Photo by Mason Poole/Parkwood Entertainment/PictureGroup
As far as celebrity worship goes, the only thing more intriguing than a Valley of the Dolls-esque fall from grace, like say Lindsay Lohan’s saga, is a romance with a happy ending. Enter Jay Z and Beyoncé, power couple who’ve broke free from the hard knock and climbed the pop culture ladder to the top rung. You could call it royalty (ahem, Queen Bey traffic gridlocked 93 and 95), but the duo’s status is less about the right lineage, and more about buzzy lyrics, like-ability, and, at least for half the pair, a lifetime of lunges.
Last night’s stop of their On The Run Tour show at Gillette Stadium was a essentially a retrospective of this journey, a 43-song set plucked from their respective discographies and collaborations, complete with a finale video montage of recording studio embraces, wedding stills, and clips of Blue Ivy’s first smile, crawl, burp, and fart. Two enormous screens adorned either side of the main stage used to spotlight the duo — if you were sitting anywhere other than front-and-center this is how you confirmed the performers were in the flesh and not marionettes. But during the home video reel, the screens went black, Jay Z and Beyonce invisible to the crowd, everyone’s attention directed towards the happy family. Yes, dammit, it was sweet, and more than a few fans were spotted drying their eyes when the lights went up, but it was too sweet – a sugar coated, red ribboned ending illuminating that we were bearing witness to the concert equivalent of a rom-com at the IMAX.
One can’t deny that when the Carter’s were performing solo, with aid from fantastic back up dancers, or sharing the stage, they were exuberant (I felt giddy during “Big Pimpin’” and “Izzo”). The light shows, pyrotechnics, and, back drop screen swirling geometric shapes or engulfing Jay Z in satanic flames, went off without a glitch. The happy couple did indeed seem happy. All things went as planned, and yet as Beyoncé bounced within the mammoth monitor, one couldn’t help but feel they were being duped by the sentinel of bootylicious, a Stepford wife of hip hop, a mechanical Queen Bey. It was a saccharine gimmick, but a good one, and a damn profitable one, too.