Interviews may be the foundation for many a star’s bid to wow and woo fans before an album release but recent years have seen the performer Beyonce steer away from them.
Now, after shocking fans by not giving ‘Vogue’ an interview to accompany her spread in its September issue a Yale professor has stepped forward to reveal why the star no longer needs them.
More below…
Hits Daily Double reports:
What’s noteworthy about this cover is that the standard accompanying Q&A with the subject is nowhere to be found, the piece points out. The absence of the obligatory interview “may be unusual for Vogue, whose representatives declined to comment, but it is no longer unusual for Beyoncé. At some imperceptible point around 2013 to 2014, she appears to have stopped giving face-to-face interviews…
“Daphne A. Brooks, a Yale professor who teaches a class on black women and popular music culture that includes Beyoncé’s music (she is on sabbatical, finishing a book that will, in part, discuss Beyoncé), views her inaccessibility as a hard-won privilege, a reclamation of privacy not historically accorded to African-American women. ‘She’s been able to reach this level of stardom in which she’s managed—in a way that I really think is unique even among other black women entertainers—hyper-visibility and inaccessibility simultaneously,’ Professor Brooks said.
“She called it ‘refreshing’ to think that Beyoncé’s reticence in the news media would challenge her listeners ‘to think about the art first,’ as opposed to fostering a presumption about ‘getting closer to the entertainer.’”
After watching the star’s former manager Mathew Knowles use Benny Medina‘s notebook to turn Beyonce into a Jennifer Lopez-sized solo star we have to say it’ll take some time for fans to get used to a truly “mysterious” Yonce.
For, fans who’ve been around since the singer’s earlier days will know that every album campaign came armed with an accompanying movie, cosmetic commercials and a gang of interviews that would dominate the media from all angles.
However, things have changed and the work put in during this time has now given the icon the luxury of placing her music (and not her personality) to the forefront.
This wouldn’t have worked two or three years ago but her recent transition from ballad-belting diva to polished Hip Hop vixen has armed her with a coolness that allows her to be as elusive as she is being while using social media to keep her visibility live and kicking.
Will things change in the coming years? Undoubtedly, for an older Beyonce will have to switch things up once again when a younger, fresher batch of chart threaten to outshine her in the way she did her idol Janet Jackson back in 2006.
Until then….