The first shows of her tour make it clear: We are living in the Beyonceverse.
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One man asked another what night he was seeing the show.
Night two, or, as far as his seatmate was concerned, nightlast.
They got on the plane wearing compression socks for Beyonce.
She remembered it saying Welcome to Beyonce.
Stockholm is a pleasant but quaint city to start a global tour in.
Is that the polite way to say even locals seemed to find it random?
Going through customs, they ask why youre here.
I said Im here for the Beyonce concert.
The customs agent rolled her eyes and said, Ugh, why did I even ask?
She turned to the other agent and started speaking in Swedish.
Two 20-somethings had white glitter cowboy hats hanging down their backs.
Three other fans were confused about what a merch T-shirt proclaiming NO SKIPS meant.
What does it mean?
Should I know what it means?
I dont care what it means.
I just want it, insisted another.
The fans I spoke to said they had no expectations for the show.
Maybe this was because of thelack of visualsfrom an artist who has released not one visual album butthree.
That afternoon, Id convinced myself that the lack of music videos was intentional.
That it wasnt the result of a stalled corporate partnership.
Maybe it was just the result of Beyonces well-documented perfectionism.
(Perhaps there weretoo-white candles, as shed said once while giving notes during a rehearsal.)
I had taken shots of her Kool-Aid.
I had given in to the spin: It was actuallybetterthat there werent any music videos.
It wasradicalthat there werent any.
There is no conception, he said.
The Bible says eyes have not seen, ears have not heard.
When the show started, it didnt start with a bang it started with a ballad.
Clouds, peachy and lavender in their golden-hour glow, glided across a screen that spanned the stage.
There was Beyonce, in a custom Alexander McQueen catsuit, a mic stand, and a deep cut.
I love you I love you I love you, she began, singing Dangerously in Love 2.
Its a track that always sounded slight on its album.
Only when it was released from its mix in live shows could it become a big gutsy ballad.
In Stockholm, to an audience bracing themselves forLights!
Flash!the songs pleading landed with an emotional wallop.
You will eat your greens at Beyonces table.
She sang the songs in a fit, in a fever, in vocal runs that circled and surrounded.
Thenwe got subterranean with glitter and grime.
First came theRenaissancethesis statement, opener Im That Girl.
Cuff It, Energy, and Break My Soul followed with the last turning into Formation.
The ballad openers were starting to look like dealers choice.
Those songs wouldnt fit in the tours IV drip of desire and adrenaline.
In the three-hour show, Beyonce plugged us in to her motherboard.
She is cyborg Beyonce, who needs a power source andisthe power source.
We watched her ride a chrome tank down a platform to the second stage.
We watched as she was drilled and posed and coiffed by mechanical arms.
Onscreen, we zoomed through fiber-optic cables and in and out of her cyborg scaffolding.
ForRenaissances lovey-dovey songs, she emerged from a clamshell.
For earlier anthemic hits, she was bouncing and grinding atop the pit.
The chrome tank was a chair.
The mechanical arms almost functioned as a tripod.
She growled the call and response on Heated instead of dancing to it.
For Church Girl and some songs from4, she was the stationary centerpiece amid a dozen dancers.
Her most memorable set pieces have been awalkand achair.
Beyonce has played with robot imagery before in 2008 forI Am … Sasha Fierce.
But that is perhaps the era fans are least enthusiastic to return to.
Move announces itself asthemost underratedRenaissancetrack, playing all the way up to every seat in the rafters.
That set list was syllabus and index in one.
But Renaissance is not a guided tour in the same way.
There is so much Beyonce music now, so many permutations of her single vision.
Blink and youd miss a medley that includes Rocket and Dance for You.
Another interlude blended End of Time with her Jay-Z Carters collab Heard About Us.
The hiiiiiigher runs in Family Feud were layered under the opening organ of Lovehappy, soundtracking an interlude.
But I noted the near-total absence ofLemonade.
Shed chosen Formation and a bit of Freedom from that album but nothing else.
It makes sense: There is no guilt or wrath in this show only direct orders.
(Eat it, eat it,eat it eat it eat it!)
Her Telephone verse, on that Lady Gaga collab, wouldve slotted nicely here.
Ditto Countdown and End of Time.
Renaissance was influenced by ballroom and reveres it.
This was just one of theextravagantlyfashioncostumesoverseen by stylist Shiona Turini(a former contributing editor for the Cut).
Like its star, the Renaissance tour shows its work.
A final set list appears in the tour book annotated with Beyonces handwriting.
The interludes teased the still-unreleased music videos, Brooklyn block parties, grainy vintage ballroom footage.
The pre-Formation interlude addressed the lack of music videos with text onscreen: Youve called for the queen.
But a queen moves at her own pace, bitch.
She decides when she wants to give you a fucking taste.
So get your fork and your spoon if you got one.
After the show, I discussed it with a friend who was in the VIP pit on opening night.
Renaissance is nothing more and nothing less than another excellent Beyonce concert.
Madonna is launching her own retrospective Celebration tour.
But Beyonce already did all that with Beychella.
Otherwise, Beyonce isnt living in her past but sampling it, making old songs sound new.
She was Glinda the Groove Witch, dropping good vibes below.
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