Concert review by聽海角精品黑料 Contributor Tyler Jeffries
BALTIMORE 鈥� A dance troupe of 20-plus Amazons. Frenetic choreography. A rotating screen-cube-monolith. Fireballs as long as school buses.
And all of this on display in only the first 15 minutes of the聽show.
Friday night Beyonc茅鈥檚 Formation Tour landed at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, touching down with all the ferocity of a category 6 hurricane making landfall. To a sold-out crowd of more than 50,000 card-carrying 鈥淏ey-Hive鈥� loyalists, Ms. Carter ripped through a two-hour set that was big on bombast and small on subtlety. And it ruled.
Or, more precisely, she ruled.
Clad in an oversized fedora that may as well have doubled as a crown, 鈥淨ueen B鈥� took the stage to the tune of 鈥淔ormation鈥� with all-female militia trailing behind. From the opening echos of the track it was quickly apparent that this was something different, something special: the artist in her prime, an alien touching down to abduct the senses of an entire NFL complex.
The setlist spanned all of her deep catalog, hitting nearly every touchstone of her career. An especially sultry take on 鈥淒angerously in Love,鈥� the anthemic 鈥淔lawless,鈥� and a half-dozen cuts from her most recent opus 鈥淟emonade鈥� (yes, they do sound as good in a stadium as you would expect.) Noticeably absent was 鈥淪ingle Ladies,鈥� a simple admission of its tiredness or a more symbolic decision?
Not a soul seemed to notice the omission however, nor did anyone stop moving through the 120 minute ceremony for that matter. Young and old, male and female, one could assume from scanning the crowd that Beyonc茅 caters to the most diverse audience in pop music. If there is a single consistent trait of this mob it鈥檚 the fashion sense: All patrons were dressed to the nines, clad in the most eccentric of costumes trying nobly to match the outlandish costumes of Her Highness.
Seconds into the show鈥檚 open Beyonc茅 implored the crowd to 鈥渟lay,鈥� shorthand for 鈥渒ill it. But if any figurative dragon was slain Friday night it was her competition in popular music. Indeed Beyonc茅 in all of her military-esque regalia, slayed. Mission accomplished.
