For a mega-star known to тιԍнтly control her image, Beyoncé had to deal with a series of distracting controversies as she released her new album this week
The past week should have been a time of unalloyed celebration for Beyoncé’s new album, “Renaissance.”
The reviews for the mega-star’s seventh solo album have been pretty ecstatic, with Vulture saying that her rich, exciting celebration of dance music and “explicit nods to Black queer creative traditions” have put her at the center of pop music.
But the album’s July 29 release has been dogged all week by a series of distracting “mini-scandals,” as the Daily Beast’s senior entertainment editor Kevin Fallon said. None of the scandals, on their own, is enough to undermine the triumph of Beyoncé’s music, but the conflicts and controversies, coming one after the other, have Fallon and other Beyoncé observers taken by surprise, given that she usually maintains her public image with such тιԍнт control.
“The militant nature of the micromanagement” around Beyoncé and another pop diva, Taylor Swift, is “notorious,” Fallon said.
“Their respective publicists are infamous in media circles for the wizard-like swiftness with which they appear to squash, deny, or clarify any unflattering story,” Fallon added, saying, “The most shocking part of the Beyoncé mini-scandals is that there were Beyoncé mini-scandals at all.”
