Dear Gossips,
This time of year is all about lists as we review the twelve preceding months and most entertainment outlets and review boards and critics associations come up with what they consider to be the best in culture: film, television, books, music, and more.
At the top or near the top of every music list of 2022 is the Queen of Culture, Beyoncé and her album, Renaissance. Rolling Stone put Renaissance at #1 as did Pitchfork, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, and NPR. As always, Beyoncé’s work inspires scholarship, and NPR’s year-end analysis of Renaissance by Ann Powers, Daphne A Brooks, and Danyel Smith is a GREAT read.
Renaissance is without question the most acclaimed album of the year and she is the most nominated artist this Grammy season, although we don’t really know what that means specifically for Beyoncé, whether or not she actually cares, and if she’ll even show up, because… we don’t know anything at all. We’re basically two weeks from the end of the year and she’s still making us wait on those visuals. At this point we might have to just accept that the visuals might not come in 2022. They may never f-cking come at all. I mean, it's not like she needs them. The album is a smash hit. We’ve been listening to the album non-stop since it dropped, we didn’t need the visuals. But also, as she says on “Break My Soul”, Beyoncé is “sleepin’ real good at night”. Because she has released the stress. She’s the one out here living by her own lyrics – and I guess that’s the point; if you’re going to put out a song about finding a new way to live and work, there’s no sense in not finding a new way to live and work.
So here we are, as usual, with no idea what Beyoncé is doing. She’s been SO quiet. There have been no Instagram posts in over a month. There have been no announcements. We know there’s a tour next year because she auctioned off a package at Miss Tina’s Wearable Art Gala but what that tour is called, and when that tour will start, and where that tour will take her remains a secret. And it’s not that I’m getting impatient, I would never dare, obviously. It’s just that… at work, we have to consider our vacation blocks, like when to take time off and submit the dates for approval and I don’t want to touch the calendar just in case I end up booking a trip right when she comes to town. I can’t be the only one, right? During a Beyoncé touring year, she has influence over our schedules. And our budgets. Because whatever she’s been preparing, it’s going to be worth it. That’s the one guarantee of 2023.
Yours in gossip,
Lainey