14 DAY TRIAL // Beyonce and Jay Z brought their On The Run tour last night to San Francisco, for a performance scheduled to close the North American leg of their current string of concerts at the AT&T Stadium. The reviews are mixed so far, and whether the concert was a hit or not greatly depends on who you ask.
The San Francisco Gate newspaper can't make up its mind and opts to call the performance “loud and erratic,” proving that there isn't really that much feeling left between the two singers. Don't get us wrong though, Beyonce and Jay Z performed flawlessly on stage, proving once more that they are complete professionals and that they are never going to let their personal life interfere with their career.
The first complaint was that the music was turned up way too loud. If you go on Twitter, you're going to see a lot of people living a fair distance from AT&T Stadium complain about the noise on the night of the event, particularly the base. And if people that weren't even in the stadium complained, you can imagine what those standing next to the speakers felt.
Since the divorce rumors have been holding the headlines of gossip columns for months now, people were especially keen to see the chemistry between the two singers. But if you were looking for sideway glances and uncomfortable chemistry on stage, you were waiting in vain.
Ever the professionals, Beyonce and Jay Z did their best to keep up appearances, “smiling politely at each other, gently holding hands and trading a few verses as if they actually enjoyed it,” according to the same newspaper. Of course, one can't help but remember that both singers stand to make a decent fortune from this concert, a reported over one hundred million in all.
For those who paid attention to the smaller signs, the evidence of a tension between the two was there. No matter how hard each try to fight for the public's attention, the other one would immediately come in and try to cramp his style.
Some people found it annoying that Beyonce kept singing ballad after ballad, basically bringing down the entire audience, and others noticed that there wasn't that much chemistry between the two singers, which in the end impacted negatively on audiences who felt they were witnessing two sullen children who were forced by their parents to play nice with each other.
Other than that, the show was entertaining. There are a lot of visual interludes, a clear nod to Beyonce's recent video album, though some of you might find it disconcerting that Beyonce still needs to flaunt her derrière so much these days, when she's clearly established herself as one of the heavyweights of the industry.