(Parkwood/Columbia)
On her unapologetically escapist seventh album, the pop superstar unleashes everything from disco bangers to global house hedonism
It has been six years since the last proper Beyoncé solo release. After 2016’s astonishing visual album, Lemonade, the pop behemoth put out a solid but canonically forgettable collaborative full-length with husband Jay-Z (as the Carters), plus 2019’s The Gift, her vibrant soundtrack for Disney’s remake of The Lion King. The protracted wait for her seventh album gives its title, Renaissance, a multiplicity of meanings, nodding to Beyoncé’s return and also society’s post-pandemic rejuvenation. As she told Harper’s Bazaar in 2021: “With all the isolation and injustice over the past year, I think we are all ready to escape, travel, love and laugh again. I feel a renaissance emerging, and I want to be part of nurturing that escape in any way possible.”
Beyoncé was never going to make a corny “live, laugh, love” record, and her rebirth finds her in the role of siren luring us to the dancefloor. Lead single Break My Soul was a boisterous and euphoric slice of 90s diva house, albeit not exactly groundbreaking. Still, her first US Top 10 single in six years also marked her return to US radio airplay, so clearly it did something right. But Renaissance, for the most part, ventures beyond pastiche into far more eclectic, adventurous territory – a fine soundtrack for a feral summer of chaos and joy. Fast-paced bounce melds with glossy Diana Ross-inspired disco, tinges of soul, sweltering Afrobeats and gqom; swirling trap, swaggering house, Jersey Club, New Jack Swing and even gritty, thumping maximalism (courtesy of PC Music’s AG Cook) on All Up in Your Mind – often within the space of one song. The songs flow as a continuous mix, with beat-switches reigning supreme: Energy starts in the same funky bass arena as the preceding Cuff It before spinning into nocturnal global house hedonism with Jamaican-American rapper Beam; Church Girl goes from gilded gospel to thot rap; Pure/Honey’s brash self-confidence suddenly yields to breezy pop vocal harmonies.
