Beyoncé, Cardiff review — star power on full display as the voice takes centre stage

Cardiff was gripped by Beyoncé fervour. The most madly industrious members of her Beyhive fandom had been queueing since the previous afternoon to get into the Principality Stadium. Sellers hawked pink fluffy Stetsons and fake feather boas. Hotels were booked out for the first UK show of her Renaissance tour, which began in Stockholm earlier this month.

The fervour was real — but it has been accompanied by customary overdrive from the hype machine too. A highly speculative prediction that the 57-date tour will shatter records by grossing more than $2bn has morphed into descriptions of “Beyoncé’s $2bn tour”. Reviews from Stockholm reported a “lavish leap forward” for live entertainment, a trip into the “intergalactic future”. Yet the tour opener also gave cause for concern following an uncharacteristically static performance from the singer. Unfounded rumours of injury emerged, the no-less-fantastic flipside to superlatives about $2bn grosses and lavish leaps.

Cometh the hour in Cardiff, 60,000 people converged on the city-centre stadium. “I told you she’s going to arrive from the ceiling!” said a person behind me as visuals showing winch hooks appeared on the big screen on the stage. The singer promptly materialised on a hidden platform from beneath the stage in an elegant silver Valentino ballgown. Her choice of opening song also seemed intended to wrongfoot. She began not with the kind of banger designed to take an audience by the scruff of the neck, but instead a sequence of ballads.

The first, “Dangerously in Love”, had thuddy drums and blaring volume, but the successors located a slinkier register. The backing band, all dressed in silver too, was no longer all-female, as in Beyoncé’s last solo tour in 2016. She sang with marquee-name star power allied to unshowy technique, as with a deft passage of gospelly vocalising alongside a soloing guitarist in “1+1”. Images of her were magnified on the big screen, which was very big indeed, stretching the width of the stage, and very high definition: a spectacular prop.

With a costume change into a silver mirrored bodysuit — the fashion house this time Courrèges — she returned to play a suite of songs from last year’s Renaissance album. The live band was replaced by electronic beats that sliced through the cavernous venue and great juddering basslines that you could physically feel. This brash, loud sound quality suited the material, which marks Beyoncé’s move from R&B, pop and hip-hop into dance music. Sci-fi visuals unfolded on the screen while lasers criss-crossed the venue.

Renaissance is partly geared for post-Covid dancefloor escapism. It also aims to educate by drawing attention to overlooked black and LGBT+ pioneers in club culture. More than 20 dancers, a mix of body shapes, genders and ethnicities, illustrated the messaging with vogueing and other ballroom moves. Beyoncé occasionally joined the group choreography, but mostly left the dancing to her troupe. There was a noticeable uptick in energy when she promenaded with them around a circular thrust stage with for “Break My Soul”, Renaissance’s hit single, which ended with a neat interpolation of Madonna’s “Vogue”.

Further themed sections followed during the two-and-a-half-hour setlist. Each had its own outfit, including one classic, a Loewe diaphanous bodysuit with art-deco hands printed in strategic places. Set pieces tended to make the singer an immobile centre of attention. She sat on top of a silver military vehicle for a sequence of hip-hop-accented numbers, beginning with the Black Lives Matter anthem “Black Parade”. A series of seductive slow jams starting with “Plastic off the Sofa” found her lying on an aphrodisial round bed with a scallop headboard.

There’s a definite incongruity to Beyoncé making a dance album for whose tour she is dancing less than usual. The explanation lay in her vocal performance. There was a lot of singing, in a versatile range of tones and genres. She sounded live and unfiltered, unlike the covert trickery often used at stadium shows. An almost scat-like passage of scurrilous vocal abandon in “Heated” was, she remarked, her favourite moment in the show.

For the final song, “Summer Renaissance”, she was hoisted above the audience on a horse, like Bianca Jagger at Studio 54, while singing high notes in the style of Donna Summer. This tribute to the archetypal disco diva — she who reigns at the heart of mechanistic electronic music with a volcanic display of human feeling — summed up the purpose of the show. It has been designed around the reach of Beyoncé’s voice: her literal voice, not the figurative one of the hype machine.

★★★★☆

Tour continues to September, beyonce.com