The release of Renaissance coincided with a trip my friends and I took to Provincetown, Massachusetts for a week of debaucherous gay fun. We arrived exactly one day after Beyoncé dropped the record, and it didn’t take long to discover that it had been recorded with the queer community in mind. Dedicated to her dear “Uncle Jonny,” a gay fashion designer, and awash in queer musical references (from house to disco), the aptly titled album was a revelation. There has long been an unbreakable bond between pop stars and the queer fans who idolize them, but a special spark ignites when an artist who is already revered by us delivers a gift directly to us. Naturally, it became the soundtrack for our trip. Across the next seven days, as my friends and I traipsed through the oasis that is P-Town, Renaissance served as our guide. Whether we were dancing at clubs, buying leather vests at the local fetish shop, or tanning our buns at the clothing-optional Boy Beach, Beyoncé’s heavenly voice was never too far from our ears.
To this day, listening to Renaissance reminds me of that week: the perfect marriage of setting and soundtrack, experienced in the finest company. It only made sense then that, come the next summer, we would all attend the accompanying tour together, settling on her Philadelphia stop as the most convenient date. After all, allowing Beyoncé to guide yet another out-of-state sojourn felt strangely appropriate.
One of our greatest living performers, Beyoncé is known for putting on historic live shows. Look no further than her dual “Homecoming” performances at Coachella 2018, which set an impossibly high bar for what a festival headlining set could look like, leading fans to coin the term “Beychella.” (Subsequent headliners have tried for similar rebrands; none of them have stuck.) The accompanying Netflix documentary of the same name, which spliced together footage from both weekends with behind-the-scenes peaks into the performer’s tireless prep for the show, was nominated for multiple Emmys. Years later, Homecoming continues to play on the TV in the background at many gay pre-games.
But even with that show still at the forefront of my mind (where it will forever stay), I knew the Renaissance World Tour would feel different. The Homecoming performances, odes to the soulful swag of historically Black college marching bands, were thoroughly researched and meticulously crafted — and as the son of a Morehouse graduate and the nephew of many Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority sisters, I felt a comforting familiarity being immersed in this distinctly Black style of celebration. But if Bey’s latest series of concerts felt even half as devoted to queer exaltation as the album did, I knew it would be one of the most important shows of, at the very least, my life.
It only took video from the first show in Stockholm to confirm my theories. No artist is quite as skilled at keeping audiences engaged from home — and no fanbase is more committed to live-streaming to the masses — so months before my friends and I would see it in person, we were already obsessing over looks, memorizing new choreography, and analyzing every song addition, subtraction, and variation on the sprawling 30-track setlist. By the time we’d reached our own date, we had spent more than two months “seeing” the show through a screen. And yet, in that moment, as the Queen prepared to show Renaissance to her first U.S. audience, there was a palpable excitement reverberating throughout Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field.
Renaissance begins with Beyoncé. At my show, she came onto stage almost an hour later than anticipated (allegedly to let the sun set so she wasn’t sweating too much in the scalding Philadelphia heat). But any qualms about her tardiness quickly dissipated as she dove into a medley of some of her most beautiful ballads. Throughout the tour, she shined a light on LGBTQ+ talent, with her creative director Andrew Makadsi booking a slew of queer and trans DJs as openers (from established names like Arca and LSDXOXO to upcoming acts like Memphy, br0nze_g0dd3ss, KIA, and the dynamic duo of Goth Jafar and River Moon). But with this introduction, she became her own opening act, gently easing the crowd into the night as she mesmerized us with little more than a microphone and a set of otherworldly vocal pipes.
This isn’t the first time Beyoncé has started off with a slow jam, but with Renaissance, the choice takes on a new context. Because, for this show, ballads were largely eschewed as she took audiences on a high-octane journey through her latest album, playing nearly every song in sequential order, save for occasional highlights from her back catalog, like the energetic bounce hit “Get Me Bodied” or the insatiably horny “Partition.” (“Plastic Off the Sofa,” with its sultry falsettos, is the slowest she got once the concert began in earnest.) With this choice, Beyoncé transformed massive stadiums into intimate nightclubs, and for more than two hours, invited audiences to lose themselves in the resurrected revelry of bygone hotspots like Studio 54.
