I thought more of the singles with Destiny’s Child were stronger than much of her solo output. I thought Crazy In Love was great though.
Look, you want to make it in this business, you better be either a hot black chick (Beyonce, Rihanna, Alicia Keys) or a skanky white chick (Brittany Spears, Lady Gaga, Ke$ha, Pink, Christina Agulara)
Well they could sing and rap too, plus Left-Eye was crazier than another whole band. What more could you want?
My chorus performed it in our concert last weekend. Our performance was memorable because of the choreography we added. Without that, the song was stupid and (hopefully) forgettable.
Yep, in particular the lyrics of the songs off the CrazySexyCool album, where they delve into gang violence, AIDS, and death.
From Wiki:
"CrazySexyCool won the 1996 Grammy Award for Best R&B Album. It received a nomination for Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal for “Creep” and for Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal and Record of the Year for “Waterfalls”. Besides the Grammys CrazySexyCool received multiple win’s and nominations for several Billboard Music Awards, American Music Awards, MTV Awards and Soul Train Awards.
In 2003 CrazySexyCool was listed as one of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time at number 377. Rolling Stone said that “Things were not well with TLC during the making of CrazySexyCool: Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes was lighting fires, and the group was in a financial slide that would end in bankruptcy proceedings. But they emerged with the most effervescent and soulful R&B pop anyone had seen since the Supremes.”"
It is also (same source) the first album ever from a female artist to receive RIAA Diamond status.
Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s not historically significant. Personally, I hate Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound, and the Bible, but I can appreciate them.
Songs like Single Ladies are just embarrassing. Shouting about being a strong woman only works when women in the society are weak.
…I much prefer the Captain Jack version.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEr0BPOfVw4
I always thought it was pop dressed up to sound like R&B. And I don’t find it nearly as offensive as straight pop.
I also thought Beyonce**'s** appeal had more to do with her looks.
Underline mine: only in countries where genders are divided by the color of the singer. In most countries, she’s considered pop; so’s Prince, to name another one that makes my eyes cross when I see him classified as “RnB” - being black doesn’t make your music “RnB” any more than being white makes it heavy metal. Then again, I keep seeing Mago de Oz (Celtic Metal), Celtas Cortos (Celtic Rock) or Estopa (Rumba Catalana) classified as “Latin” in non-Spanish-speaking sites… it’s in Spanish, therefore it’s “Latin music”.
That song makes me want to shoot something up, and I don’t mean in a good way :mad::mad::mad:
I’m not totally sure I could pick Beyonce out of a lineup, but she’s got some damned good songwriters and producers behind her. “Crazy In Love,” as has been mentioned, would easily make my Top 10 pop songs for the 2000s, possibly top five. “Single Ladies,” the simple playground chant that it is, is an undeniable earworm, although one of her weaker and more annoying efforts. (However, I always get a kick out of the unexpected harmonies of the strings/synth strings underneath the “if you like it then you shoulda put a ring on it” part.)
I’ve never been particularly impressed by her voice (at least, I haven’t heard anything in any Destiny’s Child or her solo work that’s really jumped out at me), but she’s got enough chops and “fun” in her delivery, along with the pop songs and production behind her, that I’m totally sold on her as being one of the great pop stars of the early 21st century.
If that’s how you feel about Beyonce you must really hate Lady Gaga.
EIDT: And I love ‘Single Ladies’. I don’t know why, it’s probably the dance as much as a song. It’s just pure unadulterated pop campness that doesn’t take itself seriously at all.
Not a fan of Beyonce’s, though I kind of like Irreplaceable - mostly due to originally hearing it as part of a mashup with a song by one of my favourite artists. It’s not a bad song, even when stripped of the backing from Hey My Friend, though Tommy does improve it. (It does have the unfortunate side effect of having trained my brain to expect Beyonce to sing ‘To the left, to the left’ after the first few seconds of Hey My Friend’s intro, though…)
Single Ladies, on the other hand, I could go forever without hearing again, and can’t really think of a way to improve it…
Considering the source of this quote, a financial magazine concerned with “brands,” is this quote really that surprising? There’s a good chance the interviewer had just asked her something like “How do you manage the Beyonce ‘brand’ so successfully when so many of your compatriots have burned out,” or had been referencing her “brand” throughout the course of the day, and she simply was using their own terminology in addressing their questions and concerns, or she was intelligently tailoring her answers for the magazine’s target readership. (And there’s also a decent chance that an overzealous writer inserted “the brand” for “my name” or something…). Does she refer to her “brand” in non-financial-magazine interviews? I’d be more concerned if she referred to herself as a “brand” in a magazine tailored to women or music or something.
Oblig link. It’s that Fosse razzle dazzle, Baboonanza.
*Linked website made my browser all jumpy, but it was the only video I could find, and the link was pretty mandatory for this thread.
Seriously, this to a T. I have no clue how anyone would consider Beyonce R&B, other than she’s black and so of course she’s going to be R&B (if she’s not hip hop or rap). She’s pure pop, and so is Prince. You don’t have to be white to be a pop star.
I’m a little surprised at how many people think Beyonce can’t sing. I didn’t want to bash her personally, just her choices in what she’s singing. It’s obvious to me that she’s not only a good, but her voice has the hallmarks of actual training. Maybe it’s all the time I spent in choirs. Anyway, I think that’s what bothers me most about her song choices, I don’t know if I can appreciate someone who’s obviously letting I Marketing (for lack of a better word) subsume her talent.
By the way I have nothing against pop, but I wouldn’t put Beyonce in the same sentence with Prince. I’m a huge Prince fan; I’ve got 3 copies of Dirty Mind on vinyl. I can’t think of a single Prince song I would put in the same category with Single Ladies.
Why are people making a distinction between “pop” and “R&B”? For all intents and purposes, “pop” is a mishmash of radio-friendly songs from any genre - R&B, Dance, Rock, Punk, Hip Hop, and so on.
Mute button.
Liza Minnelli does a version of “Single Ladies” in the Sex & the City sequel. I still haven’t figured out whether that’s so incredibly crazy that it’s the coolest thing ever or whether it’s a harbinger of armageddon.
No one is saying they’re in the same league, talent-wise. Nava just used both of them as examples of black people who are pop but often thought of as R&B (presumably because they’re black), which I agree with.
I think both Beyonce (solo) and Prince have certainly done R&B work in their careers, as well as some hip-hop and in Prince’s case some rock & roll - pop is just one of their genres, albeit the dominant one.