Beyonce: Turns out Houston police sirens go waaaah, waaaah, waaaah

So Beyonce played a gig in Houston last night, and protestors turned up.

Did the police take steps to ensure the protest remained peaceful?

Well, not really. It was the police who were protesting:

Members of the Coalition of Police and Sheriffs (Cops) stood a mile away from the NRG Stadium and shone a blue light towards the venue.

They were protesting about Beyonce's Formation video, which they claim is "anti-police".

This is "anti-police" in the sense of "how dare you criticise the behaviour of any police anywhere", of course. There's a lot of that about, and it doesn't really do anyone any good. If COPS (seriously? That's the name of your protest gang?) want to ensure that the police get the respect they deserve, they might want to think about shining their blue light in the other direction.

Beyonce makes the poor right-wing heads hurt

Poor right-wingers. There they were, enjoying their Superbowls, probably chuckling a little - "look, someone on Twitter has posted a picture of an owl with a monocle because it's a superb owl" and then Beyonce happened.

Pretzels were spat out. Hot dogs dashed to ground. Amusing pictures of owls wearing top hats went unretweeted as the very LOLZ went out of the moment.

Beyonce had brought politics into the Superbowl. And that isn't allowed. How can you sully a sporting event by turning it into a political platform?

Well, obviously that would be different.

But you can't have the NFL's showcase being used to promote an ideology, can you?

The NFL reportedly accepted millions of dollars from the defence department over the course of three years in exchange for honouring troops and veterans before games, the New Jersey Star Ledger reports.

The Pentagon reportedly signed contracts with 14 NFL teams — including the New York Jets, the Indianapolis Colts and the Baltimore Ravens — between 2011-2012 stipulating that teams would be paid sums ranging from $US60,000-$US1 million each (in federal taxpayer money) to pause before the start of games and salute the city’s “hometown heroes,” according to nj.com.

Well, obviously, that would be different, probably.

Amongst the first to rush to the microphones to suggest that saying policemen shouldn't kill black people on a whim was somehow a controversial idea was former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani, a man who nowadays spends his time running Presidential Campaigns in his head:

Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani blasted Beyoncé’s Black Panther Party tribute at the Super Bowl, calling the performance an “attack [on] police officers.”

“I thought that she used it as a platform to attack police officers, who are the people who protect her and protect us and keep us alive,” Giuliani said Monday on Fox and Friends.

“What we should be doing, in the African-American community and in all communities, is build up respect for police officers and focus on the fact that when something does go wrong, okay, we’ll work on that,” Giuliani said.

Yeah, come on Beyonce, what more do you want? If the police accidentally choke a black man to death, or shoot him dead, Rudy's saying they'll certainly add it to some sort of list of things they need to think about. Let's not suggest that police need to earn respect rather than be gifted it, right?

Elsewhere on Breitbart - which is pretty much like Craigslist for Americans who believe their income levels means they can have their racism reclassified as "simple common sense" - the inability of the right to hold more than one idea in their minds at a time is displayed in the way they assume nobody else can, either:

But the pop star might have been late to the performance if she hadn’t received a highway-clearing police escort to deliver her to Levi’s Stadium on time.

As some users pointed out on Twitter, police cleared the highway so that Beyoncé could make it to Santa Clara without sitting in pesky game-day traffic
[...]
But during the Super Bowl halftime show, the pop star performed a full-scale tribute to Black Lives Matter and the militant, anti-law enforcement Black Panthers, with her backup dancers clad in Panther uniforms with fists raised in the “black power” salute.
[...]
Needless to say, social media users were eager to weigh in on the pop star’s apparent hypocrisy.

Needless to say.

The possibility that you can see that some police behaving badly and out of control doesn't mean that all police officers are like that doesn't exist in the minds of Breitbart, its readers or some social media users, needless to say.

That you can say 'stop shooting us' without it meaning 'I believe that every single police officer will shoot an unarmed black person at the earliest opportunity'.

That Beyonce isn't attacking the police, she's attacking the police for not doing more to ensure that those officers who are trigger-happy, or choke-happy, and, yes, racist as fuck, don't remain within the ranks and when they commit crimes, get punished for those crimes.

That's not hypocrisy. Knowing it isn't hypocritical, but pretending you believe it is? That's actual hypocrisy.

Tidal already trying to shore itself up as the, erm, tide goes out

I suppose Tidal's USP is that its incredibly wealthy owners make music, so it's probably no surprise that Beyonce has chosen Tidal to "surprise release" a new song.

(Are we still surprised at people releasing music without three months of run-up and hoopla before? Isn't that just how things are done nowadays?)

