It’s a Little too Late for You to Come Back

The music industry has been sinking in quick sand for the last couple years, but expect the bleeding to stop this week because Beyoncé has what ails the industry and that is a double album. Yeah so to this point she has yet to fill one album full of great music and her last didn’t have any great songs on it but… wait, I have nothing, this is a bad idea to end all bad ideas.

Granted I Am… Sasha Fierce is only a double album in that it comes in two disks, but combined, the two albums only add up to eleven songs and just over forty minutes. Even the Deluxe Edition and its sixteen songs clock in at just over an hour, something that could easily fit on a single disk. So if we learn one thing from her new album it is Beyoncé hates the environment.

As for the music, the album is split into two separate categories, the I Am section of the album is the slower, mellower portion while her alter ego Sasha Fierce is the more dance oriented part of the album. Sasha Fierce is a complete throw away, like when you buy the Rocky the Complete Collection
and throw away and forget the last two movies never existed, that is what you will want to do to the second disk. They are filled will boring Timbaland wannabe produced songs that rank at the bottom of anything B has ever done before.

I Am is much more respectable, even if nothing really comes close to any of her past glory. The closest comes in the form of Halo, a foot stomping, hand clamping romp that sounds made for a cavernous chapel. For those that put down the extra six bucks for the Deluxe Edition, be sure to go to the end for That’s Why You’re Beautiful, B’s most adventurous song to date, not that that says much.

You would think marriage would change some of the priorities of Beyoncé, but she has stuck too many of the same themes that she has beat to death on her previous album. Despite her nuptials, she still apparently hates the opposite sex mocking us guys on If I Were a Boy. Then there is Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) which calls out those with commitment issues, but as we all know she found one that doesn’t have one. But the most laughable track is Dive which Beyoncé claims is the female version of a hustler. Um, no. But keep trying to convince yourself.

The biggest disappointment comes from Babyface who penned the bland Broken-Hearted Girl. I have been hoping for a Babyface resurgence to save R&B for the mostly unlistenable version of today that relies way too much on hip-hop, but his contribution is the same lifeless tale of I Will Survive that Beyoncé has gone over time and time again. Hopefully ’Face can find that magic touch again, and bring back Boyz II Men when he does. I really miss real R&B.

Song to Download - Halo

I Am… Sasha Fierce gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.