the house Renaissance

[Murphy]

All these attempts at character assassination are unbecoming Hands—you're supposed to be the adult here, I'm just an unmarried 20-something shooting the shit & entertaining myself.

David Carradine in waiting

Beyonceaissance jouissance

 

[thirdform]

No, and - at the risk of belaboring the point already made - this idea that more generally pop music is lacking in danceabilty and fun and sex, and Beyonce was needed to remind everybody of the joys of embodiment, seems bizarre. Isn't that what the radioscape is routinely composed of anyway, since forever?

I mean, Doja Cat is doing all that, albeit admittedly not with a recycled Robin S lick

Not to get all finney/ronan fitzgerald here but house has been the dominant pop sound worldwide, alongside this slower dancehall(ish) dembo rhythm.

This is why I say these are people who have no clue about house music. Their whole idea is that was pure chicago/new jersey house, white people got and then bam, beyonce is reclaiming it! Which is insulting to the actual (mostly black and latino) chicago, detroit, new york and nj ogs who persisted with the sound getting no press.

For sure the history of house more than techno has been shall we say whitewashed (ambiguously unspecific term but it's nearly 11 PM here so forgive me) but how is going to generate the much needed revival in popular consciousness of the post-disco and bizarro electro(pop) foundations of the sound? It just won't.

 

[thirdform]

house as an open-ended, catholic term needs to be reclaimed imo, as an approach to playing records with a specific kind of post-disco slightly industrial groove oscillating between the soulful and the machinic. But that goes against the poptimist consensus.

 

[sus]

I think it was once Lemonade dropped and she repositioned herself as more of a political figure.

Agree that was definitely the tipping point... I do remember stirrings before that, as early as 2014, students at Barnard were writing hagiographic academic essays about her.

 

[thirdform]

like I have a farley jackmaster funk tape where he plays this.



It's not house music the genre, sure, but it's a house record.

 

[Murphy]

with a touch of Essex

 

[bassbeyondreason]

The Amapiano lads will fix it:

 

[blissblogger]

Do you remember how she became this sort of figure/critical darling? What made people decide she was worth investing this kind of intellectualizing attention on?

An interesting thing about Beyonce I picked up reading one of these impossibly dreary and virtuous pieces on this new record - and it's something I sort of knew just through noticing that you never heard her songs on the radio, like, maybe once in a blue moon you'll hear something, but generally she's not played on the commercial rap / R&B stations here - but she continues to be the biggest thing in pop (so it's said) but she has not had a number one single in about a dozen years. I forget the exact number but it's a really really long time, and it's very striking because before that, from Destiny's child through to i don't know which song, virtually ever Beyonce-connected song was a number one. So she's remained this enormous Pop Figure, based on something other than radio plays or track sales or singles chart positions. A free-floating eminence has been achieved, based on things like the Serious Statements, doing that video album, and the sheer critical acreage of coverage those gleaned, and then stuff like the Superbowl performance.

 

[thirdform]

i mean Nitzer Ebb was big in Chicago, yes.

And for all the stiffness which gets ascribed to them, their basslines, like D.A.F, were funky as fuck.

 

[Murphy]

where’s Alison Moyet these days

 

[rubberdingyrapids]

Criticising Beyonce is just not what critics do.

This at least tries to put the hyperbole In context

What we mean when we say Beyoncé is “saving” house music

Disco and house music are as American as hip-hop and rock ’n’ roll. But Americans have never fully embraced that idea.

www.vox.com

But even so i think web journalism cant resist hivemind hyperbole, esp not when it concerns Beyonce

What I heard of the album just sounds dance inspired, not genuine dance music (lyrically silly as ever, but thats beyonce in general). But maybe thats the genius of beyonce after all!

 

[shiels]

house as an open-ended, catholic term needs to be reclaimed imo, as an approach to playing records with a specific kind of post-disco slightly industrial groove oscillating between the soulful and the machinic. But that goes against the poptimist consensus.

This seems ridiculous at first but I’ve read it four times now and I’m starting to get something from it. Going for a kind of perverted gospel, that’s the tension

 

[sufi]

this is pretty amazing, but a good few years back now, and not dance music or anywhere near

i thought this was quite insightful

I’m not a big Beyoncé fan, she’s an awkward performer imo but she can do a sinister and seductive thing very well, an unsettling kind of creepy narcissism. When she tries the upbeat motivational feminist stuff I just don’t buy it but when she goes dark and calculated it works cos that’s who she is

 

[thirdform]

But the narrative that dance music needs changing or revitalization goes back to that pesky, ever-prevailing idea that dance music is not good to begin with. But dance music is as American as rock ’n’ roll, hip-hop, country, or R&B and is just as serious and important a genre.

Great conflating merits with American patriotism. Might as well bomb the iraqis with that way of thinking cos they have nothing of merit and are country bumpkins. ffs.

 

[shiels]

Let’s discuss the music though rather than other peoples reactions to it

there’s only two great songs on the album, the rest can be discarded, they are ALIEN SUPERSTAR and AMERICA HAS A PROBLEM

 

[sufi]

much better video



brings the song to life a bit

 

[rubberdingyrapids]

"This is why I say these are people who have no clue about house music. Their whole idea is that was pure chicago/new jersey house, white people got and then bam, beyonce is reclaiming it!"

That old blues/british invasion narrative is irresistible

 

[thirdform]

decent article as a whole but that line of argument made me tense up.

 

[version]

Criticising Beyonce is just not what critics do.

Wonder how they felt about bell hooks going after her.

 

[thirdform]

Let’s discuss the music though rather than other peoples reactions to it

there’s only two great songs on the album, the rest can be discarded, they are ALIEN SUPERSTAR and AMERICA HAS A PROBLEM

no way, other peoples reactions are way more interesting. the songs are rubbish and beyonce just sounds like she's overcompensating by this point. she was always a fantastic performer but not a vocalist with the melismatic capability of Whitney, and in engineers music like house, the performance is nothing, the studio everything.