After days of hypothesis and on-line sleuthing by followers — simply one other week, in different phrases — Beyoncé used her look in a Tremendous Bowl industrial on Sunday to announce that she would quickly be releasing new music.
In a Verizon advert that ran shortly after halftime, Beyoncé joked with the comic Tony Hale about doing one thing that will “break the web” (i.e. Verizon’s 5G community). She ran by a couple of riffs, like “Beyonc-A.I.,” a Barbie-like “Bar-bey” and a presidential “BOTUS.”
Then she mentioned, “Drop the brand new music,” earlier than the industrial ended. Quickly after, Beyoncé’s web site up to date with the announcement {that a} new album, recognized as “Act II,” could be launched on March 29.
It seemed to be the second a part of Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” album challenge, and maybe one with a country-rock theme, given the sound and look of two new songs, “Texas Maintain ’Em” and “16 Carriages,” that rapidly appeared on-line.
“Texas Maintain ’Em” begins with rapid-plucked guitar and strikes right into a stomping beat, with Beyoncé rhyming “Texas” and “Lexus” and singing traces like, “It’s an actual dwell boogie and an actual dwell hoedown.” On “16 Carriages,” an epic ballad, the guitars swell with organ-loud percussion as Beyoncé sings about wanting again at a life after dropping innocence “at an early age.”
The visuals for each image Beyoncé in cowboy hats — a function of final 12 months’s Renaissance World Tour and Beyoncé’s continued type signature, as seen final week on the Grammy Awards.
As with the primary “Renaissance,” the brand new album announcement represents a type of shift in communication for Beyoncé. She launched her 2013 album, “Beyoncé,” with no warning — immediately grabbing world consideration and setting off a music trade craze for shock “drops.” Its follow-up, “Lemonade,” in 2016, was teased by a Tremendous Bowl look however nonetheless made an instantaneous splash. Within the “Renaissance” period, Beyoncé’s revelations have been extra like typical ads.
When Beyoncé unveiled “Renaissance” in July 2022, she posted a press release on Instagram that defined it was merely half one among a “three act challenge” that she recorded in the course of the pandemic. She referred to that album as “Act I,” and described it as “a spot to dream and to seek out escape throughout a scary time for the world.” That album, with a Nineteen Nineties retro dance theme, went to No. 1 and was the centerpiece of her tour final 12 months, which offered $580 million in tickets, in response to the commerce publication Pollstar — second solely to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.
Beyoncé dabbled in nation music on “Daddy Classes” on her 2016 album “Lemonade,” and a remix featured the Chicks. She teamed with the Nashville group for a efficiency on the Nation Music Affiliation Awards that November, which obtained a blended reception from nation followers on-line however was vigorously defended by the singer’s loyal followers.
