Maximalism has always been Beyoncé’s thing. If you want people to have a blast, you blast them. That means the glitzy, blitzy launch of her current world tour’s domestic leg at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia on Wednesday night felt like a retinal bombardment of scrupulously detailed choreography, costuming, stage lighting, set design, interstitial videos, metallurgical stage props and more. Even her music threatened to violate its own innate invisibility, thickening the air from the moment the show opened with “Dangerously in Love,” a gem from her rookie seasons in Destiny’s Child. “I love you, I love you, I love you,” Beyoncé sang copiously and attentively, as if testing how many notes she could fit into the three magic monosyllables that ultimately bind humanity. A few moments later, during the titular hook of “I Care,” she was showing and telling in the same freighted breath.
Most stadium-grade pop extravaganzas stash all the ballads and midtempo stuff in the middle of the show, giving the singer a chance to regain themselves. Beyoncé turned in her homework early and didn’t look back. Once the sun had fully checked out of the sky for the night, she happily shimmied into her newest songs from “Renaissance,” a sparkly album that taps into the hereditary pulses of disco and house music while quietly subverting the traditional equation that fun equals careless abandon. In Beyoncé’s sound-world, the good times are so tightly girded by her intensity, her commitment, her circumspection, that all the catharsis ends up shooting out of the music like laser light. And in case you couldn’t see-hear-feel it during the gummy bounce of “Cuff It,” her lyrics asked the question straight up: “Have you ever had fun like this?” Before a complete answer could be formed, she experienced a wardrobe malfunction that was minor but unforgettable. She literally sang her sunglasses off her face.
Everyone in the crowd managed to keep their clothes on — as evidenced by thousands of sequined outfits casting their delicate, woozy, cosmic reflections into neighboring airspaces. This kind of sparkle is obviously meant to feel emblematic of opulence and extravagance, or maybe even magic. Prices vary between the jeweler and the craft store, but some scientists suspect it goes much deeper than that. They think our attraction to glitter and gloss is likely rooted in our evolutionary attraction to water.
At a Beyoncé concert, where notions of fabulousness and survival feel tightly intertwined, that all made a special kind of sense — especially during “Break My Soul,” a throbbing self-reliance anthem that Beyoncé made shimmery during its “la-la-la-la” intro, then heavier than life in its conclusion, its unresolved search “for something that lives inside of me.” In between, the entire song transformed into an interpolation of Madonna’s “Vogue” — but instead of dishing up a sangfroidy little rap about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Beyoncé shouted out Aaliyah, Bessie Smith, Nina Simone, Lauryn Hill, Janet Jackson, Grace Jones, Sade, Aretha Franklin and at least a dozen other Black queens of soul and hip-hop music.
She’s so good at this, so good at telling a musical story bigger than herself, even while proving she’s a singular proposition for the ages. Now, more than a quarter-century into her fame, it’s clear that Beyoncé is done with the pop market forever-ever, having opted to funnel countless Black traditions into a recombinant style of songmaking that very much belongs to her alone. That breadth of vision requires tight focus and loose imagination — and it results in the sequined multitudes spending a hot summer night listening to one of the greatest vocalists alive sing “Cozy” while she dances with real robots, then coo “Partition” while she zooms around on her fake space rover, then purr “Virgo’s Groove” from inside a cosmic seashell where time doesn’t exist. Ever have fun like this?