Fabolous

I love live music.

Attending a concert for me is the ultimate high and low. It’s a testament to the kind of influence that’s possible, and yet also the reminder that there’s work to be done if I want to get from the nosebleeds to the main stage.

A great show is more than just the artist and a pre-recorded track — it’s a live band, background vocalists, trained dancers* and most importantly: the special connection a great artist has with their fans.

The combination of these things keeps me coming back; my sixth time seeing Queen Bey did not disappoint.

We have come to expect excellence from music’s power couple, and that’s exactly what you get with the On The Run Tour.

Last Saturday, over 40,000 people came out to see Bey and Jay at MetLife Stadium. For almost two and a half hours, they had the crowd entranced as they traded off sets, occasionally coming together for brilliant mash-ups of their greatest hits from the last two decades.

Of course it was amazing; but my post-show thoughts are layered. As the self-titled “objective Beyonce stan,” here’s the real:

While it feels special to gain entry, the show itself seems removed, like it’s happening somewhere else on a separate stage, produced by Hollywood men in front of Hollywood cameras. It’s almost as if the whole thing had been filmed and edited ahead of time.

– An excerpt from Jeff Rosenthal’s article for noisey.vice.com

Although I think Jeff’s article was part troll, part truth, he at least grazed the surface of some of my small qualms with the show; in short, it’s damn near perfect.

To be clear, a large part of the concert’s storyline is told through visual elements that were filmed prior to the show, but even the live shots were perfectly-angled and peppered with special effects.

At times, I preferred the view from my binoculars to give me a dose of reality.

If you’ve attended any of Bey’s last 2 tours, you were probably doing most of the choreo and concert-ad libs in your seat, as I was, and are familiar with the “blips of sincere yet programmed PDA ” that Jay and Bey scatter throughout their performances. 

Before the show I realized I had never seen a husband and wife headline a concert together — what would be different? The answer was, almost nothing. It felt like an extended performance of any collab they’ve done in the past –it was all business.

I had expected her performance of “Resentment” to be the highlight of my night as it had been one of the most emotionally-charged and talked about moments of the show; but it wasn’t. Although she again changed the lyrics to the song, it didn’t have that “rough around the edges, but straight from the heart” quality  that tugs at your heart strings, it just felt like another strategic move by her camp to feign intimacy for the crowd — something extra they threw in post-Miami. Don’t get me wrong, she bodied the song, but it didn’t move me to tears like her 2009 Wynn Last Vegas rendition did, twice.

To my surprise, my favorite, heartfelt performances of the night were her cover of Lauryn Hill’s “Ex-Factor” — The Mamas always amplify anything and everything — and “Pretty Hurts,” which felt like her most vulnerable, and least-methodical performance.

The most moving visual element came at the end of the show, when they share their “real life,” during the “Young Forever/Halo” finale.  To see what’s possible in one lifetime — love, marriage, children, sold-out stadiums, significant influence  — I couldn’t help but leave brimming over with possibilities.

The number of artists and celebs in attendance, on both nights, just goes to show how

much respect and admiration the power couple have from their peers.

Bey and Jay are the standard.