Rumours that the song goes "if you like it then you shoulda built a paywall round it" could not be confirmed at time of publication.

The backing singer suing Beyonce isn't the key bit of the story

Javon, a backing singer, claims in a lawsuit that Beyonce pinched XO off him. Not directly, apparently, Javon gave the song to someone else (apparently the third party was backing someone else with Javon, and then went on to back up Beyonce.)

That's not really interesting. Nor is the idea that Javon thinks he's reached the sort of status where he only needs one name.

What's shocking is this bit:

Javon is asking for millions in damages from Knowles in the handwritten complaint that he filed in New York without a lawyer. The judge granted him “pauper” status — which waives his court fees — because he said he makes just $2,800 a month working for Carnival Cruise Lines.

That's what's scandalous here. Not that Beyonce may or may not have stolen a song, but that pay on Carnival Cruise Lines is so crappy their staff are officially classed as paupers.

Carnival Cruise Lines pay their people so poorly, judges waive their court costs.

Javon, you're directing your anger at the wrong person.

Man doesn't know who Jay-Z is; MTV literally can't believe it

Beyonce and Jay-Z are in Paris and are surrounded by a hullabaloo. The hullabaloo has, in turn, attracted its own hullabaloo, in the midst of which was someone interested, but not sure what he was witnessing.

MTV's Maurice Bobb just doesn't believe this:

Free life lesson: if you’re going to film Jay Z and Beyoncé taking daughter Blue Ivy on a private tour of The Louvre in Paris, you should at least know who they are.

I suppose that's sort-of true; but it's not true if all you're doing is filming a hubbub, you might only need to know there's a hubbub.

A tourist-turned-wannabe paparazzo made a major faux pas when he tried to get footage of the On The Run Tour headliners making their way into the historic French museum.

Pleasetellmehedidn'tcallBeyonceKelly. Pleasetellmehedidn'tcallBeyonceKelly. Pleasetellmehedidn'tcallBeyonceKelly. Pleasetellmehedidn'tcallBeyonceKelly.

Oh, hang on, he didn't. As his "major faux pas" was "not recognising some people":

“Who is he?” the cameraman asked about the world-renowned rapper from Brooklyn.

There's something happening. Asking what's happening doesn't seem to be a faux pas; it seems to be a sensible thing to do. It's not like recognising Jay-Z is - yet - taught to every school child on the planet.

The Magna Carta… Holy Grail MC then gave the best response ever as he walked by with his daughter in his arms and his super-famous wife — who was busy taking photos of her own — trailing behind.

Hold on. The best response ever? I'm really hoping this will be "I'm Solange Knowles' brother-in-law", or maybe "I dunno, the nurses told me, like, six times this morning, but it just won't stick", or "I'm Elvis, but don't tell anyone, they get over-excited", or "are you the only person who doesn't watch Keeping Up With The Kardashians?" But, hey, I'm an amateur. Jay-Z is a professional. Let's hear this zinging comeback - a comeback which, according to MTV's Maurice Bobb - outstrips anything Churchill, Parker or Wilde ever came up.

“Who are you?” he retorted with the steeliest gaze this side of Marcy Projects.

Oh.

I suppose to be fair, he is on holiday.

The uninformed videographer tried to laugh it off, but come on. Has this guy literally never seen or heard about hip-hop’s royal family?

It's hard to say, Maurice, but it's quite possible he's heard of Beyonce and Jay-Z, but not been interested enough to look at any photos.

Has he even heard of the Internet?

Maurice, not everyone has Beyonce.com as the homepage on their laptops. Obviously, those AOL free sign-up CDs installed a rolling Jay-Z ticker on top of your Internet Explorer 4, but since they stopped shipping it has been possible to go online, often for minutes at a time, without ever once looking at anything to do with Beyonce.

Beyonce crosses the Madonna Horizon

Beyonce has, after a period of silence, turned her attention to the most famous elevator fracas since that doctor discovered Damien's blood was like a jackal's.

That she's bothered at all is disappointing; like Thor, the mighty God of Thunder taking time out his busy schedule to explain a hailstorm in Chislehurst last summer.

But she's decided to rap about the scuffle between Solange and Jay-Z. So, what was going on, Beyonce?

We escalatin', up in this bitch like elevators
Of course sometimes shit goes down when there's a billion dollars on an elevator

First of all, as explanations go, this doesn't hold water - I'm pretty certain that if Solange had got out at the next floor, there would still have been a billion dollars in that lift, and there wouldn't have been a shin-kicking farrago.

But let's take Beyonce at her word, because this is a sad, historic moment. The point where Beyonce has become so rich and famous and powerful that she has forgotten how to be relatable. The point, then, where she crossed the Madonna Horizon.

