2023-05-11 14:04:00
Successively perched on a lunar module, queen bee, flying on a diamond horse above the crowd, television news presenter, or even popess, “Queen B” delivered a performance of more than three hours to launch her “Renaissance World Tour”, which might exceed the astronomical sum of 2 billion dollars in revenue.
“I’m speechless, it was just incredible, extraordinary,” Shane Barkey, a 31-year-old Irish radio host, told AFP.
“She did not promote her album, so there was a lot of expectation regarding what she was going to do”, underlines the young woman at the end of the concert.
Many fans had come from across the Atlantic, from the United States a lot but also from Brazil, to make sure they were the first to discover the blockbuster, one of the most anticipated of the year.
“I just wanted to tell you: you make me so happy,” Beyoncé said in front of a 60,000-seat stadium devoted to her “queen”.
“I see familiar faces of the people who flew from very, very far to see the first show tonight,” she said, drowning out the cheers of the crowd.
The first, which has been the subject of major rehearsals near Paris and in Stockholm in recent days, has already appeared to the millimeter, without any hiccups.
“I saw her from her first concert (…) There it was still a level above for Beyonce, incredible”, confides Abdul Ibraimoh, a 33-year-old Londoner, who has tickets for London, Barcelona and Miami.
Jackpot?
Several hours before the appearance of the ex-Destiny’s Child, on the stage of the Friends Arena, the large stadium in Stockholm, hundreds of fans had calmed their impatience by singing and dancing in the queues, covered with cowboy hats and rhinestones that make up their idol’s new outfit.
“She’s the queen, that’s why we’re here,” Kasher Bloom, a 36-year-old Latvian from Riga, told AFP.
Announced last February, the tour is the first solo for Beyonce Knowles since 2016, the Covid pandemic having long prevented stadiums from being filled.
“She hasn’t performed for so long, and this is the first concert, and we don’t know anything regarding this one,” explains Gabriel Cardeal, a 27-year-old Brazilian who also purposely went through the Atlantic.
Due to high demand in Stockholm, a second date has been added on Thursday, before the tour continues this weekend in Brussels.
In France, she will be in Paris – for a single date, to the great despair of her French fans – on May 26, then in Marseille on June 11. The tour currently has 57 dates in around 40 cities.
In February, Beyoncé made pop history by surpassing the record for the number of Grammy Awards – the musical equivalent of the Oscars – previously held by bandleader Georg Solti.
But the supreme prize for best album has once once more eluded rapper Jay-Z’s wife, in favor of British popstar Harry Styles.
“Renaissance”, his latest house and dance opus, has 16 tracks, including his latest R&B hit “Cuff it”. He was released last July, further sculpting his statue of the undisputed queen of the dance floor.
At only 41 years old, “Queen B” has extended in three decades an empire which she set out to conquer with the group Destiny’s Child – and her hits “Survivor” and “Say my name” – when she was still a teenager.
However, the Renaissance World Tour jackpot remains to be confirmed. According to Forbes estimates, the tour’s revenue might reach $2.4 billion, but the low end is down to $275 million.
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