The Spin has seen more than a handful of shows from today’s biggest artists, but Beyoncé is different. Beyoncé feels different. It’s a sing-along party with your best friends, yes, but it’s foolish not to recognize that you’re also witnessing one of the most powerful, important women in entertainment history at her creative best. As she ages and evolves, it’s obvious that Queen Bey will be recognized not only as a woman who needs just one name (Aretha, Whitney), but as an artist who transcends genre. Beyoncé is The Beatles. Beyoncé is Elvis.
We made it out of the scrum of Nissan Stadium will call Sunday night and to our seats just in time for the show to start, and we’d be lying if we left out the fact we were giddy and covered in goose bumps. Forgive the stating of the obvious, but stadiums are big, and making a show as enjoyable for the folks in the nosebleeds as it is for the people on the floor is a tall order. Enter The Monolith, a giant video cube/command center the size of an apartment building. The Monolith isn’t just a home for impressive technical feats or showing clips from Lemonade; Beyoncé spends a lot of the show looking directly into the camera, which, when shown on the Monolith’s screens, is a clever way to convey intimacy in a stadium setting. That the people in the nosebleeds could feel the heat from the intermittent flame bursts from behind the stage helped, too. This is the Formation World Tour, and it starts with “Formation.” Beyoncé (and her backup dancers) never convey anything other than power, whether it’s when they are (literally) marching in formation, daring you to be offended by the PG-13 displays of feminine sexuality, or kicking up water in a pool mid-field during the heart-stopping “Freedom.” She stands tall. She walks straight. She looks dead ahead. She hits every mark. And she is still able to genuinely convey that she wants her fans to stand tall.
Part of her evolution is addressing racism and sexism, not in a secret code that only the woke can understand, but aggressively and openly. Middle Fingers Up. Boy, Bye. Bow Down. Who Run the World? Girls. When there’s a street preacher outside calling the women and girls who just want to see a concert sinners and whores, aggression and openness is, frankly, necessary. That angry voice last night was a small one, drowned out, but you know what? It’s a voice women hear every day. To walk into a space and, for a few hours, not hear that voice, and be surrounded by tens of thousands of women (like, 70 percent women) and men who are on your side, is a very powerful feeling. By the way, her band is all-female, and a few of the interludes during costume changes highlighted the talents of other women — specifically black women. Her guitarist and drummer were singled out for solos, as was a dancer suspended in a hollow cube, dangling from the opened doors of the Monolith. Cubes and boxes were a repeating theme throughout the show, not that women fundamentally relate to the idea of being boxed in or anything.
Some of the hits had a bit of a twist, with “Love on Top” performed part a capella, part sing-along with the crowd (who obviously knew every word) and “Crazy in Love” really got the “crazy” across, eschewing the jubilant horn sounds for a muffled, creepy vibe. There was a cover of Prince’s “The Beautiful Ones,” and as the show was winding down, the fan favorite Destiny’s Child song “Survivor.” As if it could be anything else.
