Beyoncé’s “Be Alive” Tanking Big Time
Clearly, something is not right in the world of Bey. The art funk theme to “King Richard” is not a hit for Bey. It only reached # 3 in Itunes Store and didn’t make the US Top Fifty in Spotify streams yet. In comparison, Taylor Swift has thirteen songs in the top twenty with her “Taylor’s Version” of Red and Adele has been at # 1 in the Billboard 200 for four weeks.
It’s not simply that these are bad numbers (it is too opaque to readily see what the numbers are) but the song has disappeared from sight and indeed never made an impression on the zeitgeist. She is out of time and out of step.
Is this hubris? Beyoncé has spent her time since Lemonade recastigh herself as the embodiment of Black Pride and Woman power, but the music has gone against the grain of neo-R&b, the African power of beats on the excellent The Gift isn’t built for the marketplace although Wizkid and Yemi Alade took the exposure and ran. It wasn’t pop and it wasn’t that popular. The world lost interest and what should have been a storming return to form was a dud.
The moral is the same: if you breakaway from the core, the core might not be waiting… even if you are the biggest star in the world.
