Fans were desperate. But their wait was rewarded. Beyoncé announced on June 16 that her next album would be released very soon, July 29, 2022 to be exact. This is his seventh album, titled Renaissance. It’s been 6 years since the American superstar released an album since his much-loved Lemonade. An album where she recounted the reconstruction of her couple with Jay-Z, her husband and the father of her children, but also a very political album with assumed Afro-feminist accents.
Beyoncé did not announce on her social networks the arrival of Renaissance. She left the Spotify and Apple Music streaming platforms and above all Tidal (a high-end but still confidential service and above all the creation of Jay-Z) reveal the name and release date of the album. After the announcement, the singer’s Twitter account (dormant since a retweet from Michelle Obama in May 2020) and her Instagram account simply changed their bios to indicate these two pieces of information.
It is the sobriety and the mystery that remain for the moment. Even Beyoncé’s art direction isn’t really known for this project. Beyoncé has taken down her profile photos, probably waiting for a big reveal on the sidelines of the release of this “act 1”. As part of this marketing campaign, the British edition of the magazine Vogue also unveiled Thursday the front page that it will devote to Beyoncé in its July edition, on newsstands June 21. The photos released by Vogue – Beyoncé in glam and retro-futuristic outfits, on dance floors – heralds a very danceable album.
“Airy voices mingle with relentless rhythms and in a split second I’m transported to the clubs of my youth,” writes Edward Enninful, the British magazine reporter who met Beyoncé at her Los Angeles home.
In 2021, the year of the singer’s 40th birthday, Beyoncé was already talking about this vast artistic project. In a long interview with the American magazine Harper’s Bazaar, she explained that she was working well on a major musical project with new joyful and dynamic songs. Beyoncé then said she was thinking of the post-Trump, post-Covid period and wanted to offer her audience an escape. “In this world of confinement and injustice, I think we are all ready to love, travel and laugh again. I feel that a rebirth is emerging and I want to accompany this escape“, confides the singer.
“I’ve been in the studio for over a year and a half. Sometimes it takes me a year to find the right sound, the right rhythm… A chorus can have more than 200 combined harmonies. But there is nothing that surpasses the level of passion, love and healing that I feel in the studio. After 31 years, it’s still as exciting as when I was 9 years old. But yes, new tracks are coming “, she promised. “I want to explore new aspects of my life that I have not yet discovered, enjoy my husband and my children, she continued. I want to travel without having to work. I want this decade to be full of joy, celebration and love given and received. I want to give a lot of love to those who love me back.”
Naturally, if Renaissance is the first act of this new work, the public can legitimately expect a act 2, even 3. It’s still too early to know what Queen B is up to…
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