On this side of the Madonna Horizon, Beyonce would have been rapping about families, and how you know what families are like, and what can you do, eh? But once across the Madonna Horizon, you turn into this:

Scientists believe that as you pass through the Madonna Horizon, you're suddenly convinced that the world wants to see a photo of you being taken from behind by Vanilla Ice.

So, then: now we know. If you put rich people into a confined space, there's going to be an almighty scrap. This is why you don't see billionaires on the tube, by the way: imagine if three bank CEOs got in the same carriage on the Underground. It'd be carnage before you got out the station.

Naturally, the richer you get, the further you have to keep apart. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are forbidden from being in the same state, as with all that cash just a few miles apart could trigger an earthquake.

It's our fault, people. We've given all this money to the Knowles-Z family. In effect, we're no better than medieval peasants forcing chickens to fight for our entertainment. I hope we're all ashamed.

Beyonce is put into a museum

Exciting news from Elle:

Beyonce's hotness is now being honored at a major museum: http://t.co/qlaYhwl6go pic.twitter.com/Mg1r1gugp1

— ELLE Magazine (US) (@ELLEmagazine) July 21, 2014

You'll note it's her "hotness" rather than her successes as a musician, entertainer or businesswoman that Elle thinks is being celebrated.

Still, this is a "major museum" - which could it be? The Smithsonian? The V&A? Maybe even the Guggenheim?

Which is it, Elle?

32-year-old Beyoncé isn't eligible for induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame until 2022, but that hasn't stopped the museum from putting on an exhibit celebrating Queen B.

Oh. So it's a bunch of her outfits down by the Cleveland docks. This is news on a par with "is being added to the waxworks at Tussaurds."

Beyonce springs a Christmas surprise

'Releasing records without prior announcement' is the new 'putting a record onto the torrents, pretending it's leaked, making a fuss, and then "bringing forward" the "original release date" in line with the marketing plan'.

Beyonce has just blitzreleased a new album, just in time for Christmas - although, you'll note, way too late for Hanukkah.

Sorry, did I say album? I forgot that this release come pre-wrapped with some old bollocks:

Beyonce Unexpectedly Releases New Self-Titled 'Visual Album' on iTunes

Yes, this is a 'visual album' which you might want to see as an astonishing new development in music, or else something that Thomas Dolby did in 1994 with The Gate To The Minds Eye.

It's fair to say that while the world is thrilled to have a new Beyonce album, and impressed at the idea of lobbing the thing out when it's ready, rather than running a long build-up campaign, the "visual album" aspect is going down like a high concept in a low crowd.

Here's how Beyonce describes it:

"I see music," Beyonce said in a video announcing the album on her Facebook page, dubbed "Self-Titled, Part 1." “It’s more than just what I hear. When I’m connected to something, I immediately see a visual or a series of images that are tied to a feeling or an emotion, a memory from my childhood, thoughts about life, my dreams or my fantasies. And they’re all connected to the music.”

CMU's Andy Malt was unimpressed:

In the PR, Beyoncé talks about the experience of listening to music triggering images in her mind tied to memories, emotions and dreams.

— Andy Malt (@andymalt) December 13, 2013

They missed off the end of the quote where she says "Because I am the only person this happens to, I made videos for ever song on the album"

— Andy Malt (@andymalt) December 13, 2013

There is a possibility that Beyonce has rushed this one out because she was feeling uncomfortable at the prospect of six months of marketing meeetings where everyone else in the room tried not to snicker as she outlined her vision.

Beyonce banned from graves, only not really

The Mail has glossed the results of Beyonce's bad behaviour at the Pyramids:

Beyonce 'banned' from Pyramids by Egypt's Indiana Jones after her 'stupid and rude' behaviour

By "Egypt's Indiana Jones", they mean "an Egyptian archaeologist who loves himself a bit", Zahi Hawass. And by "banned", if you read the Independent version, it turns out they mean that he withdrew an offer to show her around:

"She said she would come at 3pm but she came late. I said 'You have to say I'm sorry I'm late'. But she didn't open her mouth," continued Dr Hawass, credited with modernising the management of Egypt's ancient sites and who claims to have repatriated 6,000 artefacts "stolen" by Western powers.

"I brought a photographer and she also had a photographer and a guard. When my photographer started to shoot, he said 'No, Stop! I am the one who says yes or no, not you.' I said 'In that case since you almost hit my photographer and you are not polite - out! I am not giving you the privilege of having you on my tour.' I said Beyoncé was stupid and I left."

