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Beyonce: album review

it’s a straight up lie to call this a review when it’s a turned-out-last-night style love note. however, ‘i’m a grown woman’ and thus ‘can do whatever i want.’

i woke up this morning to the new self-titled Beyonce album because my beloved loves me right.

within a few hours i had bought it for her too.

i worked hard all day knowing that i was going to be with Her 17 new videos this evening.

now i just finished watching Beyonce’s visual album, which She released with no press, all at once, as if we could handle that. but i’m stepping up to the challenge, i am actually letting the love i feel for Her flow through my whole self.

highlights are too plentiful to be a useful frame here. this is about an explosion of love, of Bey loving us and letting us love Her, giving us both a futuristic form of musical release AND a throwback monocultural experience, at least much closer to one than any other artist has done recently in a positive way.

i tweeted that my love for Beyonce feels sacrilegious, miraculous, infinite, inappropriate and healing. and yes of course it’s been building for some time now, but with this album She makes me feel good about being myself in these specific ways:

being exactly my shape
being a feminist
being a futurist
being a fashionista
being a partner to a peer
being unapologetically a boss at the work i’m on earth to do
being a virgo
being sure And full of doubt
being a shape shifter
being sexually brilliant
being dramatic
being international
being vulnerable
being in a state of constant growth
being a cultural change agent
being a pleasure activist who knows how to get down properly…not just still, but more than ever
being a lady, a bitch, a freak, a lover, a gift
being alive right now

there are more things, but the point i want to make here is that She manages to both be changing the game constantly while also making that Bey feeling somehow universal. i saw Her in concert last summer and it blew me away to see the gorgeous self-expression of the audience, the way we moved in Her presence. we all elevated our own best efforts to come be in Her presence.

sigh. just reveling in that memory for a second.

with this album, also, the love in Her life is such a crucial part of Her narrative – She lets us feel how She is being changed, challenged, complicated, held and grown by the passion and partnership She practices.

i think the potential results of this album are myriad: better albums from Her would-be peers, better sex, better fashion, more complex ideas of what power looks like, and what mamas look like, and wives, and divas. also more babies, slower seductions, better dancing, less policing of how we are women, more excitement about art as controversial ground to grow society, less fear.

the album is worth this love without the videos. then the videos are fantastic. the throwback videos of baby Bey are tender. the inclusion of family, friends, Her Bey world, is so right and generous.

i gifted it today to women i love because it’s the right thing to do.

i am so grateful i am capable of loving this way. thank you so much Beyonce. thank you.

i woke up like this!
i woke up like this.
flawless.