Some of Beyoncé’s most iconic moments have been on an American soccer subject. Her barnstorming 2013 Tremendous Bowl efficiency, full with a Future’s Little one reunion, was outdone by her visitor look throughout Coldplay’s 2016 half-time present as she paid homage to the Black Panthers and freaked out a sizeable part of the US institution (“It’s now ‘cool’ to embrace violence, mayhem and, frankly, even racial separatism in the reason for civil rights,” the rightwing Heritage Basis thinktank fumed on the time). Her 2018 Coachella efficiency, Homecoming, although not on a soccer subject, featured school soccer’s majorettes and marching bands as she celebrated traditionally Black faculties and universities.
On Wednesday – in a Christmas Day half-time present streamed on Netflix from her native Houston because the Texans performed the Baltimore Ravens – she once more used a soccer recreation as someplace for her to interrogate and mess around with American iconography.
Beyoncé is a part of the soccer enterprise: since 2019 her husband Jay-Z’s firm Roc Nation has partnered with the NFL to guide half-time leisure and information its social justice initiatives. (Although Jay-Z has confronted criticism within the function for aligning with an trade that shut out Colin Kaepernick after his taking-the-knee protests in opposition to racially motivated violence.) There’s additionally the latent sense that Beyoncé performs to win, an artist as devoted as an elite sportsperson to bettering her craft, and who, like an elite sportsperson, is the topic of countless fan debates about who’s the best of all time.
The Christmas Day efficiency is the primary stay outing for materials from Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé’s 2024 album that added an entire new self-discipline: nation music. She begins with a recorded phase driving a white horse and carrying a cowboy hat so broad that it might have its personal postcode, singing 16 Carriages as she passes folks standing on horseback, acknowledging the custom of African American horse driving golf equipment across the American south and certainly countrywide. A part of the Cowboy Carter venture has been to firmly underline the contribution of Black Individuals to nation music and tradition (not convincing everybody), and so it’s right here – subsequent up is her cowl of the Beatles’ Blackbird, with a quartet of Black nation backing singers.
Any solemnity is swept away because the in-stadium efficiency begins with Ya Ya, a tune whose complete effusiveness can grate in its studio model however is remodeled stay. Beyoncé has sometimes been responsible of stiffness or boring regality in stay efficiency, however she noticeably loosened up on the Renaissance world tour and continues to be thrillingly rangy right here. She prowls down bleachers full of brass gamers and dancers, her eyes bugging out, her arms mock-testifying, her strikes gleeful and antic within the method of Black artists from Little Richard to Janelle Monaé.
Half-time reveals are all the time stuffed more durable than the day’s turkeys, however this shortly turns into a veritable turducken of hits: a megamix that pulls in My Home then Riiverdance then Candy Honey Buckiin’ with particular visitor Shaboozey. It feels somewhat ungenerous then to not give him even a quick blast of the 12 months’s defining Black nation anthem, A Bar Music (Tipsy).
A bit more room is given to Levii’s Denims, as Beyoncé and Submit Malone sing whereas mooching round a denim-upholstered pickup truck. The whiff of branding thus intensifies, and a few may discover the best way they lean into this tune’s cornpone melodies to be near mockery of the style, however it’s self-knowing and charming sufficient in its silliness.
A banner proclaims we’re in the midst of a “ho-ho-ho down”, and it continues along with her cowl of Jolene. Even Beyoncé stans wrestle to get behind this model, which egregiously adjustments the unique’s dynamic. Beyoncé lets her imperiousness get the higher of her; she merely gained’t be weak and beg in the best way Parton did, and as an alternative merely points threats. Dwell, the marching band drummers and brass sound terrific and provides it some razzle dazzle, however there may be a lot to absorb as lasso tips are performed within the background whereas Beyoncé cruises in a lowrider. It hardly fits this bruised American commonplace.
Everyone seems to be at the least in place, although, for a triumphant ending, with Texas Maintain ’Em proving gorgeously contradictory: there’s one thing down-home and comforting about its beat, like a delicate thwack on the conceal of a trusty previous horse. Solely right here it’s being performed right here with dozens of musicians and dancers, together with, by Beyoncé’s facet, her daughter Blue Ivy. The sensible whiteness of everybody’s garb is dazzling and straightforwardly theatrical, however maybe there’s additionally a wink at how her all-black outfits have been obtained again in 2016.
On the finish she’s held aloft, the phrase “Bang!” unfurled beneath her as if from a cartoon pistol. That playfulness – poking enjoyable at cowboys, even emasculating them – is what riles some nation followers, who see Beyoncé as a vacationer. However that playfulness can also be what’s making her stay reveals such a blast nowadays.