Actually, "Beyonce told she is stupid" is both a more accurate and more interesting headline than the suggestion that she has somehow been "banned" from the World Heritage Site.

Fran Healy is pissed at Beyonce

Travis shared a backstage area with Beyonce at a festival. Or they tried to:

Healy tells the Daily Record, "Beyonce locked down the entire backstage area for an hour. Everyone was affected. You'd ask, 'Can I just go there?' and they'd say, 'No. You can't cross this little street'.

"Everyone was just following orders from the gang. I guess that's how Americans do it but it's not how we do it in the U.K. She was headlining the main stage and was half an hour late. The whole area was cut off as if there had been a nuclear disaster."

It's true. Fran never behaved like that when he was famous.

Gordon in the morning: Fizzy

This morning, Gordon Smart seems to be running a nothing story about Beyonce simply as an excuse to crowbar in her Pepsi advert:

THIS could be good news for BEYONCE fans.
Thousands were left disappointed at the weekend after tickets to her UK tour sold out in just 12 minutes.

But you can bet that isn’t the last of it and she’ll play another big gig this summer.

And no doubt she will be bringing loads of promotional Pepsi stuff with her, like this pop art-style ad, below right.

I suppose you could, at a stretch, suggest the ticket sales story was worth a report, but the Sun had already run one, and this happened on Saturday, so if it was news, surely it should have appeared in The News Of The World Whoops No It's Not Called That Since We Were Caught Listening To A Murdered Child's Phone Calls On Sunday?

So what's with the unpaid Pepsi ad? Could it be an attempt to sweeten relations with Team Beyonce after Saturday's somewhat less than positive story on the tickets?

Beyonce open and closed her mouth perfectly

Everyone agreed - and by "everyone" I mean "people I follow on Twitter who expressed an opinion" - that Beyonce nailed it at the Obama inauguration.

Now it turns out she got some help being note-perfect when you've actually already done the song and were just miming.

Does it matter? Not really, in the sense that Obama was only miming the inauguration anyway - the actual swearing had been done the day before, and if Barack was just opening and closing his mouth for a performance he'd done earlier.

On the other hand: what was all that 'pulling the earpiece out' business? If she'd been singing live, that would have been a brilliant moment - "Beyonce doesn't need the monitors".

Instead, it turns out to have been a bit of empty theatre.

So Beyonce didn't nail it. She was just very good at using a shortcut. She No More Nailed it.

Gordon in the morning: XX xoxoxo

Aw, here's a nice story from Gordon for a change. I say "from Gordon", he's copied it out of Q Magazine, but still. The XX are really in love with pop:

OLIVER Sim from The XX wants to work with Beyonce.

He told Q magazine: “The super-pop thing that supposedly died with Michael Jackson is still there, with Beyonce.

“I saw her at Glastonbury and I may have shed a tear. Writing a song for her, that’s the dream.”

Actually - at the moment - Beyonce has eclipsed Jackson simnply by virtue of quality control.

Destiny's Child: They're coming back... eventually. Possibly.

Destiny's Child are back, back, back.

Actually, they're not. In fact, all we're being promised by Beyonce's dad Matthew Knowles is two back-catalogue albums. But he didn't get where he is today without knowing how to market, so he dangled a possible reunion so far in the future that everyone will forget it was ever promised if it doesn't happen in the end:

Will there be a Destiny’s Child reunion tour to complement the two projects?

Not on the first release. It takes a year of planning to do these tours, but first it starts with the artist wanting to do it. And I think the ladies are still working happily in their solo careers. And I hope in the next five years that there is a reunion tour. I think it would be incredible. The hardest thing would be choosing which songs they’re going to do, because we would want to mix it up with solo hits and Destiny’s Child hits. We would have to throw away some number ones from off the set list [Laughs].

If you read that carefully, I think Knowles is saying that he hopes at some point in the next four years the individual Childs will become unhappy in their solo careers, doesn't he?

Beyonce: Crazy in print

Here's a headline to make you swell with pride:

Beyonce Wins Journalism Award

I guess it's balancing things out after Peter Oborne won Best Album at this year's Brits.

Still, let's not be too quick to assume this is a tiresome prize designed to attract attention to the gifting organisation even while undermining the people they're actually supposed to represent. What was this sequel to Watergate for which Beyonce has won?

The Crazy In Love hitmaker took a nine-month extended vacation in 2010 to spend time with her family, visit museums, attend concerts and learn how to cook.

She documented her experiences for Essence magazine in a 2011 article titled "Eat, Play, Love" - a play on the title of the book Eat, Pray, Love, which became a movie starring Julia Roberts.

