Beyonce 4 (Sony) | Reviewer's rating: 2.5/5
Beyonce Knowles can sing up a treat, dance like a woman with three hips and five speeds, act perfectly well, co-write songs and run a business that turns over millions. At a pinch she can probably rewire your house and de-flea your dog.
However, what she doesn't have is a sense of humour. Not a skerrick. Does that matter? Last time I looked Weird Al Yankovic was still uglier, poorer and not squiring a fellow mogul like Jay-Z.
Yes, it does matter. Not because she needs to be making jokes or cracking wise but because it would, maybe, stop her taking herself quite so seriously. It might, possibly, remind her of her strengths and weaknesses and exactly why people have bought her records.
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Beyonce's latest album dishes up heavy-handed and predictable songs.
But I doubt it, because Knowles's previous three albums have all suffered from the same issue that begins with the fact that she is not an album artist. Each one has had a handful of cracking pop/R&B singles packaged with pedestrian ballads, corporate filler and an overall attitude that you might call, to borrow a line from her fellow Texan, Governor Rick Perry, a shade of American exceptionalism.
That would explain why for the first third of this album and several times afterwards Knowles goes again and again to the well of what she no doubt thinks of as deep and meaningful, though in reality they are heavy-handed and predictable songs of indomitable spirit, empowerment and trouble-conquering. She sees herself as a soul singer in a line from Aretha to Mary J. Blige.
While she has a big voice, she is too deliberate to bring real heart to a slow waltz such as I Was Here. Even when a song such as I Miss You, which has little more than a bare electronic pulse, gives her the chance to let the song be felt, she pushes it.
Too deliberate ... Beyonce Knowles performs at the Glastonbury Festival on June 26. Photo: Getty Images
Where Knowles then strikes trouble is that the bold and brassy side of her, which produced Single Ladies and Deja Vu, is not firing on all cylinders. Party, which features Andre 3000 of Outkast, never kicks off while End of Time feels stiff-legged for Caribbean-influenced dance music. The best of them, Countdown, throws together brass band, stuttering steps, brief splashes of dancehall and electronica and celebrates its near oddness, but you can't help wondering, what if it had been really odd and boldly different, maybe even funny?
Even less successful is the song presumably intended to fill the ''girl power via hip-shaking dance clip'' Single Ladies hole. Run the World (Girls) borrows from the Timbaland/Missy Elliott bag of tricks of weird sounds, cross-current beats and spiky vocals. The effort is there but unlike Missy at her peak, it never sticks fast. Much like the album, really.
