PHILADELPHIA — Beyoncé's South Philly Renaissance began with a prelude.
Before darkness fell on Lincoln Financial Field on Wednesday, an enormous video screen showed a TV test pattern, cleverly reworked to include colors of the Progress Pride Flag celebrating the LGBTQ community.
That screen became an image of a cloudy blue sky, and then — as the anticipation of the sellout crowd turned into ecstasy — it was filled in with a stadiumwide image of Beyoncé herself.
And then there she was, at 8:45 p.m. sharp.
In a short black Givenchy dress, uttering the words that her mostly female, significantly queer, impressively diverse, sequin-clad and bedazzled cowboy hat-wearing audience longed to hear: “I love you, Philadelphia.”
From there, the opening segment of the first U.S. show of the Renaissance Tour — named after the pulsating 2022 album that draws on the history of dance music and club culture, spotlighting Black gay creators — was surprisingly old school.
The two-and-a-half-hour spectacularly entertaining show started off with “Dangerously In Love,” a Destiny’s Child song that became the title cut of Beyoncé's first solo album in 2003. The six-song segment was a ballad-singing masterclass, backed by an eight-piece band.
It was intentionally presented as an intimate intro to an evening that would soon enough get bigger than life.
The 41-year-old singer sat atop a piano while Emily Bear played “1 + 1,” growled into the bluesy “I’m Goin’ Down” (a Rose Royce song later covered by Mary J. Blige), and exchanged vocal runs with guitarist Agape Jerry on “I Care,” veering towards hair metal.
None of those songs are from "Renaissance," and none are among Beyoncé's biggest hits. (And though the Renaissance Tour include plenty of hits, it is by no means a “greatest hits” tour.)
But by beginning without immediately hitting the audience with outsized production numbers, it allowed her to present herself as an actual human being who just happens to be a culture-shifting global pop star.
It also allowed her to sing an abbreviated show-stopping “River Deep, Mountain High,” a tribute added to the Renaissance set list after Tina Turner’s death in May.
Then, it was “Alien Superstar” time. And that’s when the state-of-the-art Afrofuturist spectacle of Beyoncé's first solo tour in seven years really began.
She made her second entrance seated, a particularly stylish extraterrestrial cyborg. Rising from her throne in a sexy silver spacesuit, the band was replaced by 20 dancers in matching outfits, headed to the catwalk to take to the crowd.
The aesthetic mashed up Fritz Lang’s "Metropolis" with more modern sci-fi movies like "The Fifth Element" and "The Terminator."
Thumping house music made bodies move, with a theme of uniqueness. We are all our own special, one-of-a-kind entities, with Beyoncé being just a little more unique than everybody else.
“I’m one of one, I’m number one, I’m the only one,” she sang, emphasizing a point incontrovertibly apparent.
But while trumpeting her unicorn status, the Queen also enraptured her Beyhive in the way that "Renaissance" had hopefully intended by birthing the kind of joyful, communal space that the COVID lockdown created a longing for.
"Renaissance" is about self-acceptance and the aspiration to be “comfortable in your own skin,” as Beyoncé sang during “Cozy,” which phrased it this way: “You’re a god, you’re a hero, you’ve survived everything you’ve been through.”
It was self-esteem boosting with a sprinkling of “rainbow gelato” and “limoncello glycerine.”
Sounds delicious, and for the most part, it was. Beyoncé’s one-of-one combination of talents were everywhere on display.
For the traditional-minded, she consciously placed herself in a long Black music lineage, not only with the Rose Royce and Tina Turner covers, but also a showcase of Philadelphia-born soul man Frankie Beverly’s “Before I Let Go.”
Other nods to vintage R&B and pop included a snippet of the Jackson 5′s “I Want You Back” in a version of “Love on Top” that turned into a mass singalong.
Backup singers Tiffany Ryan, Karyn Porter, Natalie Imani, and Tayler Green got to step out with Diana Ross’ 1976 disco hit “Love Hangover” during a changeover.
The most hip-hop focused segment of the show was subtitled “Opulence.” It was introduced with a spoken-word interlude featuring Philly ballroom legend Kevin JZ Prodigy.
During “My Power,” Beyoncé’s 11-year-old daughter, Blue Ivy, joined the dancers, showing off her moves in camouflage chic.
Beyoncé’s skills as a rapper are often underestimated. On the Megan Thee Stallion collaboration “Savage (Remix),” she threw down with force, rapping while crouched atop an armored vehicle.
And her flow was intricate on “Heated,” during which fans cooled themselves with folding fans emblazoned with the song’s name, available for $40 at the merch stand. They came in handy; it was a warm night.
The special effects were dazzling. Though in the social media era, the wow factor of spectacular staging is dimmed.
Yes, it was pretty cool to see the actual Beyoncé suspended by wires and floating above the crowd on a platinum horse during the Donna Summer sampling “Summer Renaissance” encore.
But most fans had already seen it on TikTok, so shortly after liftoff, they made their way to exits in hopes of beating epic traffic.
The attention to detail in the staging was thoroughly impressive. Perhaps the truest line Beyoncé sang all night long was in “Cuff It”: “I’m a seasoned professional.”
Costumes were clever, most notably during a segment in which Beyoncé posed inside a scallop shell — a nod to Botticelli’s "Birth of Venus" — while the star and dancers were dressed as bees.
Her Queen’s outfit included a headdress, complete with antenna. It was a little unclear however, what that had to do with “America Has A Problem.”
Dancers dazzled, showing out with an extended showcase before the encore.
Beyoncé strutted with swagger and confidence, but didn’t dance as much as on previous tours. (The BeyHive speculation is that she might have suffered a leg injury earlier this year. If so, it didn’t hamper the overall effectiveness of the show.)
The highlight came halfway through with “Break My Soul,” the lead single from "Renaissance" that deals in a Beyoncé speciality: resilience.
The song is marvelously efficient and motivating on its own, with Robin S. and Big Freedia samples and thumping bass pushing us all towards a “new salvation.”
Then “The Queens Remix” version of the song melded it with Madonna’s “Vogue,” shouting out Black women music makers including Philadelphians Santigold, Tierra Whack, and Jill Scott.
With their names in lights, there was strength in numbers, and the Renaissance was in full effect. No souls would be broken. Beyoncé sounded indomitable.
Set list
1. “Dangerously In Love”
2. “Flaws and All”
3. “1 + 1″
4. “I’m Goin’ Down”
5. “I Care”
6. “River Deep, Mountain High”
RENAISSANCE
7. “I’m That Girl”
8. “Cozy”
9. “Alien Superstar”
10. “Lift Off”
MOTHERBOARD
11. “Cuff It”
12. “Energy”
13. “Break My Soul / The Queens Remix”
OPULENCE
14. “Formation”
15. “Diva”
16. “Run the World (Girls)”
17. “My Power”
18. “Black Parade”
19. “Savage (Remix)”
20. “Partition”
ANOINTED
21. “Church Girl”
22. “Get Me Bodied”
23. “Before I Let Go”
24. “Rather Die Young”
25. “Love on Top”
26. “Crazy in Love”
ANOINTED – PART 2
27. “Plastic Off the Sofa”
28. “Virgo’s Groove”
29. “Naughty Girl”
30. “Move”
31. “Heated”
MIND CONTROL
32. “America Has a Problem”
33. “Pure/Honey”
ENCORE
34. “Summer Renaissance”
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