The piece impressed officials at the New York Association of Black Journalists, who have now honoured the star with a writing prize for her efforts.

Yes, the New York Association Of Black Journalists has given Beyonce a prize for a superannuated "what I did on my holidays".

Gordon in the morning: Off-colour

How can you tell when you're just running a pap snap for the sake of it, and not because there's even a slither of a story attached?

Yes, having to change the colour of your headline in a bid to add some sort of interest. That'd be a clue.

Beyonce gets an honour

Grammys are fine, Brits are like Grammys but not quite as good, but surely no honour can be higher than that gifted to Beyonce: Having a horsefly named after her.

The fly probably drinks blood and so survives by sucking off horses. However, it has two similarities with Beyonce: it was discovered the year she was born, and... what was it, Bryan Lessard, that led you to the name?

He says he wanted to pay respect to the insect’s beauty by naming it Scaptia (Plinthina) beyonceae.

Lessard said Beyonce would be “in the nature history books forever” and that the fly now bearing her name is “pretty bootylicious” with its golden backside.

Hang about - an Australian fly with a distinctive golden arse?

Someone's going to be angry as hell...

Gordon in the morning: Bitch this, bitch that was the flavor of the month

Another one of those days when Gordon's lead story is, erm, transcribing Jay-Z lyrics. Apparently Mr Z has realised that throwing the word "bitch" around isn't on:

The ode, which is doing the rounds in the US, includes the lines: "Before I got in the game, made a change and got rich/I didn't think hard about using the word bitch/I rapped, I flipped it, I sold it, I lived it/Now with my daughter in this world I curse those that give it."

It continues: "I never realised while on the fast track that I'd give riddance to the word bitch/To leave her innocence intact/No man will degrade her, or call her name/Forever young you may pass/Blue Ivy Carter, my angel."

Gordon, of course, stands up every single story he runs, ever - he told the Leveson enquiry so much while under oath. It makes it a little strange, then, that he adds this:

Last night some Jay-Z fans were questioning whether the poem was legit after refusing to believe he'd go that far.

Actually, more or less as soon the poem appeared people questioned if it was genuine. Which means that not only is Smart leading his column transcribing a poem, it's a poem that even he admits he has no idea if it's a real one or not.

This is, of course, a paper from the same stable that ran The Hitler Diaries with a little story going 'ooh, actually these might be made up'.

It is an interesting story if it is true, although the poem could be real without the emotions being genuine - unless Jay-Z intends to remove all the songs that use "bitch" and "woman" as synonym from his back catalogue, there's a big 'so what?'

More interesting still to see Smart try to explain why the story is worth our attention even if it isn't a real one:

Whether it is or not, Beyonce will be all for Jay cleaning up his language.

'It doesn't matter if this is a story based on a falsehood, as I suspect someone I don't know would want it to be true'. Classic.

Beyonce ruins birth experience for less-rich mothers

Congratulations to Beyonce and Jay-Z, of course. But, boy, did you really have to be such douches to everyone else who needed to use the hospital?

The New York Times reports:

The familiar area outside the neonatal unit had been transformed: partitions had been put up, the maternity ward windows were completely covered, and even the hospitals’ security cameras had been taped over with paper. Guards with Secret Service-style earpieces roamed the floor.

“We were told we could walk no further,” Ms. Nash-Coulon said Monday. And when she and her husband, Neil, demanded an explanation, she added, the guard claimed, unconvincingly, “ ‘Well, they’re handling hazardous materials,’ ” even as a large group of people screened from view were passing through the main hallway he had declared off-limits.

The most worrying aspect of this is the shutting off of the hospital's security cameras. Sure, Beyonce had people. Who was looking after the other kids?

Gordon in the morning: Something is growing inside, but we don't talk about it, do we?

Some pretty weak stuff about Beyonce this morning, as Gordon runs a photo given to him by ITV to puff a programme this weekend:

No sign of the baBey

By GORDON SMART, Showbiz Editor

ANY pregnant women watching A Night With Beyonce on TV this Sunday will want to know where she got this maternity get-up.

The singer is eight months pregnant but appears perfectly slim on the ITV1 show.

Goodness! Has Gordon stumbled onto something here?

It's sure to fire internet rumour

Yes, the one that claims that - like Gordon's old boss, Rebekah Phonehakah Brooks - Beyonce has got a surrogate parent on the books. So is this solid evidence, Gordon?

but she's actually only bump-less because it was recorded back in the summer.

In other words, Gordon has run a piece saying "look, this woman doesn't look eight months pregnant because, erm, she wasn't eight months pregnant."

Even an internet conspiracy nut wouldn't bother with that. Although it's good enough for The Sun, it seems.