Still crazy in love! A tour de force from Bey and Jay
Review
Beyoncé And JAY-Z — On The Run II
Principality Stadium, Cardiff ★★★★★
THE most famous married couple in the world right now (apart from maybe Harry and Meghan) first hit the road with their On The Run Tour in 2014. A lot has happened since then.
Four years ago, Beyoncé and JAY-Z were promoted as the music world’s Bonnie and Clyde, shooting loving looks across a glittering stage.
Now, after pretty clear proof of JAY-Z’s infidelity (and two smash-hit albums from each party discussing it), Bey and Jay’s steel-clad bond is in need of some welding.
While Jay’s cheating and Bey’s subsequent calling-out via her visual album Lemonade was alluded to throughout the show, the opening night of the tour was overwhelmingly a perfectly produced celebration of the couple’s apparently realigned love.
It also coincided with claims they have renewed their wedding vows (hinted at via the big screen).
Different eras of the couple’s musical careers bounced through the set list (think everything from Formation to 99 Problems), with the onslaught of well-delivered smash hits broken up by a series of cinematic shorts on an enormous screen.
Footage showed the pair canoodling on a paradise island, an argument in an exotic sitting room and Beyoncé seducing JAY-Z in bed as he looked on through a Super-8 camera.
While these highly produced films felt intimate, the most candid moments came at the end of the show, when a montage of touching (and mercifully not too saccharine) home videos showed daughter Blue Ivy and two babies. (The jury’s still out on whether they were the couple’s one-year-old twins Rumi and Sir.)
The affection in the room was palpable. Whatever you make of their artfully spun romance, the devotion from their crazy-in-love fans was impossible to deny.
Author: Sammy Jones
