hotel. "I wanted to live my life," she explains."
"For the first time in my life I was able to travel the world and hear different influences," she says, "To see different kinds of dance and choreography and taste different types of food and just be able to relax and have great conversations." Previously, Beyoncé: The Artist had taken priority. It was time for Beyoncé: The Person to step forward. "I felt like I had worked so hard all my life that it was important that I was just able to be inspired and to digest everything I have been doing for so long."
This being Beyoncé, the rest period started to slowly metamorphose into the new record, 4. She could turn off the schedule, but she could not turn off her intuitive feeling for creating dynamic music. It was time to set a new bar. For the first time ever, she made a record not because the label had penciled one in on the marketing wall-chart but because she wanted to make one for herself. “It was a labor of love. It was done because I love what I do and not because I was trying to make a certain type of album. Because it was my playground, it was real."
The result is a shape-shifting piece of musical work for Beyoncé . Opening with three platinum-plated ballads to mid-tempos, 4 sets out its vision as a radical sidestep from the era-defining club and pop hits of Destiny's Child. For the first half of the album, before she jumps off into the street-smart 90s New Jack bounce of "Party", a collaboration with Kanye West and Andre 3000, you might even call it her rock record. 'Other people have said that,' she says, looking delighted with the note. Touring the world along with her husband and his entourage had opened her up to the possibilities of new genres and the magnitude of the festival experience. She had started looking beyond stadiums, watching Linkin Park and Muse and Rage Against The Machine whip up their adoring fans in different ways than pop music intuits. She liked what she saw. Beyoncé started thinking about the possibility of re-writing her place in musical history:
"It's bolder than the music on my previous albums because I'm bolder," she notes. "The more mature I become and the more life experiences I have, the more I have to talk about. I really focused on songs being classics. I really focused on songs being classics, songs that would last, songs that I could sing when I'm 40 and when I'm 60. I feel like it's important I start shaping my legacy. Doing things that have a little more substance. I really want people to think when they listen to my music. I want them to feel more than 'OK, I'm at a party, I'm dancing'. I want it to be a conversation. I wanted to help them through their painful memories and their most happy moments."
With lon |
