On Sunday evening, Beyoncé performed her much anticipated Halftime show. As expected, the media fawned over her performance as if it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. On Twitter and other social networks, the story was different. Thousands of viewers condemned Beyoncé's performance as self-indulgent, uninspiring, and even sleazy.
Her performance was decent; Beyoncé proved -- once again -- that she can sing and dance at the same time, even though she is far from an expert in either category. However, her performance did not come close to living up to past performances by Madonna, Prince and Michael Jackson. Even Madonna's performance, which was hypocritically criticized more by the media, was a bigger hit in the ratings.
The problem with Beyonce's performance is that she was bent on proving that she can still sing. She did prove that while performing her final song "Halo," although there are questions to how much of that performance was lip-synced. She sounded fine while performing "Crazy In Love" and was successful singing "Bootylicious" and "Independent Women Part 1" with Destiny's Child. But at times, she just kept screaming into the microphone and we wished -- for the first time -- that Beyoncé would have pre-recorded her songs so she could concentrate on her dancing, which seemed awkward at times.
Beyoncé waved her hair, shook her booty, and touched herself suggestively. However, one can see that she wanted to do more and that concentrating on her singing after the inauguration controversy took away from that. No matter how good any performer belts out their hits, the sound system and acoustics are always so poor at the Super Bowl that the singing doesn't matter.
It's quite laughable that some critics were using Beyoncé's performance to put down Madonna. They must have tired of using Lady Gaga, so they moved onto another singer. However, Madonna's performance last year at the Super Bowl was miles ahead of Beyoncé's. Madonna might have been a little stiff (she was recovering from a pulled hamstring), but she seemed a lot more into her performance than Beyoncé did. Madonna also connected a lot more with the audience.
Critics and the general public have never disagreed on a performance so much as Beyoncé's Halftime performance. It seems there is a reason critics are afraid to criticize Beyoncé. If any other female artist did the same performance, critics would knock them over left and right. Are they afraid of being called "racist?" Are they being swayed by a strong PR team? Tell us what you think in the Comments section.
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