BEYONCÉI Am... Sasha Fierce
(Columbia)
*** (out of 5)
Beyoncé has two personalities? In interviews, she’s barely shown even one, but on her new double-CD, the R&B superstar performs two sets of songs, each in a different identity. Supposedly, the “Sasha Fierce” character she adopts on the dancier second disc represents the bootylicious, stiletto-wearing stage persona she trots out in her live shows, while the all-ballad first disc reveals the “real” Beyoncé, the vulnerable woman trying hard not to be a “Broken-Hearted Girl.” But in fact, it’s on Sasha Fierce stompers like “Ego,” the Lil Wayne-influenced “Diva,” and the irresistible “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” that Beyoncé seems most like herself — sexy, fun, confident, untroubled by emotions running any deeper than a centimetre.
Not that the first disc is worthless — “Halo” is a decent rewrite of Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” and “If I Were a Boy” is a grand, cathartic swoon of a breakup song. But you only have to compare it to, say, Prince’s similarly gender-bending “If I Were Your Girlfriend” to see how timid and formulaic its sensibility is, and how afraid Beyoncé is, even in the “personal,” “risk-taking” half of this album, of saying anything startling or revelatory about herself. Maybe three discs next time?
0 Yorumlar