Shot Of Rhythm

[ Wednesday, March 07, 2007 ]

 

The queen B

After a banner 2006, which saw her release of B-DAY (one of the year's very best releases) and a starring role in DREAMGIRLS (where she, to be fair, was blown away by Ms. Jennifer Hudson), you'd think that Beyonce would sit back for awhile, resting on her SI swimsuit-issue cover and her increasingly glorious reputation in American pop life. Yet and still, if the new tracks floating around cyberspace are any indication, The Lady Miss Knowles is gonna squeeze a bit more juice out of her recent creative burst. Here are three tracks from the upcoming special edition of B-DAY, which will both reformulate the original album's track listing and add some fresh stuff. I'm a particular fan of "World Wide Woman," which manages to transcend its strained extended metaphor into being a most serviceable mid-tempo R&B jam, but I also must admit being quite taken by her two Spanish-language tracks. The alliance with fellow pop royalty Shakira on "Beautiful Liar" is - believe it or not - as good in actuality as it is in theory.

It's more than I can hope for to hear as much good music from Beyonce in 2007 as I did in the previous year, but - in what has been a very slow year so far, both creatively and (especially) commercially - I'll take what I can get. You must not know about me.

By the way, I found a couple of these tracks on a fine music blog called Muzik Bone, which you should visit on a regular basis.

"World Wide Woman"

"Amor Gitano" (feat. Alejandro Fernandez)

"Beautiful Liar" (feat. Shakira)

On the box right now: Wilco, SKY BLUE SKY. Yep. More to come...

Peace...

Dove With Claws [6:07 PM]