In person, the Renaissance tracks were given glorious new life. Few live performers can match their studio pitch as exactingly as Miss Knowles-Carter, but the ever-versatile songstress never rested on replication alone. On stage, it all felt reimagined, from the smooth transition that connects the Big Freedia-assisted “Break My Soul” into the “Vogue”-sampling “Queens Remix” to the clever mashup of album highlight “Move” with Nina Sky’s classic “Move Ya Body.” And who will ever be able to forget about the infamous Mute Challenge? After months of getting people to go silent halfway through “Energy,” the inclination to hush up still encircles the song, even outside the context of the show. Everything was uniquely tailored for this experience.
It also felt tailored to us. Throughout, there were reminders about who this music was for: one of the backdrops is a direct reference to the Progress Pride flag (which is slyly hinted at in “Cozy”); during “Heated,” Beyoncé led the crowd through a communal fan-clack as she recited the tongue-twisting vogue-chant outro. She has always employed queer dancers, but this time, the stage was filled with voguers, and the choreography felt decidedly cuntier than usual. The entire show seemed informed by a distinctly queer sensibility. She fostered an environment that was accepting of all forms of personal expression, where we were all encouraged to be unique — because in this universe, we were all Alien Superstars. Even the pageantry of her endless array of custom couture looks (from the likes of Valentino, Alexander McQueen, Gucci, and Marc Jacobs) felt in step with the gay demand for overindulgence. Some looks — the hot pink Ivy Park number, the Mugler “Queen Bee” costume, and of course, the crystal-covered “hands” bodysuit from Loewe — have become historic staples of their own; it’s not hard to imagine many of these ensembles reappearing in DIY form come Halloween.
This sense of affirmation reached its zenith with a dip into the sticky-sweetness of the penultimate number “Pure/Honey.” Reveling in the spirit of that fan-favorite ballroom track, Renaissance morphed into a full-out vogue ball, steered by the voice of ballroom legend Kevin JZ Prodigy and his instructions to “serve it the old way.” As he chanted through categories like Sex Siren and Soft & Cunt Performance, dancers like Legendary breakout Honey Balenciaga dipped and spun across the stage with agile ease. It was quite the sight to behold, both entertaining and informative — a piece of queer history coming to life on a stage presided over by one of the biggest pop stars in the world.
Like the album, the concert concluded with “Summer Renaissance.” Beyoncé, now enrobed in a silver cape bedecked in shimmering fringe, floated high above the crowd, straddling a giant horse that glistened in the light like a mirrored disco ball. She sang about “feeling way too loose to be tied down” over that instantly recognizable Donna Summer “I Feel Love” sample, and before long, confetti was erupting all around as the dancers led the audience through the song’s requested “applause…round of applause.” The moment was blindingly euphoric; though it was very obviously ushering us to the end, it was impossible not to bask in all its pure glory.
As soon as she finished, a collective stupor seemed to wash over the nearly 65,000 attendees in the stadium. When my friends and I began to leave, sparkly remnants of confetti sticking to the underside of our shoes, we tried to summarize what we had just seen — just experienced — but nobody could find the right words, unable to voice anything beyond platitudes like “life-changing,” “incredible,” and “holy shit, that was amazing.” But we knew.
Because that’s what Beyoncé does to you. She grabs a hold onto you and refuses to let go. She takes your breath away, and then, just when your lungs are filling back up with air, she does it again. She plays with you, referencing obscure online memes and joking that “you are the visuals, baby” as a reminder that she’s always keeping up. And sometimes, she drops an empowering queer album the day before you and your friends make the trek from New York to P-Town, providing the perfect soundtrack for a week of gay bacchanalia, only to facilitate even more memory-making when she takes it on the road, gifting you with the concert of a lifetime.
Last night, Beyoncé concluded her landmark world tour with a final stop in Kansas City, and just like that, after a year of deep immersion in her Renaissance, we have been forced to bid adieu. It’s a bittersweet feeling — to celebrate what we’ve had while mourning what we’ve now lost — but we’ll always carry the experience in our spirits. Renaissance is forever (and not just because the concert film hits theaters in December).
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