After watching 90 minutes of black men pounding each other into submission we got to spend 15 minutes of a black women pounding us into submission during a musically negligible but emotionally gratifying response to both the setting and to her lip-synching controversy by Beyonce. Yes, folks, for all the special effects the best effect was hearing her pant!
Give credit where credit is due, Beyonce played the songs through, the opening "Crazy For You" and the later singalong with her Destiny Child back up singers were both pretty thorough work outs, and the last song which almost seemed like a breather "Halo" stood alone as just icing on the cake. As if to note that not only does Beyonce not need backing tapes, but she also doesn't need backing dancers though she has them by the dozens.
With, what, 60 Beyonce clones surrounding her and performing synchronized moves she, however, still brings out all the toots and whistles you would expect from Beyonce and it looked terrific, the lights were bright, dazzling blasts of neon and, unlike Madonna last year, she doesn't allow the sights to overwhelm the sounds.
But still, the sounds weren't much: too loud, too bombastic, such a hard sell for such, frankly, iffy material. Who thinks Beyonce is Diana Ross? Who is fooling who? As great as she might be, and I am a fan, though not the fan I was in 2011, like so much of modern R&B it is light on the melody, heavy heavy heavy on the beat. And the beat reverberates on the field, it is not a pleasant sound and in full Sasha Fierce style, Beyonce sounds OK without sounding great. "Halo" isn't "1 And 1" or "Irreplaceable", however good it might be. A lively "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)" was fun in its own limited way.
Still, it started well, "Bills Bills Bills" and "Nuclear" were OK and it ended spectacularly.So all of that not withstanding, Beyonce was better than Madonna, better than the Who or Springsteen, or Prince for that matter. And still, all these half time shows kinda suck. They have to live up to the moment, they need to be bigger than life and lose their human touch.
Grade: B
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